The present investigation will focus on the mood selection in factual
past time, in subordinate clauses following the temporal adverbials
luego de que ‘after’ and después de
que ‘after’ in Spanish journalistic prose. According to
prescriptive grammar (Canteli Dominicis & Reynolds, 1998:142; Solé &
Solé, 1977:17), if the temporal setting of the verb in the
matrix clause is past, the mood choice for the subordinate clause
following luego de que or después de que should
logically be a preterit indicative such as in (1).
However, not uncommon are sentences such as (2), from a Spanish
newspaper, in which the mood of the verb in the subordinate clause is the
preterit subjunctive.
In this sentence the temporal setting of the verb in the matrix clause
is past, the adverbial luego de que indicates a retrospective
relation between the matrix clause and the subordinate clause. In other
words, the action of the verb in the matrix clause happened after the
completion of the action in the subordinate clause. The inherent factual
nature of these sets of circumstances creates an indicative context for
which a verb in the indicative mood is prescribed, yet the mood choice for
the verb in the subordinate clause in (2) is subjunctive. Web searches
with the key words luego de que and después de
que show that there is a great deal of variation in mood choice after
these two adverbials in past temporal clauses in journalistic prose.
The observation that the preterit subjunctive is used as a preterit,
imperfect or present or past perfect indicative in literature and in
journalistic prose has long been noted (Staubach,
1946; Wright, 1926a, 1926b, 1947) and even
criticized (Mallo, 1947, 1950). Although there are a plethora of theories and
investigations into mood choice in Spanish in general, and a few studies
specifically on the variation of mood choice after luego de que
and/or después de que in past temporal subordinate
clauses, none of these previous investigations can adequately explain the
data presented in this study. The purpose of this article is to present
data that counter previous hypotheses on mood choice by showing that mood
choice in sentences of this type is dialectal in Spain and Mexico and is
variable in other Spanish-speaking countries.
METHODOLOGY
The data for tabular analysis for this investigation were obtained
through the Corpus de referencia del español actual
(CREA), a data bank available on-line from the Real Academia
Española (1989). CREA is comprised of a
wide variety of oral and written texts produced in Spanish-speaking
countries from 1975 to 2001. The written texts come from 100 different
sources and include samples from newspapers, magazines, and books. A
search engine allows one to type in a word or phrase, in this case
luego de que or después de que, and sort by a
year or span of years, by Spanish-speaking country (a total of 23
countries), and by type of document (newspapers, magazines, books,
miscellaneous, oral, or all of the aforementioned). Once a selection has
been made, a large portion of the text with the word or words selected is
highlighted. At the end of the text, the year, author, title, country of
origin, and theme of the document are described. Documents whose author
was named as prensa ‘the press’ were selected for
this investigation.
CREA uses articles from a variety of news sources for its database.
For example, Mexican newspapers include El Universal, Proceso,
and Excelsior; Spanish newspapers include El País, Voz
de Galicia, Diario Vasco, El Norte de Castilla, Diario de Navarro, El
Mundo, El Faro de Vigo, and Canarias 7. Only articles
produced from within the specific countries were accepted for analysis, as
indicated in the city of origin in the byline. Thus, if the article was
bought from the Associated Press or another organization, the data were
not accepted.
Luego de que and después de que can also be
used after clauses in which the matrix verb is in the temporal present or
future perspective. When the temporal present implies a habitual state of
affairs, the present indicative is used in the subordinate clause. If the
verb in the matrix clause is in the future temporal perspective (which can
also be represented by a morphologically present verb), the subjunctive is
used in the subordinate clause, as the action or state in the subordinate
clause is dependent on the completion of the action in the matrix clause
(de Bruyne, 1995:484). The focus of this
investigation is limited to the past temporal perspective, as it is in
this perspective that the action or state of the verb in the subordinate
clause must be a completed event because the action of the verb in the
matrix clause depends on this completion in order to have taken place at
all.
