The Indicative/subjunctive Mood Alternation with Adverbs of Doubt in Spanish

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study aims to analyse the indicative/subjunctive mood alternation in Spanish sentences with adverbs of doubt (acaso, posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás, tal vez, seguramente, a lo mejor, igual). To this end, this study statistically analysed the linguistic and social factors conditioning the mood alternation in sentences with adverbs of doubt. A total of 1278 tokens were analysed. Each datum was annotated with verb type, verb aspect, verb person, distance between the adverb and the verb, sex, age, region, and education level. To exclude confounding factors, multivariable logistic regression was conducted, and the analysis yielded significant odds ratios (ORs) for 10 items, including sex, region, education level, adverbs (posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás, tal vez), aspect, and distance between the verb and the adverb. These results show that these adverbs can be divided into two groups, where posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás, and tal vez are more likely to co-occur with the subjunctive than the adverbs acaso, seguramente, a lo mejor, and igual. Furthermore, this study has shown that each adverb differs in the likelihood of co-occurring with the subjunctive, and that social factors of speakers affect the mood selection. Thus, an analysis of mood alternations should include social and linguistic factors.