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

Abstract

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.