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Part of
East and West of The Pentacrest: Linguistic studies in honor of Paula Kempchinsky
Edited by Timothy Gupton and Elizabeth Gielau
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 33] 2021
► pp. 83–92

Chapter 4
Negation and mood in epistemic contexts

| Miami University

This squib examines mood contrasts in Spanish and (Modern) Greek. It is argued that the dual interpretation of negation, first analyzed in Horn’s (1989) seminal work, can provide new insights for mood contrasts in negated epistemic contexts. I show that metalinguistic (narrow-scope) negation of Spanish creo ‘I believe’ and Greek pistévo ‘I believe’ entails an intentional, rather than intensional, pragmatic function: the speaker wishes to reserve truth-value judgment, resulting in an unevaluated propositional complement. In intentional contexts, the subjunctive is exhibited in Spanish, and the indicative in Greek. I suggest that the subjunctive is exhibited in Spanish because unevaluated propositions fail to update the context, in keeping with Farkas (2003). Conversely, the indicative surfaces in Greek because unevaluated propositions are not non-veridical, aligning with Giannakidou (1997, 1998, 1999, 2006, 2009, 2013). I then extend the investigation to emotive predicates, another context of mood variation, providing more evidence that metalinguistic negation marks unassertive propositional complements.

Keywords: mood distribution, epistemic contexts, (non)-veridicality, subjunctive, negation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Farkas (2003)
  • 3.Cross-linguistic variation in negated epistemic contexts
  • 4.The interpretation of negation in epistemic contexts
  • 5.Emotive verbs and metalinguistic negation
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Dedication
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 10 May 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.33.04gie
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