Non-Past Concessive Sentences in Mexican Spanish and the Role of Position in Mood Alternation

Abstract

Abstract Following a functionalist approach, the goal of this study was to determine whether iconicity/position of the subordinate clause (in our case, non-past concessive clauses) played a role in mood alternation in Mexican Spanish. Initially, it was hypothesized that speakers of this variety of Spanish would favor the placement of the concessive clause with the verb in the subjunctive before the main clause; this was related to a more iconic value of the subordinate construction when the concessive clause is preposed, together with Lunn’s concept of (lack of) ‘relevance’/evaluative function of the subjunctive. Two sets of data were analyzed: speakers’ judgments of grammatical concessive clauses, and the informal oral production of concessive structures in an interview setting. Results support our original prediction differently depending on the type of instrument and data set analyzed.