A Concept-based Approach to the Subjunctive

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Hispania, Volume 95, Number 2, June 2012, pp. 333-343 (Article)
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A Concept-based Approach to the Subjunctive
Amy E. Gregory
Pilgrim School; Los Angeles, CA, USA
Patricia Lunn
Michigan State University, USA
Emerita
Abstract: Linguistic research has shown that Spanish speakers mark clauses with the subjunctive when
they consider the information value of those clauses to be low. Despite widespread agreement among
linguists, however, the information-value approach to the subjunctive is largely ignored in textbooks and
workbooks. This article explains how the information-value explanation works and suggests ways of
incorporating this insight into classroom explanation.
Keywords: assertion/afirmación, information quality/calidad de información, linguistic description/
descripción lingüística, mood contrast/contraste modal, non-assertion/no-afirmación, pedagogical
grammar/gramática pedagógica, pedagogical linguistics/lingüística pedagógica, Spanish subjunctive/
subjuntivo español
L
anguage teaching has changed a great deal in the last few decades. The focus has
become communication (the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning),
and agreement has emerged that grammar explanations should not be the focus of the
communicative classroom. At the same time, linguistic explanations of grammar have become
more descriptive and explanatory. These parallel developments have produced an anomalous
situation: while textbook formats and classroom activities have changed a great deal, grammar
explanations in the textbooks and classrooms have not. The explanations presented in many
textbooks and workbooks are often far from the best that linguists have to offer; indeed, they
may not be informed by linguistic research at all.
We argue here that the insights of theoretical linguistics can improve pedagogical explanations of the subjunctive (and, by extension, those of other grammar topics). We do not claim that
improved explanations will render complex topics simple, obviate the need for input, or cause
acquisition to happen; we argue only that linguistically adequate explanations should be one
of the tools available to foreign language teachers and students. The defining characteristic of
linguistic description is that it is data-based; an adequate linguistic description has to account for
what native speakers say (and, with the rise of discourse analysis, for what they say in context).
This approach is particularly valuable in the modern classroom, because students now have
access to authentic Spanish on websites, on television, and in movies, and they should be provided grammar descriptions that account for the authentic language to which they are exposed.
This article examines the disconnect between popular explanations of the Spanish subjunctive, and what linguists have discovered about the mood contrast in Spanish. The first part of this
article synthesizes the line of modern linguistic research that has converged on an explanation of
the subjunctive/indicative contrast in Spanish, and shows how conventional approaches to the subjunctive fail to take advantage of the insights provided by this explanation. The second part of the
article translates linguistic explanation into pedagogical practice for the communicative classroom.
AATSP Copyright © 2012
Hispania 95.2 (2012): 333–43
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A Linguistic Description of Spanish Mood
Mood, the usual English translation of the term modo, is a misleading word in and of itself,
implying a kind of radical subjectivity on the part of the speaker. Subjectivity, carefully defined,
is in fact relevant to the subjunctive/indicative distinction (as discussed below), but a more
revealing translation is mode. It will be argued here that subjunctive and indicative are different
modes of conveying information, which reveal, in Bolinger’s (1968) prescient description, the
“volitional involvement” (29) of the speaker in organizing and presenting information. Terrell
and Hooper (1974), in a much-cited paper, showed that the syntactic patterns of the sentence
are the expression of underlying communicative goals: “The speaker makes certain decisions
about the information he wishes to convey” (492).
Based on Terrell and Hooper’s (1974) insight, Lavandera (1983) showed how “[t]he
subjunctive-indicative morphology attached to every occurrence of a conjugated verb is a quick,
clear instruction about the presence or absence of ‘assertiveness’ for each statement” (232).
Lunn (1989) continued this line of research by showing how assertion is linked to information
quality: “Information that speakers of Spanish are likely to encode in the indicative is relevant
information” (690), or information that is both reliable and newsworthy.
Mejías-Bikandi (1994) added the speaker’s point of view to the discussion of discourse
organization and information value: “In order to predict the mood of a complement clause in
Spanish, we have to take into consideration what the speaker’s intentions are. . . . When it is
not the intention of the speaker to present P (a proposition) as part of some individual’s view
of reality, P is not asserted and the subjunctive mood will be used” (900–01). And Gregory
(2001) used the metaphor of cognitive maps: “Speakers locate those propositions considered
to be information in their deictic center and they distance themselves from those propositions
they consider as (or want to represent as) lacking informational value” (108).
