Oh, Grammarians Extraordinaire,

Is there a relationship between the future perfect passive and 
conditional mood?  I sent around this cartoon yesterday --

    http://www.savagechickens.com/blog/2005/12/christmas-carol.html

to which someone I work with responded that the construction is also 
in the conditional mood and that one could argue it's in the 
imperative as well.  (What?)

I had always thought (rather simplistically, perhaps) that the 
conditional mood was indicated by the auxiliaries _could_, _may_, 
_might_, _would_, and _should_, but as I began to look into it this 
morning, I was startled to find that, in some grammars, the 
conditional is not even listed as a mood.  Conversely, or perhaps 
contrarily, one source (this one online) identifies four types of 
conditional moods, all four illustrated by conditional clauses, two 
of which contain perfect forms, not a one in the lot with a modal 
auxiliary.

But most of my grammar texts do not seem to address this mood at all.

Can anyone in this forum enlighten me on this point?  Is the 
conditional mood indicated only by certain auxiliary verbs?  Or does 
the conditional mood also embrace sentences with conditional clauses? 
Is the conditional, in fact, not a mood?  And, just for fun, is there 
a relationship between mood and tense?

I wouldn't be surprised to find that different systems construe this 
point differently, but I would like to understand something of those 
different approaches, and the thinking that drives them.


As always, thanks!

Odile

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