The adverbial phrases luego que and después
que followed by a subordinate clause share the same meaning and are
equally valid as luego de que and después de que
(http://rae.es/rae/geostroes/gespub000005.nsf(voAnexos)/arch7F13F582E3397492C1256
….). However, using these key words in a search can yield
constructions in which the adverb and que do not yield the
meaning ‘after’, such as in Primero dice que es chileno y
después que es peruano ‘First he says he is Chilean and
afterwards that he is Peruvian’. For this reason, the key word
searches for this investigation were limited to luego de que and
después de que.
Another option for using these adverbials is to omit que and
use an infinitive in place of a subordinate clause. However, in this type
of construction the subject of the matrix clause must be the same as that
of the infinitival phrase. As the purpose of this investigation is to
study mood choice in subordinate clauses, these types of constructions
were not considered.
Of central importance to this investigation was the mood used in what
is an apparently indicative context. Therefore, only those sentences in
which the verb in the matrix clause was in the preterit, imperfect,
pluperfect, or perfect anterior were considered for tabular analysis, as
the semantic value of these forms indicate an exclusively past event. If
the verb in the matrix clause was in the historical present, a verb with
present tense morphology, yet presenting a past temporal perspective, the
sentence was not accepted, as it could be construed that these sentences
were in the present temporal perspective, thus invalidating the temporal
balance of past actions. Similarly, the verbs in the subordinate clause
were considered relevant only if they were in one of the indicative or
subjunctive preterit forms.
To verify the data obtained in the CREA search, additional data were
obtained from La Jornada of Mexico City, El Mundo of
Madrid, and La Nación of San José, Costa Rica.
These data were taken from articles written in 2003, so as not to
replicate data obtained from the CREA search. These particular newspapers
were chosen because they had search engines that would accept the phrase
después de que.
Additional data for analysis were obtained from the Google search
engine, which also allows one to type in a phrase such as luego de
que or después de que. These data were not used in
the tabular analyses, but some samples were used as supplemental examples
of mood choice within the same country, article, or sentence.
Journalistic prose was chosen because it offers the ideal medium for
extracting complex sentences with the adverbials luego de que and
después de que, as journalists are reporting events that
indeed took place and are presumably dedicated to reporting
straightforward facts. Therefore, given that the event or action in a
matrix clause did reportedly take place, the reported action or event in
the subordinate clause following luego de que or
después de que must also have taken place, thus
theoretically taking the indicative. While journalistic prose is
universally considered to be a stylistic register in the literature,
nevertheless, “resulta particularmente importante el
análisis de la lengua en los periódicos y revistas, porque
se trata de un registro que goza de mayor permanencia que los que
corresponden a otros medios de comunicación”, ‘The
analysis of the language of newspapers and magazines is particularly
important because it is a register that enjoys more permanence than those
corresponding to other means of communication’ (Martínez Albertos, 1989:36).
DATA
Not all countries have data available from CREA that contain sentences
with luego de que and después de que. The
countries with the most available data are represented in the current
investigation: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico,
Spain, and Venezuela. Table 1 lists the number
of cases examined per country.
Cases of past temporal clauses following luego de que and
después de que by country in CREA
Each case was examined to determine the mood choice in the complement
clause. Table 2 presents the frequency of the
indicative mood and the subjunctive mood after the two adverbials
according to the country in which the sample was found.
Frequency of preterit indicative and preterit subjunctive after
luego de que and después de que in
CREA
Three salient observations can be drawn from this data. First, the
data from Mexico (N = 50, 80) indicate that there is an
overwhelming preference for the indicative after both luego de
que and después de que. The data from Spain
(N = 30, 85) shows the opposite: an overwhelming preference for
the subjunctive. Costa Rica tends to lean toward the indicative. Second,
within the remaining countries there is a high degree of variability in
mood choice after both adverbial conjunctions. Third, the adverbial
conjunction does not appear to affect mood choice. Thus, if a particular
country tends to favor the indicative over the subjunctive after luego
de que, it will also favor the indicative after después de
que. In a search for number of tokens of luego de que and
después de que, it is apparent that después de
que appears more frequently.
Based on these observations, an additional test for frequency of mood
choice after después de que was run from data collected in
the newspapers El Mundo, La Jornada, and La
Nación from Madrid, Mexico City, and San José,
respectively. As in the CREA search, only articles verifiably produced
from within the countries were accepted for analysis. These results, shown
in Table 3, support the data obtained from CREA
for Mexico and Spain. However the data obtained in this second search
indicate that mood choice in Costa Rica is more variable than in the CREA
search (N = 56 for Spain and Mexico, and N = 50 for
Costa Rica).
Frequency of preterit indicative and preterit subjunctive after
después de que in selected newspapers from Spain, Mexico,
and Costa Rica
The results from CREA and the individual journals are very similar.
The data for Spain (N = 85) from the CREA search show that the
subjunctive is used with 100% frequency after después de
que. The data from El Mundo (N = 56) indicate a
98.2% frequency for the use of the subjunctive. For Mexico, CREA
(N = 80) shows that the indicative is preferred with a 90%
frequency after después de que, and La Jornada
(N = 56) shows a 91% preference.
For Costa Rica, the data from CREA (N = 36) result in a 87.5%
preference for the indicative, whereas those from La
Nación (N = 50) indicate a 60% preference for the
indicative. These results are more consistent with the results of the data
from the other Spanish-speaking countries that demonstrate a high degree
of variability in mood choice.
PREVIOUS INVESTIGATIONS INTO MOOD
CHOICE
The structural approach
In explaining mood choice in past temporal adverbial clauses, various
grammar reference sources state simply that the indicative is used for
fulfilled events in the past (Canteli Dominicis & Reynolds, 1998:142; Solé &
Solé, 1977:171). Some sources recognize that the
-ra form of the preterit subjunctive may also be used in written
Spanish, specifically in journalistic prose for these types of events (de
Bruyne, 1995:486; Kattán-Ibarra & Pountain, 1997:86). Butt
and Benjamin stated that “the media everywhere frequently use the
-ra and -se forms even for fulfilled events in the
past” (2000:227).
While structuralists tend to shy away from explaining the use of the
preterit subjunctive in past temporal subordinate clauses, many do include
the use of the preterit subjunctive in their descriptions of alternation
of past perspectives in indicative contexts. The preterit subjunctive may
be used in place of the preterit, pluperfect preterit, or anterior
preterit, especially in journalistic, affected, or archaic style (Alarcos
Llorach, 1999:159; Butt & Benjamin, 2000:227; Fernández Alvarez, 1987:133; King & Suñer 1999:129). It is important to note that these scholars
ascribe an indicative value to this substituted usage of the preterit
subjunctive. Specifically, Alarcos Llorach states,
Se utiliza cantara como arcaísmo
o dialectalismo en lugar de la forma compuesta habías
cantado, con valor modal de indicativo e indicando anterioridad
respecto a un punto del pretérito (1999:159).
‘Cantara (PRET SUBJ) is used as an archaic or
dialectal form instead of the compound form habías cantado
(PLUPERF PRET IND) with the modal value of the indicative and indicating
anteriority in respect to a point in the preterit.’
These descriptions of the use of the preterit subjunctive in place of
indicative preterits serve no more than to state present usage of the
preterit subjunctive instead of the use of one of the indicative preterits
after después de que or luego de que.
The historical approach
The preterit subjunctive in indicative contexts may indeed be an
archaic form, as the preterit subjunctive form held an indicative value
during a period of linguistic history. As is commonly known, in Latin
there existed a pluperfect preterit indicative cantaveras and a
pluperfect subjunctive cantavisses. Sometime between Late Latin
and Old Spanish the pluperfect preterit indicative was reduced to
cantaras and competed with a compound tense avias
cantado. Meanwhile, the pluperfect subjunctive continued in its same
usage with the morphology cantasses. By Medieval Spanish,
cantaras eventually lost out in its indicative form to the
compound form avias cantado, leading to its specialization as a
subjunctive form. Therefore, in Modern Spanish there are two competing
preterit subjunctive forms, cantaras and cantase. The
former is commonly referred to as the -ra form, and the latter as
the -se form.
