Factivity, Causatives, and the Distribution of Subjunctive Mood
Laura Siegel (University of Pennsylvania), lsiegel@ling.upenn.edu
This paper accounts for several aspects of the distribution of subjunctive mood ((SUB), as opposed
to indicative mood (IND)) that have proven difficult to account for on previous treatments. Specifically, it
addresses the appearance of subjunctive mood in the complement of factive emotives, and in causatives, and
provides an account for the variation seen generally across Romance and Balkan languages with respect to
mood in these environments.
Factive emotive (FE) predicates both presuppose the truth of their complement, and express some emotion/ evaluation on the part of the subject towards this presupposed proposition, e.g. it is sad that, it pleases
me that, regret, surprise, etc. (Kiparsky & Kiparsky 1970). In many languages, including many Romance
languages, these predicates appear with SUB on the verbs in their complements ((1) and (2)).
(1)
os meus amigos lamentum que eles nunca chegeum a horas às reuniões
my
friends regret
that they never arrive.SUB on time to meetings
‘My friends regret that they never arrive on time to meetings (Portuguese, M & R (1992))
(2)
Marcela se lamenta de que no le hayan avisado antes
marcela SE regrets of that not her have told.SUB earlier
‘Marcela regrets that they didn’t tell her earlier.’ (Spanish, V (2000))
Another occurrence of SUB that is unexpected on prototypical treatments of mood is that in many
languages, causatives occur with SUB. That is, verbs such as force, prevent, make (someone/something do
something) and verbs with a perhaps more subtle causative aspect to their meaning (Jackendoff 1995) such
as help, allow, let occur with subjunctive in their complements (see (3), (4), (5)).
(3)
ens van
forçar que abandonéssim
l’edifici
us AUX.3pl force that abandon.SUB.pst.1pl the-building
‘They forced us to abandon the building.’ (Catalan, Q (1998))
(4)
L’escàndol contribuirà
que sigui
reelgit
the-scandal contribute.fut.3sg that be.SUB.prs.3sg reelected
‘The scandal will help him be reelected.’ (Catalan, Q (1998))
(5)
Petru la fǎcut sǎ ducǎ cartea Mariei
Peter he-ACC has made SUB bring book-the Mary-DAT
‘Peter made him bring the book to Mary.’ (Romanian, R (1991))
Both FEs and causatives have proven to be very difficult for semantic accounts of subjunctive-taking
environments. They clearly do not fit the traditional understanding of SUB as occurring in irrealis contexts
(Givon 1994, Mithun 1995), nor are they clearly intensional (Farkas 1984) or nonveridical (Giannakidou
1998). Other accounts that try to remedy this run into other difficulties, or cannot account for the range of
data (Terrell & Hooper 1974, Hooper 1975, Farkas 1992, Quer 1998, Villalta 2000, a.o.).
I argue that these cases fall out from the presuppositional content of IND. Specifically, IND is associated
with a presupposition that the speaker believes in the truth of the embedded proposition, while SUB has no
such presupposition, and is associated with neutral commitment on the part of the speaker to the truth of the
embedded proposition. This presuppositional content of IND, but not SUB has been demonstrated for other
mood facts, e.g. certain verbs exhibit an IND/SUB alternation with this presuppositional difference (6),
Rivero (1971, 1977), (Bustos & Aliaga 1996). Support that this is the relevant interpretational difference
between SUB and IND comes from the fact that modification by "finally" (which forces the reading in
which the speaker believes in truth of embedded proposition, Melvold (1991)), is consistent with IND but
not with SUB. Similarly, a presupposition-contradicting continuation is acceptable with the SUB variant,
but not with IND.
(6)
els etudiants admeten que el degà {té/ tingui} raó en aquest punt
‘The students admit that the dean is(IND/ SUB) right on this issue. (Catalan, Q (1998))
This IND/SUB alternation is seen in negated or questioned complements of certain verbs (Rivero 1971,
Farkas 1992, Brugger & D’Angelo 1994, a.o. called Polarity Subjunctive (PS, Stowell 1993, Quer 1998))
(shown in (7) and (8)). These show that both SUB and IND are permitted in the same syntactic environment,
but their presuppositional content differs; a presupposition-contradicting continuation is permitted with the
subjunctive but not the indicative (7a vs. 8a).
