[ilayn]

I think you are also giving yourself too much credit on the separability of tense and mood and if it does not fit into your mental model you are discarding all other options. You can do the same research yourself. Mood and tense are not always separable as you might think. Morphology is a red herring here. It clearly transmits the essential time information and also adds mood no-confirm structure on top. Hence if you don't consider that as a tense, then I have the same suspicion about your knowledge and obviously I might be also wrong.

[marcellus23]

I am not suggesting that you cannot convey both mood and tense information with the same pattern. I agree with that, and I already made that point in my English imperative example. I also agree that moods can restrict which tenses you can express, sometimes restricting it to only one possible tense (as with Turkish inferential).

The point I am making, is that by the definition of mood, "inferential" simply has to be a mood. The point of using it is to suggest a particular relationship with reality ("I didn't see this, but I heard it second-hand"). That's modality, i.e. mood. It also happens to restrict the temporality of the verb to the past.

> It clearly transmits the essential time information and also adds mood no-confirm structure on top.

What you seem to be referring to here is the actual vocal pattern that you attach to a verb root to signify gossip. Of course, word endings can convey both tense and mood, just as they can convey both gender and number. But they are still separate concepts.