Cover not available

Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 11:3 (2014) ► pp.357–380

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

Subjunctive use variation among monolingual native speakers of Spanish

A cross-dialect analysis

Published online: 8 December 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.11.3.03gal
Research conducted with monolingual native Spanish speakers has yielded discrepant results concerning the loss or maintenance of the subjunctive, whereas studies conducted with heritage speakers point to a gradual subjunctive loss (Montrul 2009; Mikulski 2010; Silva-Corvalán 1994a, 1994b, 2001). Cross-dialectal studies (Blake 1982; De Sterck 2000; Fernández Ulloa & Portillo Mayorga 2000; Menegotto 2003, 2004, 2008) have mainly focused on past tenses, and scarce are cross-dialectal studies investigating native speakers’ subjunctive use in the present tense. This study examines mood use by means of an acceptability test and a forced choice cloze test conducted by native speakers of two varieties of Spanish. One hundred and four adult monolingual native speakers of Spanish participated in the study — N = 56 from Rosario, Argentina and N = 56 from Toledo, Spain. Results indicate an overall vitality of the subjunctive and also reveal slight differences regarding acceptability based on gender and region.
References (40)
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 J. Lantolf, and G.B. Stone, 13–22. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1983. “Mood Selection among Spanish-speaking Children: Ages 4 to 12.” The Bilingual Review 101: 21–32.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borrego, J., J.G. Asencio, and E. Prieto. 1986. El subjuntivo: valores y usos. Madrid: Sociedad General Española de Librería, S.A.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Collentine, Joseph. 1995. “The Development of Complex Syntax and Mood-Selection Abilities by Intermediate-Level Learners of Spanish.” Hispania 781: 122–35. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Streck, Goedele. 2000. Registros y áreas geográficas en lingüística.Valores y usos de las formas verbales en -RA, -SE, -RÍA y –RE. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Farley, Andrew. 2004. “Semantic and Syntactic Perspectives on Mood Selection in Spanish: An Analysis of Presupposition, Government, and Binding.” Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada 221: 13–35.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fernández Ulloa, Teresa, and Rosario Portillo Mayorga. 2000. “Uso del imperfecto y pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo entre estudiantes universitarios de Bilbao y Santander.” Onomázein 51: 167–187.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García, Mary Ellen, and Tracy Terrel. 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 Linguistics. ed. by M.P. Hagiwara, 214–226. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guitart, Jorge. 1982. “On the Use of the Spanish Subjunctive among Spanish-English Bilinguals.” Word 33 (1): 59–67. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gudmestad, Aarnes. 2006. “L2 Variation of Spanish Subjunctive: Linguistic Features Predicting Use.” In Selected proceedings of the 7th Conference on the Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages, ed. by C. Klee, and T. Face, 170–184. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “Moving Beyond a Sentence-level Analysis in the Study of Variable Mood Use in Spanish.” Southwest Journal of Linguistics 29 (1): 25–51.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gudmestad, A. 2012. “Acquiring a variable stmcture: An interlanguage analysis of second language mood use in Spanish.” Language Learning 62(2), 373–402. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kempchinsky, Paula. 1986. “Romance Subjunctive Clauses and Logical Form.” PhD. diss., University of California-Los Angeles.
. 2009. “What Can the Subjunctive Disjoint Reference Effect Tell Us About the Subjunctive?” Lingua 1191: 1788–1810. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kowal, Jerzt. 2007. “La elección del modo subjuntivo en las subordinadas nominales.” Linguística Española Actual 29 (1): 45–72.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1990. “The Intersection of Sex and Social Class in the Course of Linguistic Change.” Language Variation and Change 21: 205–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lastra, Yolanda, and Pedro Butragueño. 2012. “Aproximación al uso del modo subjuntivo en el Corpus sociolingüístico de la ciudad de México.” Boletín de Filología 47 (2): 101–131. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lipski, John. 1978. “Subjunctive as Fact?” Hispania 61 (4): 931–934. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lloyd, Paul.1993. Del latín al español. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lozano, Anthony. 1972. “Subjunctives, Transformations and Features in Spanish.” Hispania 55 (1): 76–90. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1975. “In Defense of two Subjunctives.” Hispania 58 (2): 277–283. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lubbers Quesada, Margaret. 1998. “L2 Acquisition of the Spanish Subjunctive Mood and Prototype Schema Development.” Spanish Applied Linguistics 21: 1–22.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lynch, Andrew. 2000. “The subjunctive in Miami Cuban Spanish: Bilingualism, contact, and language variability.” PhD. diss., University of Minnesota. Dissertation Abstracts International 60, 8.
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
Menegotto, Andrea. 2003. “Tiempo y aspecto en dos variedades de español.” Actas del IX Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Lingüística. Edición en CD. Córdoba: Comunicarte Editorial.
. 2004. “Variación dialectal en los pretéritos del español. Un acercamiento minimalista.” In Debates actuales. Las teorías críticas de la literatura y la lingüística , Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UBA. 18–21 Oct. 2004. Edición en internet.
. 2008. “Variación dialectal en los pretéritos simple y compuesto del español” In Lengua viva. Estudios ofrecidos a César Hernández Alonso, ed. by Álvarez Tejedor et al., 175–201.Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mikulski, Ariana. 2010. “Receptive Volitional Subjunctive Abilities in Heritage and Traditional Foreign Language Learners of Spanish.” The Modern Language Journal 94 (2): 217–233. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “Knowledge of Tense-aspect and Mood in Spanish Heritage Speakers.” International Journal of Bilingualism 13 (2): 239–269. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perez-Leroux, Ana. 1998. “The Acquisition of Mood Selection in Spanish Relative Clauses.” Journal of Child Language 251: 585–604. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Real Academia Española: Banco de datos (CREA). Corpus de referencia del español actual. [URL].
Real Academia Española: Banco de datos (CORDE). Corpus de referencia del español actual. [URL]
Sastre Ruano, María Ángeles. 1997. El Subjuntivo en español. Salamanca: Ediciones Colegio de España.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. 1994a. “The Gradual Loss of Mood Distinctions in Los Angeles Spanish.” Language Variation and Change 6 (3): 255–272. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1994b. Language Contact and Change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Sociolingüística y pragmática del español. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Terrell, Tracy, and Joan Hooper. 1974. “A Semantically Based Analysis of Mood in Spanish.” Hispania 571: 484–494. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (14)

