Cover not available

Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 31:3 (2021) ► pp.357–381

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF

Prescriptively or descriptively speaking?

How ‘information-quality’ influences mood variation in Spanish emotive-factive clauses

ORCiD logo with link | Georgetown University
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 22 March 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.19044.fau
Abstract
It is generally put forth that Spanish has the subjunctive as the required mood in the complements of emotive-factives (alegrarse de que ‘to be happy that’), desire verbs (querer ‘to want’), verbs of uncertainty (dudar ‘to doubt’), modals (ser posible que ‘to be possible that’), causatives (hacer que ‘to make that’), and directives (recomendar que ‘to recommend that’) (e.g., Real Academia de la Lengua Española. 2011. Nueva gramática de la lengua española: MANUAL. Madrid: Espasa Libros.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). However, in spite of these traditional rules, it has been observed that some of these environments allow for the indicative (Blake, Robert. 1981. “Some Empirically Based Observations on Adult Usage of the Subjunctive Mood in Mexico City.” In Current Research in Romance Languages, ed. by James Lantolf and Gregory B. Stone, 13–22. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Crespo del Rio, Claudia. 2014. “Tense and Mood Variation in Spanish Nominal Subordinates: The Case of Peruvian Varieties.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Deshors, Sandra C., and Mark Waltermire. 2019. “The indicative vs. subjunctive alternation with expressions of possibility in Spanish.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 24(1): 67–97.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Gallego, Muriel, and Emilia Alonso-Marks. 2014. “Subjunctive use variation among monolingual native speakers of Spanish: A cross-dialect analysis.” Spanish in Context 11(3): 357–380. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; García, Mary Ellen, and Tracy Terrell. 1977. “Is the Use of Mood in Spanish Subject to Variable Constraints?”. In Studies in Romance Linguistics Proceedings of the Fifth Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, ed. by Michio Hagiwara, 214–226. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Gregory, Amy E., and Patricia Lunn. 2012. “A Concept-based Approach to the Subjunctive.” Hispania 95 (2): 333–343.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Kowal, Jerzy. 2007. “La elección del modo subjuntivo en las subordinadas nominales.” Lingüística Española Actual 29 (1): 45–72.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Lipski, John M. 1978. “Subjunctive as Fact?” Hispania 61 (4): 931–934. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Silva-Corvalan, Carmen. 1994. “The gradual loss of mood distinctions in Los Angeles Spanish.” Language, Variation, and Change 61: 255–272. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Waltermire 2019). The current study explored one such environment; emotive-factive clauses. Results showed that the presuppositions that speakers hold regarding the knowledge that their addressees possess influence the mood that they select. This, thus, demonstrates the important role that pragmatics plays in the occurrence of mood variation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Emotive-factive predicates
    • 1.2Why does this variability occur?: semantic approaches to mood
    • 1.3Why does this variability occur?: a pragmatic approach to mood
  • 2.Pragmatic presupposition and mood choice
    • 2.1Pragmatic presupposition
    • 2.2Pragmatic presupposition and old information
    • 2.3Old information and the subjunctive
  • 3.The theory of ‘information-quality’
    • 3.1Information-quality and mood variation with emotive-factives
  • 4.The current study
  • 5.Method
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Instrument creation
      • 5.2.1Corpus search
      • 5.2.2Acceptability judgment tasks
        • I.Contextualized acceptability judgment task
        • II.Context-free acceptability judgment task
    • 5.3Data collection
      • 5.3.1Language background questionnaire
      • 5.3.2Acceptability judgment tasks
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Contextualized acceptability judgment task
      • 6.1.1The indicative with new and old information
      • 6.1.2The subjunctive with new and old information
    • 6.2Context-free acceptability judgment task
    • 6.3Contextualized AJT vs. context-free AJT
  • 7.Discussion
    • 7.1Contextualized acceptability judgment task
    • 7.2Context-free acceptability judgment task
    • 7.3Contextualized AJT vs. context-free AJT
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • 9.Future research
  • Notes
  • References
References (42)
References
Becker, Martin G. 2010. “Principles of mood change in evaluative contexts: The case of French.” In Modality and Mood in Romance, ed. by Eva-Maria Remberger, and Martin G. Becker, 209–233. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blake, Robert. 1981. “Some Empirically Based Observations on Adult Usage of the Subjunctive Mood in Mexico City.” In Current Research in Romance Languages, ed. by James Lantolf and Gregory B. Stone, 13–22. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borgonovo, Claudia, Bruhn de Garavito, Joyce, and Phillipe Prévost. 2015. Mood Selection in Relative Clauses Interfaces and Variability.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition 371: 33–69. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borrego, J., Asencio, J. G., and E. Prieto. 1986. El Subjuntivo: Valores y Usos. España: Sociedad Española de Librería.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bosque, Ignacio. 1990. Indicativo y Subjuntivo. Madrid: Taurus Universitaria.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collentine, Joseph. 2010. “The Acquisition and Teaching of the Spanish Subjunctive: An Update on Current Findings.” Hispania 93 (1): 39–51.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crystal, David. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2016. “El Corpus del Español.” Accessed in February 2018. [URL]
