A variationist analysis of the subjunctive mood in a sociolinguistic corpus of spoken Francoprovençal

Abstract

Variationist studies on the subjunctive in Romance remain focused on dominant nation-state languages. Conversely, very little research focuses on the minoritised varieties (often labelled ‘regional’ languages) with which these dominant languages are in contact. The framework deployed for elucidating on change in the subjunctive has not yet been adequately tested in language endangerment. Using a novel sociolinguistic corpus of spoken Francoprovençal, the variationist analysis presented in this paper offers a preliminary investigation of the synchronic shape of the subjunctive in one variety, and assesses the extent to which social and linguistic factors influence variant selection. The results indicate a progressive weakening of a subjunctive mood that is increasingly lexically motivated. The available evidence suggests that a combination of tense-aspect-mood variation and morphophonological regularisation are contributing to the decline in subjunctive selection, with no social factors playing a role in the variation.