Cited by 14 other publications

Giancaspro, David, Silvia Perez‐Cortes & Josh Higdon
2022. (Ir)regular Mood Swings: Lexical Variability in Heritage Speakers’ Oral Production of Subjunctive Mood. Language Learning 72:2 ► pp. 456 ff. DOI logo
Hirota, Harunobu
2022. The Indicative/subjunctive Mood Alternation with Adverbs of Doubt in Spanish. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 29:4 ► pp. 450 ff. DOI logo
Hirota, Harunobu
2023. Quantitative-statistic corpus analysis about mood variation in Spanish based on linguistic and social variables. Corpora 18:1 ► pp. 97 ff. DOI logo
Perez-Cortes, Silvia
2022. ON COMPLEXITY AND DIVERGENCE IN HERITAGE LANGUAGE GRAMMARS. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 44:3 ► pp. 818 ff. DOI logo
Perez-Cortes, Silvia
2022. Lexical frequency and morphological regularity as sources of heritage speaker variability in the acquisition of mood. Second Language Research 38:1 ► pp. 149 ff. DOI logo
Faulkner, Tris
2021. Prescriptively or descriptively speaking?. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 31:3 ► pp. 357 ff. DOI logo
Bove, Kathryn
2020. Mood selection in a contact variety. In Variation and Evolution [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 29], ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Deshors, Sandra C. & Mark Waltermire
2019. The indicative vs. subjunctive alternation with expressions of possibility in Spanish. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 24:1 ► pp. 67 ff. DOI logo
Hoff, Mark
2019. Epistemic commitment and mood alternation: A semantic-pragmatic analysis of Spanish future-framed adverbials. Journal of Pragmatics 139 ► pp. 97 ff. DOI logo
Hoff, Mark
2020. Mood in future-framed adverbials. In Hispanic Linguistics [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 26], ► pp. 161 ff. DOI logo
Waltermire, Mark
2017. Mood variation after expressions of uncertainty in Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 10:2 ► pp. 349 ff. DOI logo
Gallego, Muriel
2016. An analysis of subjunctive frequency and semantic predictors of mood in Central Argentinian Spanish. In Inquiries in Hispanic Linguistics [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 12], ► pp. 301 ff. DOI logo
Gallego, Muriel
2022. L2 Spanish morphosyntactic development through collaborative writing: An analysis of mood production, text length and syntactic complexity. Language Teaching Research 26:1 ► pp. 34 ff. DOI logo
Gallego, Muriel & Emilia Alonso Marks
2015. Frequency of Subjunctive Use in Oral Production in Two Varieties of Spanish. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 173 ► pp. 162 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 december 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