Mood Choice Research Articles

Sad Mood and Music Choice: Does the Self-Relevance of the Mood-Eliciting Stimulus Moderate Song Preference?

Recent findings regarding the influence of sad mood on music preference have been inconsistent, with some research suggesting that sadness promotes selective exposure to happy music and other work suggesting the very opposite. In three experiments, we investigated whether this discrepancy may have resulted from differences in the extent to which sadness was elicited by having participants think about personally relevant versus personally irrelevant negative events. To this end, we manipulated sad mood via a guided visualization technique in which participants were led to imagine experiencing a loss that was relevant either to their own or to an unfamiliar individual's concerns. Results revealed that irrespective of the self-relevance of the mood induction, individuals in sad, relative to happy, or neutral moods preferred to avoid expressively happy music. This aversion was partially mediated by beliefs that choosing happy music while sad would be inappropriate and thereby ineffectual in mood repair. Together, these findings contribute to resolving discrepancies in the literature and help advance understanding of the influence of mood on music choice.

Extending the dominion of effective control – Its applicability to mood choice in Spanish and Portuguese

AbstractWithin the model of Cognitive Grammar, the concept of dominion is fundamental to the analysis of the conceptualizer's attitude toward an event or a proposition. However, the concept has, first and foremost, been understood in epistemic terms, whereas there has been less concern with the conceptualizer's efforts to influence and manipulate the course of events in the world. This being so, the present paper shows that the conceptualizer's dominion of effective control is relevant in a number of linguistic contexts. The analysis provides evidence for this particular feature in factive contexts, deontic contexts, contexts of volition and causation, and in adverbial clauses of purpose, manner and condition. The analysis further shows that the conceptualizer's dominion of effective control is capable of providing a conceptually grounded explanation for the occurrence of the Spanish and the Portuguese subjunctive mood in these grammatical contexts.

Heritage and Foreign Language Learner Use of the Spanish Subjunctive in Advice

Previous research indicates that heritage language (HL) learners of Spanish tend to produce the subjunctive more than FL learners (e.g., Fairclough, 2005; Potowski, 2007). However, these studies have focused mainly on written production, and research on oral production has yielded contradictory findings (Fairclough, 2005; Lynch, 2008; Martínez Mira, 2006). This classroom-based research study (1) compares HL and FL learners’ subjunctive use and patterns of interlanguage mood choice in a paired oral activity in which students gave advice and (2) investigates whether learners negotiate meaning or form with each other in regard to mood selection. Twenty university students enrolled in fifth-semester Spanish (13 HL and 7 FL) were grouped into 7 HL-FL and 3 HL-HL pairs. Results indicate that HL learners were significantly more likely than their FL peers to produce the subjunctive in the structures where it was expected. HL and FL learners alike rarely negotiated for meaning or form with regard to mood choice.

Control and dominion: Factivity and mood choice in Spanish

AbstractThe present paper analyses the meaning of Spanish mood in factive contexts from a Cognitive Grammar perspective. It is argued that terms like assertion and presupposition do not explain the semantics of the subjunctive. Rather, they constitute an initial classification for finding a conceptually grounded explanation of it. The hypothesis is put forward that mood choice in factive contexts can be explained by the elaboration of Maldonado's (1995) notions of dominion and control. On the one hand, the conceptualizer has a low degree of effective control over the described event in presupposed contexts where the subjunctive mood occurs. On the other hand, presupposed contexts with the verb in the indicative mood equates with epistemic control over the described event. Thus, it is argued that the meaning of the subjunctive mood is related to the conceptualizer's epistemic dominion, and to the dominion of effective control. An additional analysis of the subjunctive mood in volitional, causative and perceptual contexts corroborates the initial claim.

The subjective mode of comparison: Metalinguistic comparatives in Greek and Korean

In this paper, we present a striking parallel between Greek and Korean in the formation and interpretation of metalinguistic comparatives. The initial observation is that both languages show an empirical contrast between ordinary and metalinguistic comparatives realized in two places: (a) in the form of a designated metalinguistic comparative MORE, and (b) in the form of THAN employed. We propose (building on earlier ideas in Giannakidou and Stavrou 2009; Giannakidou and Yoon 2009) that the metalinguistic comparative is subjective and attitudinal, i.e. it introduces the point of view of an individual towards a sentence—and argue that the individual expresses invariably an attitude of preference: she prefers one sentence (the sentence itself, or the proposition it expresses) in a given context over another. The preference may come out as completely negative in certain cases, and this is manifested as yet another MORE lexicalization in Korean (charari), which selects nuni-THAN, which itself carries a negative expressive index (in the sense of Potts 2007b), we will claim. Expressive negativity is not equivalent to negation in syntax, as nuni alone cannot license NPIs that need negation. If our analysis is correct, it has one important implication that goes beyond just the metalinguistic comparatives in the individual languages we are considering. It allows the generalization that metalinguistic functions in language are indeed part of the grammar. In particular, they are reflexes of grammaticalization of perspective and subjective mode, on a par with predicates of personal taste discussed by Lasersohn (2005, 2008, 2009), mood choice, and similar phenomena. In comparatives, subjective mode is manifested as an attitude of preference, with possible addition of expressive meaning.

Receptive Volitional Subjunctive Abilities in Heritage and Traditional Foreign Language Learners of Spanish

The Spanish subjunctive has been known to pose difficulties for learners of Spanish whose native language is English (e.g., Collentine, 1997, 2003 ; Terrell, Baycroft, & Perrone, 1987 ). Investigating the same feature in heritage learners of Spanish can provide more information about the linguistic development of this growing population. This pilot study compared heritage and foreign language (FL) learners' ability to recognize native-like and nonnative-like mood choice in volitional constructions. Students enrolled in heritage and traditional FL Spanish courses at 3 universities in the Northeast completed a grammaticality judgment (GJ) task and an editing task, which contained examples of indicative, infinitive, and subjunctive use in volitional constructions. Heritage learners scored significantly higher on average than their FL peers on the editing, GJ, and combined (editing and GJ) tasks. These results suggest that home and community exposure play an important role in subjunctive acquisition and that instruction should be tailored to heritage learners' abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mood Management and Video Rental Choices

Utilizing mood management theory (Zillmann, 1988) and its extension, the mood adjustment approach (Knobloch, 2003), we recruited participants who were entering a video rental store to assess possible links between mood and video choice. This procedure was done to maximize external validity in examining the relationship between mood and media choice. Participants reported on their current mood before entering the store; on exiting they reported on their rental choices. Overall, aspects of the viewing situation (alone vs. with others), mood, and to some extent planned activities for the night were related to video choice but not always in the ways we had predicted. In general, those who felt angry and bored chose fewer dramas; those who felt calm chose more comedies, and those who felt energetic chose more action movies but avoided crime dramas and comedies. Those who felt nervous, however, chose more–not fewer–horror movies. In addition, those who felt sad chose more–not fewer–dramas and crime dramas but avoided dramatic comedies. Rather, sad people seemed to gravitate to serious films. Possible explanations for such findings are provided. Support for mood management is somewhat stronger than for mood adjustment.

