Mood Alternation Research Articles

Mood Across Constructions: A Unified Approach

The present paper provides a uniform treatment of mood morphology across constructions in Spanish, including: (a) mood selection in complement clauses of attitude verbs and in matrix clauses, (b) mood alternation in relative clauses and, tentatively, (c) mood alternation in conditional clauses. We argue for the following combination of ingredients from different approaches: (i) mood tracks the modal architecture of the embedding verb, not the local context set; (ii) mood introduces a world pronoun, not world quantification; and (iii) indicative mood is presuppositionally heavier than subjunctive mood.

Mood Alternation with Adverbs of Uncertainty in Galician: A Multifactorial Analysis

This study investigates the factors that significantly constrain mood selection in Galician within uncertainty adverb constructions, applying a logistic regression model. This analysis identified several significant factors affecting the choice between the indicative and subjunctive moods, including the temporal context of the clause, the preceding adverb, and the interaction of fictional and nonfictional registers with the verb type of the predicate and the gender of the speaker/writer. Time reference and the preceding adverb emerged as primary factors conditioning mood choice, with present and future time frames and adverbs encoding weaker epistemic values significantly predisposing toward the subjunctive mood. This study also highlighted the influence of the gender of the speaker/writer, demonstrating the preference of women toward the indicative mood in fictional texts. Verb type and register interact in complex ways that only partially align with previous findings. The results of the present study contribute to a deeper understanding of syntactic variation in Galician, adding to a growing body of quantitative research on Galician grammar.

Lactococcus strains with psychobiotic properties improve cognitive and mood alterations in aged mice.

Aging often accompanies cognitive and mood disturbances. Emerging evidence indicates that specific probiotics mitigate cognitive and mood dysfunctions. Strains within Lactococcus, a subgroup of probiotics, including Lactococcus lactis and Lactococcus cremoris are shown beneficial effects on brain functions via the gut microbiota-brain axis (GBA). Our previous study identified two Lactococcus strains (L. lactis WHH2078 and L. cremoris WHH2080) with the ability to promote the secretion of gut 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), the precursor of the GBA mediator 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT). In this study, the modulatory effects of WHH2078 and WHH2080 on cognitive and mood alternations were investigated in aged mice. Oral administration of WHH2078 and WHH2080 (1 × 109 CFU/mL/day) in aged mice (12-month-old) for 12 weeks significantly improved cognitive and depressive-and anxiety-like behaviors. The neuronal loss, the 5-HT metabolism dysfunction, and the neuroinflammation in the hippocampus of aged mice were restored by WHH2078 and WHH2080. the disturbances in the serum tryptophan metabolism in aged mice were unveiled by metabolomics, notably with decreased levels of 5-HT and 5-HTP, and increased levels of kynurenine, 3-hydroxykynurenine, and indolelactic acid, which were reversed by WHH2078 and WHH2080. Regarding the gut microbial community, WHH2078 and WHH2080 restored the increased abundance of Firmicutes, Desulfobacterota, and Deferribacterota and the decreased abundance of Bacteroidota and Actinobacteriota in aged mice. The beneficial effects of the two strains were linked to the modulation of 5-HT metabolism and gut microbiota. Our findings point to the potential role of Lactococcus strains with 5-HTP-promoting abilities as therapeutic approaches for age-related cognitive and mood disorders.

Quantitative-statistic corpus analysis about mood variation in Spanish based on linguistic and social variables

Mood is one of the most popular topics in Spanish and mood alternation occurs when the structure is just an adverb and a verb. Although many studies have addressed this subject, most focus on verbs. Some studies have discussed mood alternation with adverbs of doubt, but only a few use statistical methods. In addition, the existing research on speakers’ social factors is insufficient. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to reveal differences between the adverbs of doubt using statistical methods and to elucidate the relationship between mood alternation and social factors. To achieve these objectives, this corpus study extracts data from corpes xxi (2020) and preseea-Madrid ( distrito de Salamanca) and analyses 1,587 examples containing posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás, tal vez, a lo mejor, igual and seguramente using multiple correspondence analysis and decision tree analysis. The results show that adverbs of doubt can be divided into two groups. One includes posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás and tal vez which are more likely to co-occur with the subjunctive. The other includes a lo mejor, igual and seguramente which have tendencies to co-occur with the indicative. Furthermore, for social factors, male, educated people, and peninsular Spanish relates more to the subjunctive.