In summary, this approach to subjunctive/indicative is based on speaker evaluation
of information quality. Speakers will mark information they feel no need to assert—either
because it is unreliable (doubtful, untrue, future, etc.) or because it is uninformative (already
known)—with the subjunctive; they will mark information they consider worthy of assertion
with the indicative. The mood contrast is not, contrary to Collentine (2010), based on the notion
of truth value, a logical construct that is both misleading and inadequate for this purpose. As
Mejías-Bikandi (1994) has shown, analyzing the mood contrast pragmatically sheds light on
Spanish data that were previously problematic. The key to the pragmatic approach lies with the
speaker’s intentions rather than with truth value. Pragmatically, speakers assert a proposition,
using the indicative, to indicate that the proposition provides information about some person’s
view of reality; if this is not the speakers’ claim, the proposition will not be asserted and the
subjunctive is used. Speakers may choose not to assert a proposition even if they do consider
the proposition to represent some individual’s view of reality when, for example, they take a
proposition as given (already known to the interlocutors) in order to comment on it.1
Simply put, in complex communicative situations—which are mirrored syntactically by
complex sentences—speakers of Spanish can use grammatical mood to rank the information
value of clauses. They can use the indicative to assert the information contained in a clause, an
option that is always available, even in subordinate clauses. Or, they can assert the main clause
but not the subordinate clause. Rarely, they can choose to use the subjunctive in both clauses
(e.g., Quisiera que Ud. me explicara esto), in which case the complete lack of assertiveness is
understood as extreme politeness.
The analysis outlined here coincides partially with common explanations of the subjunctive
in textbooks (high school and university level), including some intended for university advanced
grammar courses, but also diverges from them in significant ways. Table 1 summarizes the nonresearch-based approach to the subjunctive, which simply repeats conventional grammatical
rules that have been passed down from textbook to textbook.
Gregory & Lunn / A Concept-based Approach to the Subjunctive
335
Table 1. Non-research-based Approach to Grammatical Mood in Spanish
Prevalent Concepts Used in Describing the Spanish Subjunctive
Semantic Uncertainty
notion
Unreality
Futurity
Non-existent /
Non-specific
entity
Emotion
Contrary-to-fact
when used in
conjunction with
“if” clause
The first four semantic notions correspond to the category of low-value information. This
overlap between the two approaches, though, masks an important difference between them. The
semantic-notion analysis implies that it is the subjunctive itself that expresses these notions.
However, if we look at example sentences for each of these notions, we see that uncertainty,
unreality, etc., are not expressed by the (identical) verbs in the subordinate clauses, but by the
main clauses.
(1) Dudo que sea así.
(2) No es que sea así.
(3) Volveré cuando sea así.
(4) Quiero uno que sea así.
There is a crucial difference between saying that speakers use the subjunctive to mark low-value
information (which may be uncertain, unreal, etc.), and saying that the subjunctive conveys these
semantic notions in and of itself. When the latter argument is made, it leads to some perfectly
logical but inaccurate conclusions. Students who are taught that the subjunctive “means” doubt,
etc., often conclude that, given their understanding of the word si, the subjunctive should always
appear after this word. As a result, they use the present subjunctive after si (e.g., *Si tenga
tiempo, te llamaré), in the face of all the input, spoken and written, in which these incorrect
forms fail to occur. This error is invited by textbook statements that say that the subjunctive
“means doubt” and students whose understanding is based partly on this misinformation may
actually resist counterevidence to it.
The information-quality approach to the subjunctive can explain both the use and the
non-use of the subjunctive after si. When it is possible to assert an if–then relationship between
the clauses (e.g., Si tengo tiempo, te llamaré), the indicative is used.2 When, in contrast, the
hypothetical situation is known to be inoperative, the past subjunctive is used (e.g., Si tuviera
tiempo, te llamaría). Counterfactual information (i.e., information the speaker knows to be
false) is the least likely candidate for assertion, and is highly marked.
The semantic notion of emotion presents a different problem.3 Emotion is useless as a
linguistic category because it is impossible to define; in other words, it is not a category that
a child learning to speak Spanish as a first language would be able to understand or use. How
would a child figure out how much emotion, and what kind of emotion a speaker must feel in
order for the subjunctive to appear? How could a child understand why some expressions of
emotion appear with the subjunctive while others do not? There are many sentences in Spanish
that convey emotion on the part of the speaker, but do not contain the subjunctive.
(5) Creo con toda el alma que todos somos hijos de Dios.
(6) Te apuesto cualquier cosa a que esto va a acabar mal.
