| This study deals with the problem of mood in Spanish. The main types of sentences in which the speaker has a choice between the indicative or the subjunctive moods are discussed, and an answer is given to the question "What criterion/criteria does the native speaker use in determining the choice of mood in Spanish?".;The claim is made that a single general principle/criterion accounts for all the occurrences of mood in Spanish: the indicative mood is used whenever the speaker commits himself to the truth or falsity of the proposition expressed in the embedded clause, while the subjunctive is used when there is no such commitment on the part of the speaker.;The dissertation is based primarily on previous analyses of the same problem by various authors, and on findings about the English language. Chapter I contains a presentation of the problem, Chapter II a discussion of modality and time reference. Chapter III deals with the choice of mood in relative clauses, Chapter IV contains a discussion of mood in adverbial clauses, and Chapter V deals with Complementation. In the conclusion some minor problems are discussed. The data came primarily from my own intuition as a native speaker of Spanish, and from a few other native speakers from various dialects of Spanish. |