Mood alternation in Mexican Spanish in Georgia

Abstract The current study analyzes mood alternation in Spanish spoken in Georgia among first-generation Mexican immigrants. Using sociolinguistic interview data, tokens of the subjunctive and indicative in dependent clauses were examined, particularly in the following syntactic contexts: depender, aunque, me gusta que, no porque, quizás, tal vez, and no sé si/ cómo/dónde/qué. We argue that mood selection in the contexts under study is determined by the evaluation of the proposition in the dependent clause. We then use this data to inform theories of possible world semantics (i.e., Anand and Hacquard 2013; Giannakidou and Mari 2021; Villalta 2008) to better understand mood alternation. Moreover, while many U.S. Spanish varieties may demonstrate what Silva-Corvalán (1994, 91) refers to as “a reduced system that made it more difficult to distinguish between more or less possible situations in a hypothetical world,” we show that cases of alternation in the present data still differentiate speaker meaning and evaluation.

Volition and mood in Italian: a study of the state-of-affairs subjunctive

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the function of the Italian subjunctive in the sphere of volition. It argues that the subjunctive designates what is called a state-of-affairs (SoA) in this sphere. This argument is substantiated in two parts. The first part is a discussion of the subjunctive in the sphere of volition across the system. In the discussion, it is concluded that the subjunctive designates a SoA where it opposes the proposition-designating indicative. The second part is a corpus-based study of 25 verbs of volition with data from CORIS, a corpus of written Italian. This qualitative study tests the hypothesis that mood alternation in complements of verbs of volition has a decisive semantic impact on the main verb or the complex structure as whole. The data confirms the hypothesis, since the SoA-designating subjunctive is found to prompt a volitional meaning, whereas the proposition-designating indicative prompts a non-volitional meaning. By analyzing certain variants of the Italian subjunctive as SoA-designating, we can better account for, on the one hand, why the subjunctive remains persistent in the sphere of volition compared to other spheres of meaning, where it tends to lose ground to the indicative, and, on the other hand, what mood alternation entails in the sphere of volition.

Il congiuntivo alla danese

Abstract This article assesses the theory of ‘the subjunctive as a subordination marker’ proposed by Schmitt Jensen (1970a) in light of recent advances in the study of complementation. It argues that the theory is consistent with the functional framework of Givón (2001) where event integration is said to be mirrored in syntactic integration, but that it has to be revised on two points. Firstly, instead of marking syntactic subordination, we propose that the subjunctive is used to prompt a non-referring construal of the subordinate clause in certain constructions. Secondly, we suggest that the subjunctive prompts a conceptually secondary construal of the subordinate clause in other constructions. By proposing a twofold function of the subjunctive, we can keep the main findings of Schmitt Jensen while avoiding potential circularity and shortcomings that the syntactic theory of the subjunctive faces when applied to, e.g., mood alternation.

ON COMPLEXITY AND DIVERGENCE IN HERITAGE LANGUAGE GRAMMARS

AbstractFor more than a decade, research on heritage speakers’ (HSs’) mood selection has documented a high degree of variability in their interpretation and use of mood morphology in variable contexts. Most of the previous literature, however, has focused on late-acquired alternations, and often limited analyses to one form (i.e., subjunctive), making it difficult to draw conclusions about HSs’ knowledge of mood distinctions. This study intends to fill this gap by examining Spanish HSs’ (n = 76) and Spanish-dominant controls’ (n = 25) interpretation and use of an early acquired mood alternation, where the presence of indicative or subjunctive conveys the report of an assertion or a command. Results from two experimental tasks reveal that, even though HSs’ performance tends to differ from that of controls’—especially at lower levels of proficiency—the nature and extent of their divergences suggests the need to embrace a more nuanced analysis of HSs’ linguistic outcomes when examining modal contrasts.

The Indicative/subjunctive Mood Alternation with Adverbs of Doubt in Spanish

ABSTRACT This study aims to analyse the indicative/subjunctive mood alternation in Spanish sentences with adverbs of doubt (acaso, posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás, tal vez, seguramente, a lo mejor, igual). To this end, this study statistically analysed the linguistic and social factors conditioning the mood alternation in sentences with adverbs of doubt. A total of 1278 tokens were analysed. Each datum was annotated with verb type, verb aspect, verb person, distance between the adverb and the verb, sex, age, region, and education level. To exclude confounding factors, multivariable logistic regression was conducted, and the analysis yielded significant odds ratios (ORs) for 10 items, including sex, region, education level, adverbs (posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás, tal vez), aspect, and distance between the verb and the adverb. These results show that these adverbs can be divided into two groups, where posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás, and tal vez are more likely to co-occur with the subjunctive than the adverbs acaso, seguramente, a lo mejor, and igual. Furthermore, this study has shown that each adverb differs in the likelihood of co-occurring with the subjunctive, and that social factors of speakers affect the mood selection. Thus, an analysis of mood alternations should include social and linguistic factors.

