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Volition and mood in Italian: a study of the state-of-affairs subjunctive

Volition and mood in Italian: a study of the state-of-affairs subjunctive This paper deals with the function of the Italian subjunctive in the sphere of volition. It argues that the subjunctive designates what is called a state-of-affairs (SoA) in this sphere. This argument is substantiated in two parts. The first part is a discussion of the subjunctive in the sphere of volition across the system. In the discussion, it is concluded that the subjunctive designates a SoA where it opposes the proposition-designating indicative. The second part is a corpus-based study of 25 verbs of volition with data from CORIS, a corpus of written Italian. This qualitative study tests the hypothesis that mood alternation in complements of verbs of volition has a decisive semantic impact on the main verb or the complex structure as whole. The data confirms the hypothesis, since the SoA-designating subjunctive is found to prompt a volitional meaning, whereas the proposition-designating indicative prompts a non-volitional meaning. By analyzing certain variants of the Italian subjunctive as SoA-designating, we can better account for, on the one hand, why the subjunctive remains persistent in the sphere of volition compared to other spheres of meaning, where it tends to lose ground to the indicative, and, on the other hand, what mood alternation entails in the sphere of volition. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Acta Linguistica Hafniensia Taylor & Francis

Volition and mood in Italian: a study of the state-of-affairs subjunctive

Andersen, Anders
Acta Linguistica Hafniensia , Volume 54 (2): 33 – Jul 3, 2022
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2023 The Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen
ISSN
1949-0763
eISSN
0374-0463
DOI
10.1080/03740463.2022.2151229
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This paper deals with the function of the Italian subjunctive in the sphere of volition. It argues that the subjunctive designates what is called a state-of-affairs (SoA) in this sphere. This argument is substantiated in two parts. The first part is a discussion of the subjunctive in the sphere of volition across the system. In the discussion, it is concluded that the subjunctive designates a SoA where it opposes the proposition-designating indicative. The second part is a corpus-based study of 25 verbs of volition with data from CORIS, a corpus of written Italian. This qualitative study tests the hypothesis that mood alternation in complements of verbs of volition has a decisive semantic impact on the main verb or the complex structure as whole. The data confirms the hypothesis, since the SoA-designating subjunctive is found to prompt a volitional meaning, whereas the proposition-designating indicative prompts a non-volitional meaning. By analyzing certain variants of the Italian subjunctive as SoA-designating, we can better account for, on the one hand, why the subjunctive remains persistent in the sphere of volition compared to other spheres of meaning, where it tends to lose ground to the indicative, and, on the other hand, what mood alternation entails in the sphere of volition.

Journal

Acta Linguistica Hafniensia – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jul 3, 2022

Keywords: Volition; verbs of volition; the subjunctive; mood alternation; complementation; main verb-complement mood interaction

References

  • The State-Of-Affairs Subjunctive in Italian
  • On the Polyfunctionality of the Italian Subjunctive
  • The Relation Between Form and Meaning of Latin Subordinate Clauses Governed by Verba Dicendi
  • Verbalmodus og sætningsmodus [Verbal Mood and Sentence Mood]
  • Indicativo e congiuntivo nelle completive italiane
  • A Constructionist Approach to Complementation: Evidence from Ancient Greek
  • The Hierarchical Structure of the Clause and the Typology of Perception-Verb Complements
  • Irrealis and the Subjunctive
  • Layers and Operators in Functional Grammar
  • On Assertive Predicates
  • Sul congiuntivo nelle frasi relative e il modo ipotetico
  • Deriving the Functional Hierarchy
  • Vidensprædikatskomplementering [Knowledge Predicate Complementation]
  • Lagdelt indholdsstruktur i selvstændige ytringer og direkte og indirekte ytringsgengivelse [Layered Content Structure in Independent Utterances and in Direct and Indirect Utterance Report]
  • The Italian Subjunctive: Tradition and Innovation