And, there are sentences in which the main clause describes lack of emotion, but which never­
theless contain the subjunctive.
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(7) No estoy sorprendido de que hayan roto.
(8) Me da igual que a José no le guste.
The information-quality analysis can explain these apparent anomalies. The subordinate clauses
of sentences like (5) and (6) contain information that the speaker thinks is worth asserting (Todos
somos hijos de Dios, Esto va a acabar mal), and that is therefore marked with the indicative. In
contrast, sentences like (7) and (8) make sense only if the hearer already knows that a couple has
broken up, or that José doesn’t like something. (Indeed, a hearer unaware of these facts would
surely demand a clarification.) The subjunctive verbs in (7) and (8) refer to information that is
assumed to be known to speaker and hearer alike, and it is this lack of need for assertion that
produces the use of the subjunctive.4 In contrast, the speaker’s evaluation of this information
is not known and thus requires assertion, which produces the use of the indicative in the main
clauses of these sentences (No estoy sorprendido, Me da igual).
Once we abandon emotion as an explanatory device, it can be seen that the informationquality explanation is also valid for sentences like (9) and (10) below. In these sentences, there
is certainly no emotion expressed, but the factive nature of the information in the subordinate
clauses simply requires no assertion.
(9) El (hecho de) que EEUU sea un país rico tiene consecuencias culturales.
(10) Aunque Brasil esté en Latinoamérica, no es un país hispanohablante.
Why Use a Linguistic Approach to the Subjunctive?
What is wrong, after all, with using an approach to grammar that a linguist would not agree
with? Research into this question, such as that of Negueruela and Lantolf (2006) and Negueruela
(2003, 2008) has only just begun.
We do know that inaccurate descriptions can actually invite misunderstanding, and good
students are often the ones who are led astray, because they take generalizations to their logical
conclusion. One such mistake has already been mentioned: students who have learned that the
subjunctive “means” doubt, etc., expect always to find it after si. So, despite all the input in
which the combination si + present subjunctive fails to occur, students construct sentences like
this anyway. Similarly, students will not use a form that “means” doubt to refer to something
that is bound to happen, and so produce sentences like *Voy a volver a casa cuando se acaba
esta clase. According to the assertion/non-assertion analysis, acabe must be used in this sentence
because the future is an inappropriate candidate for assertion in this context.
A linguistically sound description is a form of support for teachers, who are freed from
having to invent ad-hoc answers to questions from students. Novice teachers depend on textbook
explanations; thus, it is imperative that adequate explanations of the mood contrast, among
other concepts, be incorporated into teaching materials. The fact that grammar is no longer the
focus of language classes does not mean that grammar is not taught or that students no longer
ask questions about it. They ask, for example, why the subjunctive is not always used after
si, why it is used to refer to situations that are (barring the end of the world) going to happen,
and why it marks information introduced by the phrase el hecho de que. It is helpful to teachers
to have a framework for their own understanding of the topic (rather than having to improvise
explanations), and it is helpful to students to hear “This sentence exemplifies the assertion/
non-assertion contrast in the following way.”
In order for research-based generalizations about grammar to be useful in the classroom,
they have to be couched in accessible language, and they have to be translated into appropriate
exercises and activities. The rest of this article will address these needs.
Gregory & Lunn / A Concept-based Approach to the Subjunctive
337
User-friendly Approaches to the Subjunctive
A metaphor often used to talk about grammar is that it is a “tool” used by speakers to
construct sentences. This metaphor is helpful in understanding mood choice, because it points
to the role of the speakers as tool-users. Mood choice provides speakers of Spanish with a tool
for presenting information, and speakers use this tool in the service of their communicative
purposes. It is at this point that the concept of subjectivity can profitably be introduced: speakers
choose how to present information, and they can use grammatical mood to fine-tune the presentation of information. Child native speakers who must figure out how to use the subjunctive can
observe that people use it to mark certain kinds of information, but they cannot observe what
these speakers really think or feel. Classroom learners, then, should not be engaged in trying to
ferret out “truth” and “emotion,” but instead should concentrate on how mood choice is used
to convey information.