Mood alternation in German: Negation as a specific case of epistemic weakening

AbstractThis paper is mainly about a unique case of syntactic epistemic weakening, i.e. the present subjunctive mood and its negation trigger in surface coordination. In contrast to modern colloquial German, which limits the use of the present subjunctive quite restrictively to root clauses, the older periods of German, Old and Middle High German, showed an extended use of the subjunctive beyond root, i.e. also in dependent structures. However, the semantically interpreted as well as the grammatical subjunctive got entirely lost in Modern colloquial, albeit not quite in Standard written German. The focus of this paper is the discussion of mood in early complex (subordinated or coordinated) negated sentences. Exploiting mainly the MHG text of theLay of the Nibelungs, we focus on negated matrix structures, in superficially coordinated, but semantically dependent clauses. This suggests that thene-particle in co-construction with the subjunctive on the predicate was used to code clausal dependence from the previous (negated) clause. In further course, in specific semantic constructions, the original Middle High German interpretability of paratactic negation and the consequent denotation of non-factual situations were lost and gave way to the pure syntactic coding of dependency. The triangle of triggers contributing to the complex phenomenon consists of 1. negation of different sorts and in various syntactic distributions, 2. dependency marking, and 3. indicative–subjunctive marking on the dependent predicate. The attempt is made to draw comparisons to other epistemicity triggers such as syntactic and lexical nonveridicals.

Lexical frequency and morphological regularity as sources of heritage speaker variability in the acquisition of mood

The present investigation examines intra-speaker variability in heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish by focusing on the potential effects of two variables in their acquisition of mood: lexical frequency and morphological regularity. To do so, this study tested participants’ interpretation and use of early-acquired mood alternations conveying either assertive or jussive meanings. Results from a truth-value judgment and a picture-based sentence completion task revealed that HSs’ performance was significantly modulated by the lexical frequency of the matrix verb introducing the modal alternation, as well as by the regularity of the embedded verbal form. In particular, frequent matrix verbs and irregular forms yielded higher rates of accuracy across most of the experimental tasks, suggesting that the degree of variability in HSs’ outcomes is determined, to a certain extent, by these two factors. These results favor an account of heritage language acquisition and loss focused on the effects of lexical activation on bilinguals’ grammatical representations (Perez-Cortes, Putnam and Sánchez, 2019; Putnam and Sánchez, 2013).

The indicative vs. subjunctive alternation with expressions of possibility in Spanish

Abstract This study explores the indicative vs. subjunctive alternation in Spanish subordinate clauses following epistemic adverbials and expressions of possibility. Anchored in semantic-pragmatic and variationist theoretical frameworks, traditional research on mood alternation in Spanish remains largely experimental in nature. In contrast, we adopt a corpus-based multifactorial methodology to investigate 4,199 occurrences of fourteen expressions of possibility extracted from the Corpus del Español (e.g. caso de que, poder ser que, por si acaso, posiblemente, etc.) annotated contextually for structural, semantic and stylistic variables. Methodologically, we conduct an exploratory multiple correspondence analysis followed by a confirmatory binary logistic regression to examine whether/how the linguistic contexts affect mood variation. Overall, the results indicate that previously unexplored semantic factors (such as the inherent lexical aspect of verbs in subordinate clauses) significantly influence mood variation in Spanish. Ultimately, our results suggest that subjunctive uses are less uniform and more prone to internal variation than indicative uses.

Pragmatic Mood Variation in Bilingual and Monolingual Yucatec Spanish

While linguists (e.g. Michnowicz 2009, 2012; Solomon 1996, 1999; Klee 2009) have described some of the unique features of Yucatec Spanish related to the lexicon , the phonetic system, and syntactic structure, but no work has focused on pragmatics in this variety. The current study utilizes semantic/pragmatic interviews to investigate four cases of pragmatic mood alternation: Suspended Assertion, Reportative Distance, Individualized Reference, and Reactional Assertions. The results examined suggest important differences between monolingual and bilingual speaker reaction to pragmatic triggers. The bilingual Yucatec Maya/Spanish speakers’ perception of pragmatic change in mood varies between the four groups of pragmatic effects; the bilingual speakers were sensitive to Reactional Assertions and Reportative Distance but not sensitive to changes in Suspended Assertion or Individualized Reference. This demonstrates a difference in pragmatic sensitivity to mood selection between bilingual and monolingual speakers of this contact variety. Specifically, bilingual speakers select mood that patterns with monolingual speakers when it is syntactically motivated, but their mood selection differs in areas where this selection pragmatically motivated.

