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Part of
Hispanic Linguistics: Current issues and new directions
Edited by Alfonso Morales-Front, Michael J. Ferreira, Ronald P. Leow and Cristina Sanz
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 26] 2020
► pp. 161–182

Mood in future-framed adverbials

Pragmatic alternations in Rioplatense Spanish

| The Ohio State University

In Spanish adverbial clauses containing cuando ‘when’ and a present-tense verb, it is assumed that indicative expresses habituality, but subjunctive futurity. However, in Rioplatense, indicative [I] occurs in future-framed adverbials, conveying epistemic pragmatic meaning: Cuando bajás [I] del bondi, llamame ‘When you get off the bus, call me.’ An online questionnaire containing 32 contextualized sentences was distributed to Rioplatense speakers (N = 140), and respondents assigned acceptability ratings using a Likert scale. Mixed-effects linear regression modeling shows that indicative is felicitous with immediate and temporally-delimited actions, and when epistemic certainty is conveyed; subjunctive is preferred for distant/unrestricted future actions, or uncertainty. These findings suggest an alternative criterion for mood choice in Rioplatense, based on epistemicity rather than differentiation between present and future events.

Keywords: pragmatics, epistemicity, mood, immediacy, future-framed adverbial
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Mood in Spanish
    • 2.2Future-framed adverbial clauses
    • 2.3Epistemic commitment
  • 3.Independent variables
  • 4.Research question and hypothesis
  • 5.Methods
  • 6.Results
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 13 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.26.08hof
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