Resumen de Mood variation after expressions of uncertainty in Spanish
According to prescriptive grammars of Spanish, subordinate clauses after expressions of uncertainty require the subjunctive when introduced by the complementizer que ‘that’ (e. g., No creo que venga (S). ‘I don’t believe that he’ll come.’) but require the indicative when introduced by the complementizer si ‘if/whether’ (e. g., No sé si viene (I). ‘I don’t know if he’ll come.’). The use of these moods in actual speech, however, is highly variable. Using a database of conversational Spanish from 10 cities in Latin America and Spain, 428 tokens of subjunctive and indicative mood use were examined according to the following linguistic and social factors – subject agreement, intervening material, frequency of the subordinate verb, age, sex, and education level. Of these variables, only intervening material is statistically significant in the conditioning of mood variation. The use of the subjunctive is preferred after the complementizer que when there is no intervening material separating it from the subordinate verb. In order to further explore possible interactions between individual factors, a Joint Multiple Correspondence Analysis using R was conducted. Results from this exploratory analysis suggest that the use of the subjunctive correlates with young, male, and highly educated speakers whereas the indicative correlates with older, female, and less educated speakers. The variable use of mood after expressions of uncertainty in Spanish may be socially motivated, as these results suggest. As such, the impact of social variables on mood variation should be explored in future studies.