Deshors, Sandra C., and Mark Waltermire. 2019. “The indicative vs. subjunctive alternation with expressions of possibility in Spanish.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 24(1): 67–97.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crespo del Rio, Claudia. 2014. “Tense and Mood Variation in Spanish Nominal Subordinates: The Case of Peruvian Varieties.” PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Farkas, Donka F. 1985. “Intensional Descriptions and the Romance subjunctive mood.” PhD diss., University of Chicago.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Farkas, Donka. 1992b. “On the Semantics of Subjunctive Complements.” In Romance Languages and Modern Linguistic Theory: Selected papers from the XX Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, ed. by Paul Hirschbühler and Konrad Koerner, 69–104. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García, Mary Ellen, and Tracy Terrell. 1977. “Is the Use of Mood in Spanish Subject to Variable Constraints?”. In Studies in Romance Linguistics Proceedings of the Fifth Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, ed. by Michio Hagiwara, 214–226. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giannakidou, Anastasia. 2015. “Evaluative subjunctive and nonveridicality.” In Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisted: New Answers to Old Questions, ed. by Joanna Blaszczak, Anastasia Giannakidou, Dorota Klimek-Jankowska, and Krzysztof Migdalski, 177–217. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra, and Fabio Pianesi. 1997. Tense and Aspect: From Semantics to Morphosyntax. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gregory, Amy E., and Patricia Lunn. 2012. “A Concept-based Approach to the Subjunctive.” Hispania 95 (2): 333–343.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karttunen, Lauri. 1971. “Implicative Verbs.” Language 42(2): 340–358.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keenan, E. L. 1971. “On the Two Kinds of Presuppositions in Natural Language.” In Studies in Linguistic Semantics, ed. by C. J. Fillmore and D. T. Langendoen, 45–54. New York: Holt.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul, and Carol Kiparsky. 1971. “Fact.” In Progress in Linguistics: A Collection of Papers, ed. by Manfred Bierwisch and Karl Erich Heidolph, 143–73. Hague, Netherlands: Mouton Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kowal, Jerzy. 2007. “La elección del modo subjuntivo en las subordinadas nominales.” Lingüística Española Actual 29 (1): 45–72.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lavandera, Beatriz. 1983. “Shifting Moods in Spanish Discourse.” Discourse Perspectives on Syntax: 209–236. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. 1978. “Subjunctive as Fact?” Hispania 61 (4): 931–934. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lope Blanch, Juan Miguel. 1990. “Algunos usos de indicativo por subjuntivo en oraciones subordinadas.” In Indicativo y subjuntivo, ed. by, Ignacio Bosque, 180–182. Madrid: Taurus Universitaria.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lunn, Patricia. 1989. “Spanish Mood and the Prototype of Assertability.” Linguistics 27 (4): 687–702. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mejías-Bikandi, Errapel. 1994. “Assertion and Speaker’s Intention: A Pragmatically Based Account of Mood in Spanish.” Hispania 77(4): 892–902. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. “Pragmatic Presupposition and Old Information in the Use of the Subjunctive Mood in Spanish.” Hispania 81, (4): 941–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Portner, Paul. 2018. Mood. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen. 1992. “The ZPG Letter: Subjects, Definiteness, and Information-status.” In Discourse Description: Diverse Linguistic Analyses of a Fund-raising Text, ed. by William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson, 295–325. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quer, Josep. 1998. Mood at the Interface. Amsterdam: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “Interpreting mood.” Probus 13 (1): 81–111. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “Twists of mood: The distribution and interpretation of indicative and subjunctive.” Lingua 119 (12): 1779–1787. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010b. “On the (un)stability of mood distribution in Romance.” In Modality and Mood in Romance Modal Interpretation, Mood Selection, and Mood Alternation, ed. by Martin Becker, and Eva-María Remberger, 163–179. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Real Academia de la Lengua Española. 2011. Nueva gramática de la lengua española: MANUAL. Madrid: Espasa Libros.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sessarego, Cecilia. 2016. “A Discourse-Pragmatic Approach to Teaching Indicative/Subjunctive Mood Selection in the Intermediate Spanish Language Class: New Information versus Reformulation.” Hispania 99 (3): 392–406. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalan, Carmen. 1994. “The gradual loss of mood distinctions in Los Angeles Spanish.” Language, Variation, and Change 61: 255–272. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert. 1973. “Presuppositions.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 2 (4): 447–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. “Common Ground.” Linguistics and Philosophy 251: 701–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Terrell, Tracy, and Joan Hooper. 1974. “A Semantically Based Analysis of Mood in Spanish.” Hispania 57 (3): 484–494. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zeevat, Henk. 1992. “Presupposition and Accommodation in Update Semantics.” Journal of Semantics 9 (4): 379–412. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

García Yanes, Francisco Javier
2025. Debunking myths from a cognitive perspective. Review of Cognitive Linguistics DOI logo
Faulkner, Tris
2022. The Two Spanish Subjunctives: The Required and Default Subjunctives. Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics 11:1 ► pp. 70 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue