On subjunctive clauses and irrealis mood in Persian

Ilkhanipour, Negin

doi:10.1017/cnj.2017.23

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 22 publications

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“…One of the challenges in the study of subjunctives has been to identify the distinctive meaning of the subjunctive and what unifies the diverse range of phenomena as subjunctive. Studies of the subjunctive have often associated its semantic distribution with irrealis, in contrast with the Indicative, which is associated with realis (Givón 1994;Ilkhanipour 2018;Portner 2009). This association has been called into question by several researchers.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Subjunctive Mood in Giryama and Tanzanian Nyanja

Ngowa

Ngonyani

2020

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This paper presents a study of the Subjunctive in the Bantu languages of Giryama in Kenya (E72a) and Nyanja in Tanzania (N201), and explores its distribution in the two languages. As in other Bantu languages, the Subjunctive is a morphological feature characterized by a verbal suffix -e, an obligatory subject marker, and the absence of tense. Syntactically, the Subjunctive appears in independent clauses, as well as dependent clauses with a certain class of predicates and adverbial subordinators. Independent clauses that may carry the Subjunctive are those that express exhortations or suggestions, and sentences marked with the future tense. Dependent clauses with Subjunctive verbs include: (a) complement clauses containing directive, volitional, and causative verbs, and (b) adverbial clauses such as clauses of purpose. Studies of the subjunctive have often associated its semantic distribution with irrealis, in contrast with the Indicative, which is associated with realis or assertion. We present evidence showing that the irrealis reading may sometimes appear to be absent. We argue that irrealis may not be a necessary and sufficient condition for the Subjunctive. However, the onstructions that give irrealis readings provide the best exemplars of Subjunctives in these two languages. Independent clause Subjunctives are shown to be clearly non-factive. Matrix verbs that take subjunctive complements are described as presupposition triggers of events that are non-factive relative to the matrix event.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Subjunctive Mood in Giryama and Tanzanian Nyanja

Ngowa

Ngonyani

2020

StOrE

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Mood selection in complement clauses in Persian

Nematollahi

2023

Current Issues in Linguistic Theory

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Similar to Romance and Balkan languages, Persian makes a formal distinction between indicative and subjunctive moods in its complement clauses. This paper proposes several generalizations about the distribution of the two moods, and evaluates the current theories of mood selection against Persian data. The proposal is that indicative appears when the complement is propositional, i.e., of type , and when one of the two other conditions holds: (1) the matrix predicate entails the content of the complement clause is in attitude holder’s context set, in which case the indicative mood makes no special semantic contribution, OR (2) the content of the complement clause or its negation is in speaker’s context set, in which case indicative signals the epistemic commitment of the speaker. Subjunctive, on the other hand, is selected when the conditions for the indicative are not met. As such, I argue that mood selection in complement clauses in Persian makes references to (1) the semantic type of the complement, (2) the semantics of the matrix predicate in terms of (non)veridicality, and (3) the speaker’s stand about the complement.

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On subjunctive clauses and irrealis mood in Persian

Abstract: The realis/irrealis distinction and its overt realization in different languages have been widely investigated in the literature (

Cited by 2 publications

References 22 publications

The Subjunctive Mood in Giryama and Tanzanian Nyanja

The Subjunctive Mood in Giryama and Tanzanian Nyanja

Mood selection in complement clauses in Persian

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