Cover not available
Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 24:1 (2019) ► pp.67–97

The indicative vs. subjunctive alternation with expressions of possibility in Spanish

A multifactorial analysis

 | Michigan State University
 | New Mexico State University
This study explores the indicative vs. subjunctive alternation in Spanish subordinate clauses following epistemic adverbials and expressions of possibility. Anchored in semantic-pragmatic and variationist theoretical frameworks, traditional research on mood alternation in Spanish remains largely experimental in nature. In contrast, we adopt a corpus-based multifactorial methodology to investigate 4,199 occurrences of fourteen expressions of possibility extracted from the Corpus del Español (e.g. caso de que, poder ser que, por si acaso, posiblemente, etc.) annotated contextually for structural, semantic and stylistic variables. Methodologically, we conduct an exploratory multiple correspondence analysis followed by a confirmatory binary logistic regression to examine whether/how the linguistic contexts affect mood variation. Overall, the results indicate that previously unexplored semantic factors (such as the inherent lexical aspect of verbs in subordinate clauses) significantly influence mood variation in Spanish. Ultimately, our results suggest that subjunctive uses are less uniform and more prone to internal variation than indicative uses.
Keywords: mood variation, possibility, logistic regression, correspondence analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Exploring mood variation: Theoretical and methodological insights from existing work
    • 2.1Theoretical approaches: Semantic perspectives
    • 2.2Theoretical approaches: Variationist perspectives
    • 2.3Extra linguistic considerations
    • 2.4Methodological insights: From experimental to corpus-based approaches
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus data, corpus extraction and semantic annotation
    • 3.2Statistical approach
      • 3.2.1Multiple correspondence analysis
      • 3.2.2Binary logistic regression
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Multiple correspondence analysis
    • 4.2Binary logistic regression
      • 4.2.1Main effects and interaction
      • 4.2.2A closer look at individual predicted uses of the subjunctive and the indicative
  • 5.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.17038.des
References (37)
References
Alcina, J., & Blecua, J. M. (1979). Gramática Española [Spanish Grammar]. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
Benzécri, J. P. (1984). Analyse des Correspondences, Exposé Élémentaire (2nd ed.). [Correspondence Analysis: An Elementary Statement]. Paris: Dunod.Google Scholar
Bergen, J. (1978). One rule for the Spanish subjunctive. Hispania, 61 (2), 218–234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D. (1986). Spoken and written textual dimensions in English: Resolving the contradictory findings. Language, 62 (2), 384–414. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1995). Dimensions of Register Variation: A Cross-linguistic Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012). Register as a predictor of linguistic variation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 8 (1), 9–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boberg, C. (2013). Surveys: The use of written questionnaires in sociolinguistics. In C. Mallinson, B. Childs & G. Van Herk (Eds.), Data Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and Applications (pp. 131–141). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brown, E. K. (2014). R script to search CdE. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed April 2019).Google Scholar
Butt, J., & Benjamin, C. (2004). A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Davies, M. (2002). Corpus del Español (100 million words, 1200s–1900s). Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2019).
(2006). A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish: Core Vocabulary for Learners. New York, NY: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Finanger, E. (2011). Time reference and lexical effects in mood choice following Spanish epistemic adverb quizá(s): A dialectal comparison. In J. Michnowicz & R. Dodsworth (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (pp. 90–102). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2019).
Gallego, M., & Alonso-Marks, E. (2014). Subjunctive use variation among monolingual native speakers of Spanish: A cross-dialect analysis. Spanish in Context, 11 (3), 357–380. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García, C. (2011). Distinguishing two “synonyms”: A variationist analysis of quizá and quizás in six Spanish dialects. In J. Michnowicz & R. Dodsworth (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (pp. 103–112). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2019).
Glynn, D. (2014). Correspondence analysis: Exploring data and identifying patterns. In D. Glynn & J. Robinson (Eds.), Corpus Methods for Semantics: Quantitative Studies in Polysemy and Synonymy (pp. 343–485). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Greenacre, M. (2006). From simple to multiple correspondence analysis. In M. Greenacre & J. Blasius (Eds.), Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Related Methods (pp. 41–76). London: Chapman & Hall. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Greenacre, M., Nenadic, O., & Friendly, M. (2018). ca: Simple, Multiple and Joint Correspondence Analysis. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed April 2019).Google Scholar