Given that the pluperfect preterit and the -ra preterit
subjunctive shared the same mood during a certain time period, it is
reasonable to expect that remnants of this historical usage remain today.
Because, as Alarcos Llorach (1999:159) pointed
out, the preterit and pluperfect preterit have taken on the functions of
the anterior preterit, it is also understandable that the anterior
preterit may be substituted for the preterit subjunctive. In sum, the
preterit, pluperfect preterit, and anterior preterit have all merged to
signify the past temporal perspective in Spanish. Since at one time this
past temporal perspective could have been represented by either the
current pluperfect preterit indicative or the current -ra
preterit subjunctive, one can certainly understand why the -ra
preterit subjunctive may now be variably used in instances where an
indicative preterit should certainly be used. As Poplack (1992:259) noted, “(w)hat we know about
linguistic change tells us the movements of verbs from one class into
another could not have taken place without a period of prior variability.
It is not surprising that this state of flux should continue in the
language today.” However, this historical approach cannot explain
the apparent regional preferences for one mood over the other in countries
such as Mexico and Spain, nor does it explain why the -se form of
the preterit subjunctive is also used in these contexts.
Semantic, pragmatic, and discourse approaches to
selection in mood choice
The semantic, pragmatic, and discourse approaches reject the idea that
a subjunctive verb form has indicative value. With the exception of
Terrell and Hooper (1974), these approaches all
maintain that the mood choice in the subordinate clause is related to the
intention of the speaker. The issue that differentiates these theories is
the specific intention that a speaker (writer) has in opting for one mood
or the other.
Terrell and Hooper (1974) correlated the use
of the indicative with, among other semantic categories, the notion of
assertion and report. Yet, as we have seen, the subjunctive is also used
in assertions and reports of past temporal events after después
de que and luego de que.
Mejías-Bikandi (1994) claimed that
mood choice is determined by the view of reality of the speaker and of the
listener. The indicative is used if the speaker regards the meaning of the
sentence to be part of the speaker's reality, or of the shared
reality between the speaker and the listener; and the subjunctive is used
if the sentence is not part of the speaker's reality or that of the
listener. Bergen's (1978) one rule for mood
choice in Spanish is based on the notion of the binary property
[+reservation] or [−reservation]. Thus, if a
speaker expresses any kind of reservation in the matrix clause (+res),
whether through the verb, noun, preposition, or adverb, then the verb in
the subordinate clause will be in the subjunctive. King and Suñer
(1999:133) stated that if the intention of the
speaker is to affirm without reservations and without additional
commentary, the indicative is used because the affirmation is
unconditional; it is affirming the information in the adverbial
clause. However, they also pointed out that even if the action that has
taken place is not in doubt, the subjunctive can be used if the intention
of the speaker is not to emphasize the action. Mayberry (2000) concluded that mood choice after temporal
adverbials depends on the speaker's commitment or degree of emphasis
regarding the proposition expressed. If the indicative is used, the
speaker has made a commitment to the occurrence of the proposition; if the
subjunctive is used, the speaker does not make a commitment. Studerus
(1995) offered the observation that there is a
tendency to use the subjunctive when the set of speakers are talking about
shared knowledge and to use the indicative when the information is new to
the listener. Lunn (1989) and Lavandera (1983), investigating mood choice in the broader
context of discourse, argued that the choice of mood alerts the listener
to determine whether to interpret what is being said as new or relevant
information (indicative) or old and not relevant information (subjunctive)
in regard to the overall message of the conversation. Lunn and Cravens
(1991:158) argued that the -ra forms of
the preterit subjunctive serve pragmatically to background information
“which a hearer/reader can safely pay less-than-careful
attention to.” Similarly, Klein-Andreu (1991), after examining the fluctuating use of the
-ra subjunctive and the pluperfect indicative in El Conde
Lucanor, a text written between 1328 and 1332, concluded that the
-ra subjunctive was used to direct the readers' attention to
low focus and less assertive information.