The Spanish language has many ways of indicating where the speaker is with respect to
what is said. Demonstrative adjectives (este, ese, aquel) and adverbs of location (aquí, allí,
allá) indicate distance from the speaker. Verb tenses locate events in time with respect to the
speaker’s present. And, the personal pronouns (yo, tú/usted, él, ella) identify other people with
respect to the speaker. What might the mood system of Spanish organize with respect to the
speaker? The answer is: information. Information can be organized according to its relevance
to the speaker’s communicative needs. Speakers use the indicative to mark information they
want to present as highly informative, and the subjunctive to mark information that they want to
present as low-value. Speakers who have doubts about whether information is true can introduce
it with disclaimers like dudo, no creo, no me parece—and mark it with the subjunctive. Speakers
who wish to convey that a proposition, true or not, is not news can background it to evaluative
material—and mark it with the subjunctive.
The criterion for assignment to the non-newsworthy category is negative; the contrast is
between newsworthy information and everything else. In other words, assertion is the default
mode. This can be analogized to how a chocolate lover looks at desserts: there are chocolate
desserts and then there is everything else. Desserts in the non-chocolate category do not all
taste the same (they might be apple-flavored, or pistachio-flavored, or vanilla-flavored, etc.), but
what they have in common is that they are not chocolate. In the same way, Spanish speakers put
information in the non-newsworthy category for various reasons: they might have reservations
or doubts about information, or—very differently—they might assume it is already known
and so they can express an attitude or value judgment towards it. Thus, Spanish speakers use
indicative verb forms to relate newsworthy information (chocolate) and subjunctive verb forms
to signal that some part of a message is not newsworthy (not chocolate).5
Towards a Concept-based Approach to the Spanish Subjunctive
Negueruela and Lantolf (2006) and Negueruela (2003, 2008) advocate for the quality of
grammatical explanations while articulating a concept-based approach to pedagogy rooted in
sociocultural theory. Their pedagogical approach is rooted in Concept-based Instruction (CBI),
which, as the name suggests, promotes concepts as the basis of instruction. Negueruela (2008)
describes a process designed to make the learner “think through these notions, not simply about
them” (196). Thus, according to Negueruela, grammatical concepts such as tense, aspect, and
mood must not be represented with ad hoc rules of thumb, but rather with an abstract explanation of the concept that is as complete as possible in order for learners to be able to generalize
their use of the concept across a broad range of circumstances. Most importantly, for learners to
internalize conceptual meaning, they must engage in conceptual manipulation. Subsequently, the
internalization of concepts as tools of the mind promotes a coherent and systematic emergence of
forms (203).6 In the case of the mood contrast in Spanish, the concept of mode must become the
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focus of well-designed classroom activities so that learners begin to recognize and understand
the contexts that give rise to its use.
For CBI, conceptual manipulation takes the form of verbalization. Negueruela (2003)
studied the process of verbalization in sixth-semester Spanish students, in which, as a homework
activity, they explained out loud to themselves their own use of mood choice in a written assignment. Learners used a flowchart/didactic model that illustrates the mood selection process to
reflect on their own performance. The following flowchart (Figure 1) is based on Negueruela’s,
but provides a more explicit breakdown of the information-value concept of mood choice.
Mood
choice
Is information in
the subordinate
clause worthy
of assertion or
confirmation?
yes
no
(4)
Has the
information
already been
evaluated as
unreliable?
Is the information
already known
because it’s ...
... (1)
common
knowledge?
subjunctive
indicative
... (2) been
mentioned in
the current
or previous
discourse?
... (3) right
before the
speaker’s
eyes?
subjunctive
subjunctive
Is the
information
unknowable
because it
refers to ...
(7)
Is the information
known to be false
(counterfactual)?
... (5)
... (6) a
something
future
or someone
time?
non-existent or
unidentified?
subjunctive
subjunctive
subjunctive
imperfect
subjunctive
Figure 1. Flowchart for Mood Selection7
The following is a list of independent clauses that correlate (by number) to each use of
the subjunctive found in the flowchart. This list of correlations should be provided with the
flowchart to aid learners in analyzing subjunctive use that they encounter in authentic materials—not in texts created for language learners. The list is not exhaustive and is only meant
to give an idea of the types of sentences that a native speaker might construct. Since some of
these independent clauses might work in a category other than those assigned here, and some
also permit a clause marked with the indicative, this is in no way meant to be a prescriptive list.
Gregory & Lunn / A Concept-based Approach to the Subjunctive
339
Learners may need to use the list of main clauses below with the flowchart in order to begin
to notice examples in input.
1, 2, 3 — Already known information:
Me sorprende que…
Me alegra que…
Te acostumbras a que...
Es difícil que…
Es bueno/malo que…
Es de esperar que…
Me parece increíble que…
No puedo creer que…
Es una lástima que…
4 — Information evaluated as unreliable:
No creo que…
No es verdad que…
Es dudoso que…
Dudo que…
No es cierto que…
5 — Referent non-existent or unidentifiable:
Busco un libro que...
