Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

A Cross-linguistic Approach to the Syntax of Subjunctive Mood

Embedded clausal complements are selected by matrix predicates in terms of (i) mood and (ii) complementizers (and (iii) tense, which we do not discuss here). It is widely accepted that the process of selection is closely linked with the individual properties of given (classes of) predicates. In this talk, we explore both the nature of the matrix predicates selecting subjunctive vs. indicative complements, and the way mood marking is realized on embedded clauses.  

We first introduce several issues that arise with subjunctive mood selection cross-linguistically: French, Italian, Hungarian, Modern Greek and South Slavic languages are the languages we consider. We then present an analysis which accounts for the triggering of subjunctive mood. We introduce a new classification of embedding predicates. In order to do so, we, decompose their meaning and argue that the trigger for subjunctive mood is a property of the predicate that we label emotive. We then propose a formalization of the mechanism of subjunctive selection based on the syntactic encoding of the feature in the grammar. Finally, we account for cross-linguistic variation of mood marking in terms of different patterns of lexicalization of the functional sequence at the level of the complementizer, in a nanosyntactic fashion.