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Carolyn Dunlap, Gulf Coast Community College

cdunlap@gulfcoast.edu

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AFTER THE FACT: MOOD CHOICE IN SPAIN AND MEXICO IN PAST TEMPORAL ADVERBIAL CLAUSES AFTER después de que

The use of the Spanish preterit subjunctive in place of the pluperfect, preterit and imperfect indicative in written works has long been noted.  Attempts to explain its occurrence in indicative contexts have been historical (Wright, 1929; Mallo, 1950), and more recently semantic, based upon the intention of the speaker or author (Mayberry, 2000; King & Suñer, 1999; Lunn, 1998; Lunn and Cravens, 1991; Studeras, 1995; Mejías-Bekandi, 1994; Lavander, 1983; Bergen, 1978; and Terrell and Hooper, 1974).  Dunlap (2006) investigated mood choice specifically in the subordinate clause of past temporal complex sentences following después de que ‘after’ and  luego de que ‘after’ in journalistic prose.  She found that mood choice is dialectal in Spain and Mexico, free from contextual and semantic restraints, and is variable in other Spanish speaking countries.

The purpose of this investigation is to further examine mood choice after después de que in Mexico and Spain based upon native speakers' determinations for mood choice from passages taken from journalistic prose and from novelistic prose.  University students in Guadalajara, Mexico and in Valencia, Spain completed a survey that elicited the participant's choice of mood and temporal aspect in constructions containing a past tense verb in the matrix clause, the adverbial expression después de que, and a subordinate clause. The data from these surveys further indicate that Spanish-speakers in Mexico prefer the use of the indicative and that Spanish-speakers in Spain prefer the subjunctive.  These results contribute to studies in language change by showing that dialectal variation persists in spite of regulatory factors, i.e. prescriptive grammatical rules that attempt to govern language equivalence.

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Dunlap, Carolyn.  (2006).  Dialectal variation in mood choice in  Spanish journalistic prose.  Language variation and change. 18: 35-53.

King, Larry and Suñer, Margarita. (1999). Grámatica española: Analysis y práctica.  Boston: McGraw-Hill College.

Lunn, Patricia. (1989). Spanish mood and the prototype of assertability.  Linguistics 27:687-702.

Lunn, Patricia V. and Cravens, Thomas D.  (1991).  A contextual reconsideration of the Spanish ‘-ra’ indicative.  In S. Fleischman and R. Waugh (eds.), Discourse pragmatics and the verb: The evidencefrom Romance.  London and New York: Routledge. 147-164.

Mallo, Jeronimo. (1950). La discussion sobre el empleo de las formas verbales de “ra” con function de tiempos pasados de indicativo.  Hispania 33: 126-139.

Mayberry, María del Socorro.  (2000).  Mood selection in temporal clauses in Spanish: A descriptive analysis.  Unpublished Master’s Report.  The University of Texas at Austin.

Mejías-Bikandi, Errapel.  (1994). Assertion and speaker’s intention: A pragmatically based account of mood in Spanish.  Hispania 77:891-902.

Studerus,  Lenard. (1995). Some unresolved issues in Spanish mood use. Hispania 78: 94-104.

Terrell, Tracy and Hooper, Joan.  (1974). A semantically based analysis of mood in Spanish.  Hispania 57: 484-494.

Wright, Leavitt O.  (1929). The indicative function of the –ra verb form:  I. Its disappearance in pre-golden age prose. Hispania 12: 259-278.