Abstract
This paper is concerned with mood distribution in European and Brazilian Portuguese. Although, in many cases, these two varieties do not differ as regards the selected mood, there are exceptions in some contexts. The variations involve rather different constructions, at first sight suggesting a chaotic picture. However, if one assumes that mood is associated with the expression of an attitude towards a proposition (in other words, that mood is an expression of modality), it becomes clear that European and Brazilian Portuguese are diverging in respect to the relevant factors for mood selection. In particular, while in European Portuguese the selection of mood is sensitive to both veridicality and epistemic modality, Brazilian Portuguese is becoming a language where the truth-value of the proposition is the main factor responsible for mood selection. Hence, a tendency appears to be developing for Brazilian Portuguese to approach the pattern found in languages like Rumanian, (Modern) Greek or Hungarian, while European Portuguese follows the pattern found in most other Romance languages.
Highlights
In this paper, I will work on differences in mood selection between European and Brazilian Portuguese
I will give a general picture of the mood distribution in both varieties of Portuguese; I will present the main semantic or pragmatic analyses of mood selection, arguing that none of them gives a satisfactory account of all the facts
Considering the observed data, the pattern found in Brazilian Portuguese is different from the one of Rumanian and related languages. While in these languages indicative is selected for veridical contexts – that is, indicative is selected if the proposition is taken to be true in the real world or in a fictional one – in Brazilian Portuguese it is selected only for a sub-group of veridical contexts, namely for veridical propositions anchored to the real world
Summary
I will work on differences in mood selection between European and Brazilian Portuguese. I will give a general picture of the mood distribution in both varieties of Portuguese; I will present the main semantic or pragmatic analyses of mood selection, arguing that none of them gives a satisfactory account of all the facts. There are modal contexts that indicative is sensitive to, and it only occurs in those contexts. As for the other main mood, subjunctive, it is not sensitive to any particular value, instead occurring in those contexts that do not require the presence of indicative.
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