The Strange History of the -ria Form

Abstract

There has been a great deal of controversy surrounding the classification of the -ria forms, concerning principally whether they should be classified as indicative, subjunctive, or by some other designation. A critical analysis of the treatment of the -ria form by several scholars from Nebrija to the present day will strongly suggest, though, that the -ria forms belong exclusively to the indicative mode. In his Gramatica de la lengua castellana published in 1492, Antonio de Nebrija labeled the -ria forms subjunctives. Having been influenced by such Latin scholars as Quintilian, Donatus, and Priscian, Nebrija used semantic criteria in defining mode: El modo en el ... es aquello por la cual se distinguen ciertas maneras de significado en el verbo (185). Undoubtedly, he considered the -ria forms subjunctives because in the apodosis of conditional sentences in Latin, Spanish amaria is equivalent to the Latin imperfect subjunctive amarem as in si darem, amarem (si diera o diese, amaria o amara). Following Nebrija, the authors of the 1771 edition of the Academy's grammar defined mode from the perspective of its meaning and classified the -ria forms as subjunctives.1 They underscored the fact that in sentences like yo amara, o amaria las riquezas, si pudiesen saciar mis deseos, the -ra form could replace both the -se form of the imperfect subjunctive in the siclause and the -ria form in the apodosis (or result clause) [186]. Because they incorrectly assumed that the -ra forms were always subjunctive, they concluded that the -ra, -se, and -ria forms belonged to this mode. They failed to recognize that the -ra form, which derives from the Latin pluperfect indicative (Lat. amaveram > Sp. amara), still functioned as such in the result clause. Proof of this lies in the fact that the -se form amase, which etymologically comes from the Latin pluperfect subjunctive amavissem, could not be substituted for the -ra form in the apodosis. The compilers of the 1771 edition noted that it was incorrect to say *yo amase las riquezas, si pudiesen saciar mis deseos (187). In is Gramatica de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los americanos, published in 1847, Andres Bello criticized the Academy for its excessive Latinization, arguing in favor of a grammar that was synchronic and languag -specific. The Venezuelan scholar was extremely innovative, for, as the distinguished critic Laizaro Mora points out, his definition of the indicative and subjunctive was the first ex mple of the use of the structuralist principle of distributionalism in a grammar of the Spanish language (Laizaro Mora 83). Using this pr nciple, Bello divided the verbal inflections into two main groups, depending on their combinatory potential with respect to certain verbs: Fo mas Indicativas o de modo Indicativo se ilaman las que son o pueden ser regidas por los verbos saber, afirmar, no precedidos de negaci6n (par. 455). Llamamos subjuntivas comune o del Modo Subjuntivo comuin las formas que se subordinan o pueden subordinarse a los verbos dudar, desear (par. 457). Here Bello uses a sort of syntactic test to de ermine just what mode a given morphological shape represents. L~zaro Mora underscores the fact that Bello was th first to use distributional criteria in d monstrating that the -ria forms are indicatives. He said the same verbs that govern the future indicative govern, by changing the tense of he main verb to past, the -ria forms. Thus, using the simple future, we say aseguro que ire; by changing the present tense to past, we must say asegure que iria (Bello 381). Bello was consistent. That is, he based his definition of mode on the notion of modal subordination, and then looked for the value of the -ria form precisely in situations where it is really subordinate. He concluded that the primary semantic value of the -ria form was a past future and thus he labeled it a post-preterite. This seems to be a strong argument for classifying the -ria forms as indicatives because, as Bello and structuralists like Zellig Harris have demonstrate , verb forms differing only in tense and governed by the same words belong to