The fact is that in reported style, such as we find in our data, the
job of the author is not to emphasize or determine the relevancy of one
action over another, nor to interpret reality, nor to make a personal
commitment regarding the proposition, nor to decide which information
should be paid more or less attention to. Rather, the job is to give
straightforward fact. Once again, whether the action happened (indicative)
or it did not (also indicative), apart from any personal interpretation or
commitment, it is a report of what did unequivocally happen. The
reporters' personal interpretations hold no place in the exposition
of facts. Furthermore as Sankoff (1988:154)
pointed out,
We have no more direct access to speakers' intentions
than through their utterances themselves, nor to how hearers decode these
than through their responses, particularly in natural situations. Analysts
may be motivated by theoretical, normative, or critical considerations to
discern intentions, or to deny them, whether or not these interpretations
are accurate.
In written expositions we cannot presume to divine the intention of
the writer or to know how readers will decode their responses.
Explanations specific to the use of the subjunctive
after luego de que and después de que
Haverkate (2002) summed up three types of
attempts to explain the use of the preterit subjunctive in factual
después de que clauses. The first type postulates that
there is an analogous relation with the symmetrical adverbial antes de
que ‘before’, which, according to prescriptive grammar,
always takes the subjunctive mood even in past temporal clauses, such as
(3).
This parallelism of structure is apparent in (4), taken from La
Jornada. This sample is one of only five that used the subjunctive
after despúes de que. In this sentence the subjunctive is
also used after luego de que.
However, Mayberry (2000) found that some
native speakers accept the use of the indicative after antes de
que in this type of construction, which indicates variability in mood
choice after this adverbial expression as well, as in (4).
Pérez Saldaña (1999:3316)
believed that while the parallelism between sentence structures of
antes de que and después de que has contributed
to the use of the preterit subjunctive in factual contexts, he also
maintained that the preterit subjunctive is used in informational contexts
of low relevancy.
(S)eguramente, la causa principal que justifica estos
usos del subjuntivo es semejante a la que se ha señalado para otros
usos de este modo en contextos factuales; esto es: el carácter
temático y la escasa relevancia informativa del contenido de la
oración subordinada.
‘Surely, the principal cause that justifies these uses
of the subjunctive is similar to that which has been pointed out for other
uses of this mood in factual contexts; this is: the thematic character and
the light informative relevance of the contents of the subordinate
clause.’
Even if we do not rule out the analogous relation theory, one must
question why the data for Spain in this investigation preserve this modal
relation, whereas those for Mexico do not, and why the data from other
Spanish-speaking countries sometimes do, but not always.
The second type of attempt to explain the use of the preterit
subjunctive in factual después de que clauses is the
historical approach previously discussed that proposes that the current
use of the preterit subjunctive in pluperfect indicative contexts results
from the extension of its Latin indicative etymology. As we have seen,
this approach does not explain apparent dialectal differences nor the use
of the -se form of the preterit subjunctive in this context.
The third type of explanation is pragmatic. The etymological
explanation for the use of the preterit subjunctive in the indicative
domain has been rejected by Lunn and Cravens (1991), based on the observation that the -se
form of the preterit subjunctive also appears in past temporal clauses
following luego de que and después de que. This
form of the preterit subjunctive did not develop in the indicative
paradigm, as did the -ra form. Like Pérez Saldaña
(1999), Lunn and Cravens (1991:150) asserted that
The -ra form can be used to mark information which
readers or hearers of the news are expected to know, i.e. information
mentioned in a previous edition or a prior paragraph, or information which
is assumed to be common knowledge. In journalistic prose, which is very
rich in information, this use of the -ra form marks low-priority
clauses to which readers can safely pay less attention than they can to
high-priority, indicative marked clauses.
In regard to the -se form, Lunn and Cravens (1991) contended that because the -ra form and
the -se form occur in the same pragmatic contexts, they are
competing subjunctive forms for the expression of this low-priority
information. The data in this investigation for Spain and Mexico show that
only Spain seems to use the -se form of the preterit subjunctive
with any degree of regularity (13% with luego de que and 23.5%
with después de que in the CREA search; 25% with
después de que in the El Mundo search). The data
from Mexico do not show any cases of the -se form. The data from
other Spanish-speaking countries present very few cases of the
-se form as illustrated in Table 4. It
may very well be that in Spain the use of the -ra form or the
-se form indicate some type of emphasis on priority, however, the
focus of this study is to show that, regardless of morphological
representations, Mexican journalists prefer the use of the indicative, and
Spanish journalists prefer the subjunctive.