Necesito un amigo que...
6 — Event to occur at a future time:
Deseo que…
Espero que…
Quiero que…
Ojalá que…
7 — Counter-factual (normally indicated by one of the following):
como si
si imperfect subjunctive, conditional
What Can You Do in Class?
Guidance regarding mood choice needs to be provided for learners from simple recognition of subjunctive morphology all the way through marking low-value information with that
morphology. The subjunctive appears primarily in subordinate clauses, so we cannot expect
learners, the majority of whom are not consciously aware of subordinate clauses in English,
much less in Spanish, to be able to attend to subjunctive endings (Collentine 1993, 1995) in
what they read and hear when their main task is get meaning from the input. Nor is it enough to
employ a linguistically sound description of the subjunctive; it is also necessary to help students
see that this description actually corresponds to what they hear and read. If both of these criteria
are met, then grammar explanations can help students notice details that they once ignored,
and attending to details can help them to comprehend what they hear and read, thus creating a
mutually reinforcing relationship between grammar and input.
The following are some general suggestions for classroom activities, which are adaptable
to a range of levels, useful for helping students notice grammar in context:
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1. Comment on your own teacher talk. We know that students will not learn a language
without input, so we use Spanish for classroom management in order to increase
student exposure to the language. However, students understand their task to be that
of figuring out what they are being told to do, and this often precludes paying attention
to structure. So, it is useful to stop after having said, for example, Quiero que hagan
solo la primera parte, and ask ¿‘Hagan’? ¿Qué forma del verbo es ‘hagan’? Doing
this a few times in each class period will help students to notice the subjunctive and
the contexts in which it appears.
2. Recycle readings and dialogs for the purpose of identifying examples of subjunctive usage. Modern textbooks are hundreds of pages long, and contain a wealth
of examples of real language. Unfortunately, despite all of this content (or maybe
because there is so much of it), students rarely revisit material from previous chapters.
It can be useful, however, to go back to a text and ask students (who now, presumably,
understand what the text says) to identify certain features of it. Students can be asked
to underline all the subjunctives, for example, or all of the subordinate clauses. Such
exercises may seem simplistic, but they are, in fact, useful both to draw students’
attention to details that they could not focus on the first time they read the text and
also to gauge student perception of syntactic or morphological features. Students who
cannot identify subordinate clauses, for example, will not benefit from a description
of the subjunctive based on clause type (noun, adjective, adverb).
3. Design activities that will force students to pay attention to grammar. Scavenger hunts
or collections are another way of focusing student attention. Students, individually or
in groups, can be given a list of phenomena, and told that they have fifteen minutes
(or a class period, or a week, or a term) to find as many examples as possible.8 The
phenomena can be more or less sophisticated, and the search can be conducted in
textbooks or in a wide range of additional sources, according to the level of the students. Lower-level students can be asked to hunt for subjunctive verbs, for example;
higher-level students can be asked to hunt for specific forms of the subjunctive, or for
types of usage (subjunctive used to refer to the future, known information, contraryto-fact information, etc.).
4. Be aware of the gulf between mechanical manipulation of grammatical forms (the
staple of workbook exercises) and creative language use, and develop a range of
exercises that are neither wholly mechanical nor completely creative. For example,
intermediate students can be asked to finish open-ended sentences in as many ways
as possible: Quiero que el profesor de esta clase…, Quería que mi profesor el año/
semestre pasado…, Busco un regalo de cumpleaños para mi madre/novio/hermano
que…
5. Since textbooks do not include activities that spotlight the discourse/pragmatic
nature of the mood contrast and encourage learners to make connections between
the subjunctive form and the communicative function of marking low-value information, create your own structured input activities that highlight the lack of information
value of known information, making salient that the main point of communication
is not what is mentioned in the subordinate clause and marked with the subjunctive.
Intermediate learners can begin to understand the functions of the mood contrast
through structured input activities, while at the same time negotiating meaning as
part of activities with a more global communicative purpose.
Gregory & Lunn / A Concept-based Approach to the Subjunctive
341
6. The verbalization (self-explanation), described in Negueruela (2008) as a homework
activity, can be used as a means of promoting the internalization of the informationvalue concept of the mood contrast. Learners can record themselves explaining mood
choice in native speakers’ texts and then in their own production. They should feel
free to explain in either Spanish or English, because the goal is to think through the
concept of information-value rather than practicing output in Spanish. Negueruela
(2008) suggests that internalization of the concept will lead to more native-like use of
the forms.
