One Rule for the Spanish Subjunctive

Abstract

A TREND which is emerging with increasing frequency in recent studies on the Spanish subjunctive is that of explaining the uses of this mode by as few principles or rules as possible.' The studies which represent this trend are based either on eclecticism (Bull and Da Silva) or generative grammar (Cressey, Lozano, and Shawl), including generative semantics (Goldin, Klein, Rivero, Terrell and Hooper, and Terrell). In contrast, studies and textbooks which are founded on structural linguistics give numerous rules for the use of the They list one or more rules for its occurrence in each of the four types of surface structure clauses, namely, independent clauses and dependent clauses, the latter being distinguished as to noun, adjective, and adverb clauses. Section 1 of this article is a survey of recent representative structural, eclectic, transformational, and semantic analyses of the subjunctive in independent and dependent clauses. I present my own treatment of the subjunctive in Section 2. This treatment differs from previous studies in that it formalizes the fact that there is but a single common rule for the use of the subjunctive and the indicative in all of their occurrences, both in independent or main clauses (exemplified in Section 3) and dependent clauses (Section 4). 1. A survey of recent studies on the subjunctive. Table 1 presents a compilation of the four well-known structural