The Subjunctive in Spanish: A Transformational Approach

Abstract

1. Conventional treatment of subjunctive. In Spanish grammar textbooks, the treatment of the subjunctive is frequently divided into three sections dealing with noun clauses, adverb clauses, and adjective clauses, respectively. The student is usually presented with a separate rule for each clause type. In some textbooks, adverb clauses are further divided into two subclassifications: one type introduced by conjunctions which always take the subjunctive (e.g. para que, sin que) or the indicative (e.g. puesto que, ya que), and another type introduced by conjunctions which can take either depending upon the meaning of the sentence (e.g. donde, cuando).' There are two problems which arise from this approach: first, the student must learn three (or more) sets of rules, and second, he must learn to distinguish noun, adverb, and adjective clauses before he can apply them. Analyses of compound sentences which have been proposed recently within the transformational framework suggest that some of the complexity mentioned above is unnecessary. Specifically, it has been suggested that the adverb clause as a separate category does not exist at all and that some clauses with adverbial functions can be analyzed as adjective clauses, others as noun clauses. This paper will present a sketch of this analysis and its consequences for the presentation of the subjunctive 2. Adverb clauses as adjective clauses. I have argued that clauses introduced by donde, como, and cuando should be considered modified versions of relative clauses having antecedents such as lugar, modo, and tiempo. In my analysis the sentence (1) El libro estd donde lo pusiste is derived from (2) El libro estd en el lugar donde lo pusiste by deletion of the antecedent lugar. Sentence (2) is in turn derived from (3) El libro estdi en el lugar en que lo pusiste by rules which optionally substitute relative adverbs for relative pronouns in sentences of this type.2 Thus the clauses in (1) and (2) are viewed as having an essentially adjectival function, modifying the noun lugar, whether it is actually present, as in (2), or merely understood as in (1).