The possibilities are endless, and current textbooks contain many useful exercises that could
be adapted to CBI. The idea is to give students the opportunity to reflect on the information
value of indicative/subjunctive morphology in context while engaging them in activities with a
genuine communicative purpose, thus giving them opportunities to manipulate and internalize
the concept of mood contrast.
Conclusion
Many things have changed in foreign language classrooms, and creative techniques for
encouraging student performance in the four skills continue to emerge. There is a plethora
of research-based pedagogical recommendations that are moving the profession away from
non-communicative-based instruction. Krashen’s (1982) emphasis on comprehensible input,
along with the natural approach (Krashen and Terrell 1983), helped initiate the communicative
language teaching movement. Concept-based Instruction is the latest—and most radical—in
a series of efforts to integrate grammar explanation into the communicative classroom, following such strategies as Focus On Form (Long 1991), Input Enhancement (Sharwood-Smith
1991), and Processing Instruction (Farley 2004; Lee and VanPatten 2003; and VanPatten
2004). Skepticism about the overt teaching of grammar is an acknowledged part of the communicative movement, so it is not surprising that the changes in the teaching of grammar that
have emerged from this shift have had more to do with limiting the amount of time spent on
grammar than with the nature of the explanations themselves. The role of grammar in the communicative classroom cannot be explored as long as we think of grammar as being adversarial
to communication. So, instead of asking questions to which we know the answers (“Should we
dedicate the bulk of class time to talking about grammar?”), we should ask: “How can accurate
descriptions of grammar facilitate progress in the communicative language classroom?” The
argument that classroom grammar should be based on descriptive grammar is not a claim that
explicit instruction will lead directly to acquisition, or a challenge to research findings about
orders of acquisition or processability. It is, rather, an appeal to improve classroom grammar
by capitalizing on available knowledge.
NOTES
See also Lambrecht (1994) for a discussion of truth value versus assertion/non-assertion.
In many dialects of Latin American Spanish, speakers use the present subjunctive after no sé si (e.g.,
No sé si tenga tiempo), where the introductory clause makes clear that they cannot assert the following
information. These same speakers, though, do not use the present subjunctive after si alone.
3
Emotion is the ‘E’ in a number of mnemonic devices used to teach the subjunctive, such as WEIRDO
(wish-will/emotion/impersonal expressions/request/doubt-denial/ojalá). Mnemonic devices are meant, as
the name suggests, to remind students of what they have learned, but they have come to constitute the
entirety of grammar explanation in some classrooms. This one, for example, explicitly suggests that the
subjunctive expresses semantic notions (wish-will, emotion, etc.), which flies in the face of linguistic
analyses. Syntax (impersonal expressions) is mixed in too, with no explanation that many impersonal
expressions (es verdad, es cierto, etc.) do not appear with the subjunctive.
1
2
Hispania 95 June 2012
342
In a way, the use of emotion as an explanatory device is the result of context-free exercises. The
fill-in-the-blank format of many exercises offers no context for mood choice beyond the sentence. And,
when there is no context in which known information is embedded, then all that is left as a cue is “emotion.”
5
In fact, there is a semantic relationship between negation and the subjunctive, which this metaphor
captures very nicely.
6
In discussing the distinction between L2 acquisition and development, Negueruela (2008: 189–90)
underscores that L2 development is semantic rather than formal in nature; in other words, it does not
have to do with the morphology, processing procedures, and form-to-meaning mappings discussed in SLA
research, but rather has to do with the internalization of conceptual categories.
7
It might be misleading that all but one of the paths in the flowchart leads to the subjunctive. Recall
that the subjunctive is a negative choice; it is used when a speaker negatively evaluates the information
value of a proposition. As a result, in spite of all the paths leading to the subjunctive option, indicative is
more frequently used than subjunctive because it is the mode used to assert/inform/affirm. This side of
the chart is not developed here.
8
With a tip of the hat to Terrell Morgan of The Ohio State University, who often uses this technique
in his classes.
4
WORKs CITED
Bolinger, Dwight. (1968). “Postposed Main Phrases: An English Rule for the Romance Subjunctive.”
Canadian Journal of Linguistics 14: 3–30. Print.
Collentine, Joseph. (1993). “The Development of Complex Syntax and the Selection of Mood by Foreign
Language Learners of Spanish.” Diss. University of Texas, Austin. Print.
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