(7)
El degà no creu [ que els estudiants es mereixin un premi ]
‘The dean does not believe that the students deserve (SUB) a prize.’
b.
però jo crec que sí
a.
i jo tampoc no ho crec
‘but I believe they do.’ (Catalan, Q (1998)
‘and I do not believe it either.’
(8)
El degà no creu [ que els estudiants es mereixen un premi ]
‘The dean does not believe that the students deserve (IND) a prize.’
b.
però jo crec que sí
a. # i jo tampoc no ho crec
‘but I believe they do.’(Catalan, Q (1998)
‘and I do not believe it either.’
I argue that this presuppositional content associated with IND can account for all of the uses of SUB
seen here. The claim that it is the presuppositional content of IND that is relevant here may appear to be
a strange claim to make about the FE cases, in which it is exactly use of SUB that occurs with predicates
that have associated presuppositions. In fact, the use of SUB with FEs has prompted the hypothesis that
presuppositional contexts require SUB (e.g. Hooper 1975, a.o.), although this is unsatisfactory given that
there are many presuppositional contexts in which subjunctive is not used.
However, there is support for the proposal that the relevant connection between presupposition and
mood is between IND and presupposition, not SUB and presupposition. Crucially, it has been shown that,
in the absence of mitigating discourse or contextual factors that provide some reason for the repetition,
redundant affirmation of a presupposition is infelicitous (9), including for presuppositions associated with
factive emotive verbs (9b) (Sadock 1973, Horn 1993).
(9)
a.
# The King of France is bald, and there is a King of France.
b.
# It pleases me that I won, and I did win.
So, I argue that SUB is used with FEs precisely because use of IND with its associated presupposition
would lead to an infelicitous redundancy of this type since the FE already presupposes the truth of the
embedded clause as shown by the contrast between (7a) and (8a). This means that a sentence like (1), if
indicative would mean something like (10), which is exactly anomalous (parallel to 9b). So, the alternative
is to use SUB, which does not have the associated presupposition
(10)
# My friends regret that they never arrive on time for meetings, and I think that they never arrive on time for
meetings.
Causatives also presuppose that the speaker is committed to the truth of their complements (Karttunen
1971, Horn 1972), so the exact same argument applies.
This provides an account of some seemingly puzzlingly cases of realis situations being grouped with
irrealis (see Bošković (1997) for a similar grouping). On the analysis provided here, IND is always associated with realis, but SUB is not always associated with irrealis cases. SUB can be used for realis cases
when the presupposition associated with IND would lead to an infelicitous redundancy.
I extend this analysis to the Balkan languages Modern Greek, Bulgarian, and Albanian, which use
IND with FEs, and also do not have polarity subjunctive (and these languages are therefore argued not to
have the presuppositional content described above associated with IND), and extend the Romanian case to
account for Romanian’s interesting hybrid behavior (partly like other Romance languages, and partly like
other Balkan languages), giving a unified analysis of these subjunctives that have been recalcitrant given
previous accounts of subjunctive.
Selected References
Farkas, D. F. (1984) “Subjunctive Complements in Rumanian,” in P. Baldi, ed., Papers from the XIIth Linguistic Symposium on
Romance Languages, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 355–372.
Farkas, D. F. (1992) “On the Semantics of Subjunctive Complements,” in H. Hirschbühler and K. Koerner, eds., Romance
Languages and Modern Linguistic Theory, Papers from the XX LSRL, Ottawa, 1990, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 69–104.
Horn, L. R. (1993) “Economy and Redundancy in a Dualistic Model of Natural Language,” in S. Shore and M. Vilkuna, eds., SKY
1993:1993 Yearbook of the Linguistic Association of Finland, 33–72.
Meireles, J. A., and E. Raposo (1992) “Tense and Binding Theory in Portuguese,” in D. P. Macedo and D. A. Koike, eds., Romance
Linguistics: The Portuguese Context, Bergin & Garvey, Westport, CT, 217–238.
Quer, J. (1998) Mood at the Interface, Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS.
Rivero, M.-L. (1971) “Mood and Presupposition in Spanish,” Foundations of Language 7, 305–336.
Rivero, M.-L. (1991) “Exceptional Case Marking Effects in Rumanian Subjunctive Complements,” in D. Wanner and D. A.
Kibbee, eds., New Analyses in Romance Linguistics, Benjamins, Amsterdam, 273–298.
Villalta, E. (2000) “Spanish Subjunctive Clauses Require Ordered Alternatives,” in B. Jackson and T. Matthews, eds., Proceedings
of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) X, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University, 239–256.