Irrealis and Sequence of TAM Atle Grønn University of Oslo Abstract In this paper 1 , I will discuss an irrealis-construction in Russian, which poses non-trivial problems for a compositional analysis of tense, aspect and mood (the categories subsumed under the abbreviation TAM). The past tense morphology on the verb – in absence of a semantic PAST operator – is argued to be licensed by an IRREALIS operator. This con- cord phenomenon will be accounted for in terms agreement/checking as in Minimalist feature theory. The choice of imperfective aspect in this con- struction can possibly be explained from the perspective of competition between optimal form-meaning pairs. 1 In mood for chess A linguistic puzzle frequently pops up in Russian chess annotations: (1) Posle 9.e4 belye vyigryvali ind,past,ipf peˇ sku, ˇ cego vpolne khvatalo ind,past,ipf dlja pobedy. (Internet) After [the hypothetical chess move] 9.e4 white would have won a pawn, which would have been more than sufficient for victory. This intriguing modal/counterfactual flavour in absence of overt markers of modality is, of course, not an invention of strong Russian chess players. On request, my Russian informants produce discourses like the following: (2) K sˇ cast’ju ja ne provalilsja ind,past,pf na ˙ ekzamene. Posle provala menja vygonjali ind,past,ipf iz universiteta. Luckily, I did not fail the exam. In case of failure [lit.: ‘After failure’] I would have been kicked out of the university. Compositional semantics alone cannot explain all there is to these data. But first, in order for the reader to appreciate the puzzle, a few words on the inventory of TAM-categories in Russian. 1 I would like to thank Kjell Johan Sæbø, Arne Martinus Lindstad, my Russian consultants Maria Filiouchkina Krave and Dmitrij Ostanin, and the anonymous referees of the workshop for valuable feedback at various stages of this work.