A Cross-linguistic Approach to the Syntax of Subjunctive Mood (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 101)

"This monograph gives a unified account of the syntactic distribution of subjunctive mood across languages, including Romance, Balkan (South Slavic and Modern Greek), and Hungarian, among others. Starting from a close scrutiny of the environments in which subjunctive mood occurs and of its semantic contribution, we present a feature-based approach which reveals the common properties of the class of verbs which embed subjunctive, and which takes into account the variation in subjunctive-related complementizers. Two main proposals can be highlighted: (i) the lexical semantics of the main clause predicate plays a crucial role in mood selection. More specifically subjunctive mood is regulated by a specific property of the main predicate, the emotive property, which is associated with the external argument of the embedding verb (usually the Subject). The book proposes a nanosyntactic analysis of the internal structure of embedding verbs. (ii) Cross- and intra-linguistic variations are dealt with according to different patterns of lexicalization, i.e., variations depend on what portions of the verb's and complementizer's functional sequence is lexicalized and on how it is packaged by languages. In doing so, this approach provides a uniform account of the phenomenon of embedded subjunctives. The monograph takes a novel, feature-based approach to the question of subjunctive licensing, providing a detailed analysis of the features of the matrix verb, of the complementizer and of the embedded subjunctive clause. It is also based on a wide empirical coverage, ranging from the relatively well-studied groups of Romance and Balkan languages to less explored languages from non-Indo-European families (Hungarian)" Preface Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Goal of the Book 1.1.1 The Problem 1.1.2 The Research Question 1.2 What This Book Is Not About 1.3 Empirical Coverage 1.4 A Few Caveats 1.5 Organization of the Book Chapter 2: Background 2.1 The Properties of the Subjunctive Mood in Romance and Balkan Languages 2.1.1 Verbal Mood 2.1.1.1 Properties of Subjunctive Complements 2.1.1.2 Predicates Selecting the Subjunctive Mood 2.1.2 Clausal Mood 2.1.2.1 Modern Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian 2.1.2.2 Serbian and Croatian 2.1.2.3 Predicates Selecting the Subjunctive Mood in Balkan Languages 2.1.3 Summary 2.2 Semantic Background 2.2.1 Truth Value/Semantics of the Embedded Clause 2.2.1.1 Farkas, 1992b: World Anchor 2.2.1.2 Giannakidou, 2009 (and beyond): Veridicality 2.2.1.3 Giannakidou & Mari, 2016a, b, 2021: Flexible Veridicality 2.2.1.4 Quer (2000, 2001): Model Shift 2.2.1.5 Bianchi (2003): Logophoricity 2.2.1.6 Portner (1997): Modal Parameters 2.2.2 Comparison Based Semantics and Semantics of the Subjunctive Clause 2.2.2.1 Villalta: gradability and Scalarity 2.2.2.2 Portner and Rubinstein (2012): Comparison 2.2.3 Take Home Message 2.3 Syntactic Background 2.3.1 Subject Obviation 2.3.2 Speaker and Subjects 2.3.3 Subjunctive Dependency 2.3.4 Variable Licensing 2.3.5 Subjunctive ``Complementizers ́ ́ and Clauses 2.3.5.1 Modern Greek na: Mood Particle or Complementizer? 2.3.5.2 Core Subjunctives Cross-Linguistically, Elsewhere and Subjunctive Scale 2.3.6 Take Home Message 2.4 The Frameworks 2.4.1 Cartography 2.4.1.1 The Architecture of Grammar 2.4.1.2 Goals, Methodology and Assumptions 2.4.1.3 Mapping out Syntactic Configurations 2.4.2 Nanosyntax (NS) 2.4.2.1 Goals and Assumptions 2.4.2.2 The Architecture of Grammar 2.4.2.3 The Process of Lexicalization 2.4.2.4 Phrasal Spellout 2.4.2.5 Tools Syncretism Containment 2.4.2.6 Principles of Lexicalization The Superset Principle 2.4.2.7 Linguistic Variation 2.5 Our Proposal Chapter 3: What Subjunctive Is Not 3.1 Against a Pure Semantic Approach 3.1.1 Truth and Veridicality 3.1.2 Refining Veridicality 3.1.3 Objective and Subjective (Non-)veridicality 3.2 Against a Syntactic Correlation Between Complementizers, (Non-)veridicality and Mood 3.3 Conclusion Chapter 4: Subjunctive: A New Proposal 4.1 Determining Subjunctive Predicates 4.1.1 Alternating Predicates 4.1.2 The Role of Agent 4.1.2.1 Sentience (and/or Perception) 4.1.2.2 Volition 4.1.2.3 Cause 4.1.3 More Features Are Needed 4.1.4 Decomposing the Features of External Arguments 4.1.4.1 The Cognitive and the Emotive Features 4.1.4.2 The Sentient Feature 4.1.5 And What about Impersonal Constructions? 4.1.5.1 Propositional and Emotive Predicates (Léger, 2006) 4.1.5.2 Modal Adjectives (Léger, 2006) 4.2 Decomposing the Subjunctive Mechanism 4.2.1 The Semantic Contribution of the Properties Associated with the External Argument 4.2.1.1 The Emotive Feature 4.2.1.2 Evaluation 4.2.1.3 Volition 4.2.2 A New Typology 4.3 Predicate Structures 4.3.1 Cognitive and Sentient Features 4.3.2 The Emotive Feature 4.3.3 The Volitional Feature 4.3.4 Verbs Alternating Between Subjunctive and Indicative 4.4 Summing up Chapter 5: Cross-linguistic Variation 5.1 Our Core Proposal: Mood as Feature-Based Selection 5.1.1 Where We Stand 5.1.2 Potential Problems 5.2 Micro-variation in Romance Language 5.2.1 Emotive Factives 5.2.2 Cognitive Non-factives 5.2.3 Fiction Verbs 5.3 Micro-variation in Balkan Languages 5.3.1 Verbs of Saying 5.3.2 Cognitive Predicates 5.3.3 Emotive Factives 5.3.4 Future Referring Verbs 5.4 Widening the Scope: The Case of Hungarian 5.4.1 Verbs of Saying 5.4.2 Cognitive Predicates 5.4.3 Emotive Predicates 5.4.4 Future-Referring Verbs 5.4.5 The Subjunctive Boundary and Alternating Verbs 5.5 To Sum Up Chapter 6: Subjunctive and Complementizers 6.1 The Empirical Problem: Subjunctive Marking, Complementizers and Morphology 6.2 Complementizers and Syncretism 6.2.1 Syncretism and Veridicality 6.2.2 Syntactic Features of Complementizers 6.2.3 A Prediction 6.2.4 Summing Up 6.3 The Puzzle of Balkan Emotive Factives 6.3.1 Factive Predicates and Complementizer Selection 6.3.2 Emotive Predicates Vs Emotive Complementizers 6.3.2.1 Romance Languages 6.3.2.2 Balkan Languages 6.3.3 So Where Is the Subjunctive Mood? 6.3.3.1 Subjunctive as a Mood Particle 6.3.3.2 The Fseq of Mood Particles 6.3.3.3 Subjunctive as Verbal Morphology 6.3.4 Summing Up 6.4 Subjunctive Marking in Hungarian 6.4.1 Factive Predicates 6.4.2 The Nature of hogy: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations 6.4.2.1 Theoretical Arguments 6.4.2.2 Empirical Arguments 6.4.3 Locating Subjunctive Mood 6.5 Summing Up Chapter 7: Conclusion References Internet Resources Index