Abstract
This paper investigates the properties of the Romanian presumptive mood and the role it plays in the distribution of the epistemic indefinite <em>vreun</em>. We focus on the morphologically complex future-based paradigm, which includes forms based on the literary and colloquial variants of the future auxiliary. The colloquial forms are shown to have lost the ability to express purely temporal meanings, being used exclusively with modal-evidential readings. We further argue that the future-based presumptive is closely related to epistemic modals, with which it shares the ability to express indirect inferential evidentiality. We capitalize on their contrasting behavior in factive settings to explain the interaction with the epistemic determiner <em>vreun</em>. Specifically, we argue that the key property that makes the (colloquial) future-based presumptive a suitable licensor for the <em>vreun </em>is its incompatibility with contexts where the modalized proposition is established to hold.
Highlights
This paper investigates the relation between mood and modality, by discussing the properties of the presumptive mood in Romanian
The starting point comes from the distributional restrictions exhibited by the epistemic indefinite vreun (Fălăuş 2009, 2014)
‘I know (s)he has met some friend.’. With this background in mind, we will focus on the fact that a verbal form in the so-called presumptive mood systematically licenses vreun: (4) S-o fi întâlnit cu vreun prieten
Summary
This paper investigates the relation between mood and modality, by discussing the properties of the presumptive mood in Romanian. The determiner vreun (vreo in the feminine) conveys speaker’s ignorance with respect to the referent of the nominal phrase It is ruled out from episodic (1) and deontic modal contexts (2a), but licensed under epistemic modals and verbs (2a, 3a), as long as they are not factive (3b):. Epistemic modal Trebuie să se fi întâlnit cu vreun prieten. Know.1sg that refl.3sg-has met with vreun friend ‘I know (s)he has met some friend.’ With this background in mind, we will focus on the fact that a verbal form in the so-called presumptive mood systematically licenses vreun:. Refl.3sg-aux.3sg be met with vreun friend ‘(S)he might/must have met some friend.’ These examples suggest a connection between presumptive mood and epistemic (non-factive) operators.
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