Abstract
In this chapter, we provide a more in-depth discussion of the reasons why we do not adopt, at least not fully, some of the previous proposals. We discuss and raise semantic objections against a veridicality approach to mood choice. While veridicality has unquestionable syntactic and semantic effects, as well as morphological reflexes, we defend the position that it plays no role in distinguishing between subjunctive and indicative mood. On the basis of a close study of complementizers in the Balkan languages, we show that (some version of) veridicality does play a role in the selection of embedded clauses, in terms of presupposition. However, ultimately, this is not related to subjunctive selection per se.
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Notes
- 1.
On the other hand, Giannakidou discards as non-subjunctive a range of constructions which also imply temporal dependency (and which, interestingly, occur with na in Greek) because they do not involve non-veridical selecting predicates
- 2.
This is also true for most of the Balkan Slavic languages (see Todorovic, 2012 in particular).
- 3.
This section is an extension of Baunaz and Puskás (2014) .
- 4.
Roussou (2010) gives an example with the predicate ‘remember’, i.e. a cognitive factive verb.
(i)
Thimame oti/pu dhjavaze poli.
Modern Greek (Roussou, 2010, p.590 (17))
Remember.1sg that read.3sg much
‘I remember that he used to read a lot/I remember him reading a lot.’
This suggests that thimame is also a verb that alternates in meaning between relative and strong veridical, as is claimed at the end of this paragraph.
- 5.
- 6.
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Baunaz, L., Puskás, G. (2022). What Subjunctive Is Not. In: A Cross-linguistic Approach to the Syntax of Subjunctive Mood. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 101. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04540-0_3
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