Construing factivity: mood alternations in epistemic contexts

This paper argues that the semantic contrast between the European Portuguese indicative and subjunctive moods, in complement clauses introduced by epistemic verbs, is related to one of the most fundamental principles of Cognitive Grammar, which states that different choices regarding the way of conveying one’s perspective about a certain aspect of the world-different construals-also result in different meanings. Specifically, it will be shown that different mood construals will reflect different levels of commitment towards the complement clause’s epistemic factivity, as it is addressed in Cognitive Grammar: factivity is the degree of identification of the virtual circumstances of enunciation evoked by the complement clause and the actual ones. The indicative is selected to convey a strong commitment towards the complement’s factivity whereas the subjunctive attenuates the complement’s factivity.