New Research Shall Be Initiated in Regard With the Effects of Mood Alternation During Neurological Shutdown

New Research Shall Be Initiated in Regard With the Effects of Mood Alternation During Neurological Shutdown

Does higher effectiveness mean better mood? Training effectiveness and mood alternations in the national finswimming team – An interdisciplinary study

Does higher effectiveness mean better mood? Training effectiveness and mood alternations in the national finswimming team – An interdisciplinary study

Epistemic commitment and mood alternation: A semantic-pragmatic analysis of Spanish future-framed adverbials

Epistemic commitment and mood alternation: A semantic-pragmatic analysis of Spanish future-framed adverbials

Mood Alternations in Old High German Subordinate Clauses

In this paper, Old High German mood alternations in the different types of subordinate clauses (complement, adverbial and relative clauses) are discussed. The use of the subjunctive in subordinate clauses is notoriously more frequent than in Modern German and has not yet been thoroughly investigated. Based on a comprehensive corpus study, the paper will show that the licensing conditions for the subjunctive in Old High German are determined by notions such as veridicality and – in relative contexts – specificity. These conditions are thus similar (but not always identical) to those observed for Modern Greek and Romance languages. Furthermore, a syntactic analysis is provided in order to account for the licensing of the subjunctive in each type of subordinate clause.

Replication and Expansion: Activity Type in Processing Instruction's Structured Input

In seeking to both confirm previous conclusions and expand the literature of the field with a different group of participants, McNulty (2012) was (partially) replicated. Three instructional interventions were designed to ascertain which activity type was responsible for learner gains. One treatment group (R) included referential-only practice activities. The second group (A) included affective-only practice activities and the third group (RA) was comprised of a balance of referential and affective activities which was subsequently eliminated in the analysis due to a lack of participants for this intervention. The instructional interventions were delivered via an open-source Moodle platform. The targeted grammatical feature for this processing instruction (PI) study was the subjunctive/indicative contrast after cuando, when. The acquisitional challenges with this particular feature result both from the mood alternation that is allowed as well as five identified Input Processing principles. University participants (n = 26) and high school participants (n = 29) followed a pretest/post-test/delayed post-test (after 2-8 weeks) design to measure learner gains on production and interpretation tasks. Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to further analyze the scores from these tasks by total, subjunctive, and indicative items at two time periods: from pretest to post-test and from post-test to delayed post-test. Findings indicate that the type of Structured Input activity is not statistically significant despite the modifications from McNulty (2012).

Interpreting mood choice effects in L2 and L1 Spanish: empirical evidence and theoretical implications

Abstract The rich morphology of Spanish, such as that of tense and verbal mood, encodes a range of features leading to diverse contextual effects on interpretation, some of which are examined in the light of original experimental data in the present study. Specifically, we analyse data on the interpretation of mood in concessive structures by upper-intermediate and advanced learners of L2 Spanish, with L1 French (N=48) and L1 English (N=40), and from an L1 European Spanish control group (N=35). The results of the learner-group interpretation experiment led to a follow-on study enquiring into the understanding of mood alternation in concessive clauses by another group of L1 European Spanish speakers through a metalinguistic interpretation task. Learner group findings suggested a heavier reliance on lexical information and world-knowledge than on grammatical cues, while L1 speakers’ data indicate a default association maintained between subjunctive and irrealis interpretations, leading to a greater measure of variability in describing presuppositional uses of this mood. The native speaker data may reflect challenges posed by representing and describing, using metalinguistic knowledge, structures whose interpretation requires the integration of linguistic, discourse and extralinguistic information. Findings are discussed in relation to current linguistic descriptions and potential contributions of our empirical data.

Mood choice in complements of Spanishcomprenderand Portuguesecompreender(‘understand’) – distribution and meaning

AbstractThe present paper analyzes the occurrence of indicative and subjunctive complements of the verbscomprender(Spanish) andcompreender(Portuguese) in European Spanish and European Portuguese. A quantitative analysis based on 400 occurrences of the complements randomly selected from the newspaper genre shows that the indicative mood occurs more frequently than the subjunctive mood in both languages, although the subjunctive mood is more frequent in the Portuguese corpus than in the Spanish one. The analysis also shows that the occurrence of the subjunctive complement is highly restricted to contexts in which the subject of the main clause verb is either 1st person or 3rd person singular. From the theoretical perspective of Cognitive Grammar, the mood alternation is explained by the concept ofdominion, i.e. the indicative complement designates an event that is located within the conceptualizer’s epistemic dominion, whereas the subjunctive complement designates an event that is located outside the conceptualizer’s dominion of effective control.