Number of cases of the -ra and -se forms of the
preterit subjunctive by country
Because of the low frequency of occurrence of the -se form
and the fact that in purely subjunctive contexts this form may be
interchanged with the -ra form, I concur that the use of the
-se form of the preterit subjunctive after luego de que
and después de que is due to an analogy in usage with the
-ra form, and that they are competing forms, particularly in
Spain. Nevertheless, Lunn and Cravens' (1991) explanation that the subjunctive marks
low-priority information cannot be upheld by the data presented in this
investigation.
ANALYSIS OF DATA
Dialectal variation in mood choice in Spain and
Mexico
The data from CREA and from El Mundo and La Jornada
indicate that while the indicative is the mood of choice after luego
de que and después de que in past temporal
subordinate clauses in Mexico, the subjunctive is preferred in Spain. The
previous approaches to mood choice cannot explain this discrepancy in
selection. If so, then Spanish journalists would almost universally be
expressing reservation toward the information (Bergen,
1978), or not emphasizing the action (King &
Suñer, 1999), or not asserting a difference between the
speaker's view of reality and that of the listener's (Mejías-Bikandi, 1994), or not committing toward
the occurrence of the proposition (Mayberry,
2000), or not imparting shared knowledge (Studerus, 1995), or regarding this information as old
or irrelevant (Lavandera, 1983; Lunn, 1989), or regarding this information as
low-priority (Lunn & Cravens, 1991) or as
low focus information (Klein-Andreu, 1991); yet
almost all Mexican journalists would be expressing the opposite.
While it is next to impossible to find an exact minimal pair of
sentences that demonstrate contrasting preferences for mood choice in
Spain and Mexico, the following pair comes very close. The sentences offer
parallel constructions: a simple noun phrase followed by a verb phrase
containing the same verb (ocurrir ‘to occur’) in the
preterit. Both sentences have the same temporal adverbial conjunction
después de que. The subordinate clause in both sentences
contains a proper name(s) as the subject, verbs with similar semantic
properties, a prepositional phrase headed with the same preposition
(con ‘with’), and a specific time reference. Example
(6a) comes from a newspaper printed in Spain, (6b) comes from Mexico.
Many pairs of sentences can be found in the data from the two
countries containing the identical verb in the matrix clause with
different verbs in the subordinate clause, one in the subjunctive, the
other in the indicative, such as (7a) from Spain and (7b) from Mexico.
Similarly, many pairs of sentences containing different verbs in the
main clause but identical verbs in the subordinate clause, one subjunctive
the other indicative, can also be found in the data, such as in (8a) from
Spain and (8b) from Mexico.
Variation within the same country
In her study on the variation of the use of the subjunctive and the
indicative in Canadian French, Poplack (1992:242–243) offered the explanation of
“inherent variability … (that) assume(s) that the subjunctive
mood is one variant of a linguistic variable…. . A linguistic
variable in its most restricted sense involves two or more ways of
conveying the same referential meaning.” The data offered next seem
to support this notion of inherent variability for Spanish-speaking
countries other than Spain and Mexico.
The data collected in this investigation indicate that mood choice in
Colombia is quite variable. The past indicative is used 50% of the time
after luego de que and the preterit subjunctive is used 50% of
the time. After después de que the indicative is used 76%
of the time and the preterit subjunctive is used 24% of the time. Examples
(9a)–(9b) and (10a)–(10c) all come from El Tiempo, a
Colombian newspaper, and show that despite similar semantic properties of
both the verbs in the matrix and subordinate clauses and similar syntactic
structures, the mood choice in the subordinate clause is variable.
In the following pair of sentences (9a) and (9b), the verbs in the
subordinate clause following luego de que come from the same
infinitive quemar ‘to burn’. The mood of the
quemar in (9a) is subjunctive, while that of (9b) is in the
indicative. Both articles deal with the same news event.
