Mood swings in european portuguese

: the indicative vs. the subjunctive in clausal complementation

Abstract

This is a corpus-based investigation on the semantic motivations for the use of the indicative and subjunctive in European Portuguese's complementation clauses. The moods are seen as conceptual tools that reflect how a clause is grounded (ef. e.g. Langacker 2009: Ch. 9). The indicative manifests compatibility between the cause's profile (the specific set of circumstances it designates) and its epistemic base (the conception of reality it is related to). The subjunctive, conversely. reflects an attenuated compatibility. The major novelty of these claims consists in proposing that the subjunctive can be bound under this notion of attenuated compatibility. A clause's profile can have an attenuated compatibility with its base because: 1. the speaker instructs the hearer to consider it so, which happens in complementation cases introduced by epistemic CTEs (complement taking elements) with a value of doubt or disbelief, such as duvidar ('doubt') or impossível ('impossible'); 2. there are motivations to contrast that compatibility with similar contexts, such as when using certo ('certain') without and with modifiers, as in it is certain that... + IND vs. it is almost certain that... + SUBJ; 3. that compatibility is not profiled at all, as in the complements introduced by non-epistemic CTEs of influence (querer want'; deixar let', 'allow') or evaluation (lamentar 'regret'; bom 'good'; mau 'bad'). The CTEs were very important in establishing these claims were, as they provide the domain of analysis (epistemic and non-epistemic, the latter divided into influence and evaluation). In epistemic contexts, however, negation in the matrix was also relevant: it is capable of turning a positive context (I think that...) into a negative one (I don't think that... = I doubt that...), i.e. a context of compatibility into an attenuated one. In non-epistemic cases, mainly on influence ones, the presence of modal verbs in the complement were also seen to play an important role in facilitating a mood change, being that they can bring epistemic features to the clause. By comparing I recommend that the house be (SUBJ sold | I recommend that the house must (IND) be sold, it can be seen that while the former describes the actions that the interlocutor is to perform, the latter describes the speaker's convictions. The latter is systematically found with indicative complements whereas the former with subjunctive ones. "Mood swings" could also be found in evaluation contexts with a reported speech complement (epistemic action).

Date of Award	26 Oct 2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Augusto Soares da Silva (Supervisor)