Gudmestad, A. (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
(2012). Individual lexical triggers and variable mood use in Spanish. International Journal of the Linguistic Association of the Southwest, 31 (2), 3–27.Google Scholar
Hsieh, C.-L. (2009). Epistemic stance taking in Chinese media discourse. Linguistic Theory Research, 3 (1), 1–35.Google Scholar
King, L. D. (1992). The Semantic Structure of Spanish: Meaning and Grammatical Form. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
King, C., McLeish, M., Zuckerman, J., & Schwenter, S. (2008, November). Epistemic adverbs and mood choice in three Spanish dialects. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 37, Rice University, Houston, TX.
Labov, W. (1984). Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In J. Baugh & J. Scherzer (Eds.), Language in Use: Readings in Sociolinguistics (pp. 8–53). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Lenz, R. (1944). La Oración Y Sus Partes: Estudios de Gramática General Y Castellana (4th ed.) [The Sentence and its Parts: Studies on General and Spanish Grammar]. Madrid: Revista de Filología Española.Google Scholar
McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2001). Ten criteria for a spoken grammar. In E. Hinkel & S. Fotos (Eds.), New Perspectives on Grammar Teaching in Second Language Classrooms (pp. 51–75). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
R Core Team. (2016). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing [Computer software]. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2019).
Ripley, B., Venables, D. M., Bates, K., Hornik, A., & Firth, D. G. (2018). MASS: Support Functions and Datasets for Venables and Ripley’s MASS. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed February 2019).
Sánchez-Macarro, A., & Carter, R. (1998). Linguistic Choice Across Genres: Variation in Spoken and Written English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sessarego, C. (2016). A discourse-pragmatic approach to teaching indicative/subjunctive mood selection in the intermediate Spanish language class: New information versus reformulation. Hispania, 99 (3), 392–406. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). The gradual loss of mood distinctions in Los Angeles Spanish. Language Variation and Change, 6 (3), 255–272. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soares Costas, P., Correia Santos, N., Cunha, P., Cotter, J., & Sousa, N. (2013). The use of multiple correspondence analysis to explore associations between categories of qualitative variables in healthy ageing. Journal of Aging Research, 2 1, 1–12.Google Scholar
Sourial, N., Wolfson, C., Bin, Z., Quail, J., Fletcher, J., Sathya, K., Bandeen-Roche, K., Béland, F., & Bergman, H. (2010). Correspondence analysis is a useful tool to uncover the relationships among categorical variables. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 63 (6), 638–646. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Studerus, L. (1995). Mood variability in border Spanish. Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingüe, 20 (2), 99–113.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, S. A. (2013). Comparative sociolinguistics. In J. K. Chambers, & N. Schilling (Eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (pp. 128–156). New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terrell, T., & Hooper, J. (1974). A semantically based analysis of mood in Spanish. Hispania, 57 (3), 484–494. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vendler, Z. (1957). Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review, 66 (2), 143–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Waltermire, M. (2014). The social conditioning of mood variation in the Spanish of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sociolinguistic Studies, 8 (1), 111–137. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (7)

Cited by seven other publications

Míguez, Vítor
2024. Mood Alternation with Adverbs of Uncertainty in Galician: A Multifactorial Analysis. Languages 9:6 ► pp. 195 ff. DOI logo
Faulkner, Tris
2022. The Two Spanish Subjunctives: The Required and Default Subjunctives. Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics 11:1 ► pp. 70 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
Larsson, Tove, Jesse Egbert & Douglas Biber
2022. On the status of statistical reporting versus linguistic description in corpus linguistics: a ten-year perspective. Corpora 17:1 ► pp. 137 ff. DOI logo
Venegas, René, Iris Viviana Bosio & Constanza Cerda-Canales
2022. Los corpus sincrónicos del español. Descripción y potencialidades para la investigación teórica y aplicada de la lengua. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching 9:2 ► pp. 116 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2024. Revisiting Modality [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 40], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 november 2024. 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.