Dialectal variation in mood choice in Spanish journalistic prose

This article examines dialectal variation in mood choice in journalistic prose after the adverbials después de que ‘after’ and luego de que ‘after’ in subordinate clauses of past temporal complex sentences in Spanish. Because the matrix clause of sentences of this type contains a verb in a past tense, indicating that an action has certainly taken place, the event of the verb in the subordinate clause headed by después de que or luego de que is anterior to this completed event and is also a necessarily completed event that therefore is in a prescriptively indicative context. However, data collected from an on-line corpus of Spanish texts from Spanish-speaking countries and from on-line periodicals show that journalistic prose from Spain universally opts for the subjunctive mood in these contexts, whereas Mexico tends to use the indicative. Other Spanish-speaking countries show varying degrees of frequency of choice for these moods. Previous approaches to explaining mood choice have maintained that variation in mood choice in the complement clause is determined by the intentions of the speaker. The data in this study refute these claims by demonstrating that the use of the indicative or the subjunctive mood is well established in Mexico and Spain, respectively, and variable in the other Spanish-speaking countries.The author wishes to thank the College of Arts and Letters at Old Dominion University for a summer research grant to carry out this study. Special thanks go to Janet Bing, Charles Ruhl, and Alfredo Urzúa of Old Dominion University for their endless patience and attention to detail in reviewing this work. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Keith Walters of the University of Texas at Austin for recommending this journal for the placement of this article.

Review article:Crosslinguistic semantics and the study of Greek

AbstractThis paper describes and assesses the flow of ‘Greek semantics’, i.e. the study of semantic phenomena in the grammar of Greek, and of its syntax-semantics interface. Semantic studies of Greek started appearing in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, and have been quite plentiful since then, with a well-defined formal semantic orientation in the 1990’s. The major topics in Greek semantics are discussed, including mood choice, sentential complementation, negation and polarity, tense-aspect modality, and ellipsis. Emphasis is given to how the semantic study of Greek connects to the larger crosslinguistic picture; more often than not, the results based on Greek call for modification of existing theories, and are shown to have significant theoretical implications for the overall design of grammar and, especially, the relation between morphology/syntax and semantics.

Mood and the Interpretation of indefinites

The starting point of this paper is the question of whether indefinites like 'a man' are always able to support referential readings a la Fodor and Sag (1982). Examination of subjunctive contexts in Italian and Modern Greek shows that: (i) mood choice is in general able to restrict the availability of referential readings; (ii) there is considerable cross-linguistic variation in this respect; (iii) this variation depends on whether mood distinctions like indicative vs. subjunctive are grammaticalized in the language. On the basis of these findings, the paper re-examines larger theoretical issues, especially in light of Kratzer's (1995) proposal, and speculates on the possibility of a unified representation for referential and quantificational indefinites

The Menstrual Cycle, Mood and Appetite

Discusses changes in mood, food intake and food choice associated with the menstrual cycle – food intake is generally increased in the pre‐menstrual phase but changes in food choice are not quite clear. The influence of the menstrual cycle on women′s mood and behaviour is so far poorly understood but popular beliefs about menstrual‐related “disabilities” still prevail. In our society, two important features of an ideal woman are: being nice and being slim, restraining temper and appetite. Putting the blame for relaxing this restraint on physiological factors seems easier to handle than questioning the ideal.

The pragmantax of some Italian conditionals

In Italian, thematic or resumptive conditionals, ‘Dutchman Sentences’, conditional inducements and deterrents, and conditional speech acts can only be found as indicative conditionals, and (almost) never as subjunctive conditionals. In the present paper, I argue that this morphosyntactic constraint on four types of ‘pragmatic’ conditional depends on the interrelation between their specific pragmatic features and the semantics of mood choice in the standard Italian conditional system of moods and tenses, which will be analyzed, together with the basic meaning of se (‘if’), in a neo-Gricean fashion.

Prescription, intuition et usage : le subjonctif français et la variabilité inhérente

Poplack, Shana - "Prescription, intuition and usage: inherent variability and the French subjunctive. Is mood choice in French syntactically or semantically motivated ? Systematic empirical analysis of mood usage in a corpus of spoken Canadian French leads to the conclusion that the subjunctive is one variant of a linguistic variable which may alternate with the indicative and the conditional in certain embedded noun clauses. Variable rule analysis of the contribution of semantic versus morphosyntactic factors to the choice of subjunctive mood reveals that this process is conditioned by the latter, suggesting that the choice of subjunctive is inherently variable and not determined by meaning. Moreover, it appears that the contemporary state of affairs is neither an innovation nor limited to Canadian dialects, but is rather a synchronie reflex of mood variability throughout the history of French language.