Examples (10a)–(10c) all contain the lexically same passive verb
in the matrix clause. The information in and the structure of the
subordinate clauses are virtually identical: They all are preceded by a
politician announcing something (10a), communicating something (10b), or
responding to something (10c); they are all followed by a definite time
period; and they all contain the adverbial expression después
de que. Yet the mood of the verb in (10a) and (10b) is in the
indicative, while that in (10c) is in the subjunctive. There is no
evidence that the information in the dependent clauses are more or less
relevant to the news story, and therefore mood choice appears to be
arbitrary, or rather, variable in these past temporal clauses.
Interestingly, despite this variability in mood choice evident in the
data collected from Colombian journalistic sources, Martínez
Albertos (1989:37) stated that
(S)egún los datos que yo tengo, hay naciones
latinoamericanas—Colombia puede ser uno de los ejemplos m|fas
destacados—en donde existe una presión social a favor de
la defensa de la pureza del idioma que supera con creces a la que existe
hoy en España …
‘According to the data that I have, there are
Latin-American countries—Colombia being one of the most
outstanding—in which there exists social pressures towards the
defense of the purity of the language that far exceeds that which exists
today in Spain … ’
Variation within the same article
The following sets of sentences came from the same article from a
Chilean newspaper in a Google search. The CREA data from Chile also show a
high degree of variability in mood choice.
Just three very short paragraphs later, comes (11b), virtually an
identical sentence except that the verb of the subordinate clause is in
the indicative.
None of the speaker-intention related hypotheses for mood choice in
these types of sentences can account for the choice of the subjunctive in
(11a) and the indicative in (11b). Even if we were to accept Lunn and
Cravens' (1991) hypothesis that the
-ra subjunctive form marks low-priority information and the
indicative high-priority, the indicative should appear in (11a), as it is
the first mention of this fact and therefore new information of a higher
priority, and the subjunctive should appear in (11b). Furthermore, if the
information in the subordinate clause were backgrounded and therefore in
the subjunctive (Klein-Andreu, 1991), we would
again expect the indicative to appear in (11a) and the subjunctive in
(11b), or the subjunctive in both instances.
Variation within the same sentence
Perhaps the most convincing argument for the variability of mood
choice in Spanish-speaking countries other than Spain and Mexico is
exemplified in sentence (12) from Argentina. The author has divided one
sentence into two by inappropriately separating the two subordinate
clauses with a period. The two subordinate clauses are actually joined by
the conjunction y ‘and’. Both of the verbs in the two
subordinate clauses are dependent on the same verb of the main clause, yet
the first verb appears in the indicative and the second in the
subjunctive.
The data in (11a) and (11b) and (12) indicate that previous
explanations based on relevance of information, new versus old
information, and intentions of the speaker, do not explain mood choice. A
viable explanation based on the data from these countries that exhibit
high variability in mood choice is simply that the choice of the
indicative or the subjunctive after luego de que and
después de que is indeed variable.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
So far we have seen that none of the previous hypotheses on mood
choice can explain the data presented in this investigation. However,
there remain other considerations to take into account. First, news events
can be classified into many different categories, such as international
news, sports, entertainment, and so forth. Examples (9a) and (9b) all take
place within the context of the results of a bus strike. Examples
(10a)–(10c) deal with pronouncements by politicians; examples (10a)
and (10b), which come from the same article, are about economic issues,
and (12) deals with a religious event. To further support the hypothesis
that news context does not affect mood choice, I examined articles
entering the search phrase después de que in the section
dedicated only to sports from La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper. Of
32 samples, 17 temporal adverbial clauses after después de
que were in the indicative and 15 were in the subjunctive. The
following two sentences demonstrate the variability in mood selection. The
verb in the subordinate clause is a form of the verb quedar
‘to be’. In (13a) the verb is in the indicative, whereas in
(13b) it is in the subjunctive.
The evidence from these data indicates that news context does not
explain variation in mood choice.
Second, given the nature of the data, all examples retrieved from the
CREA data bank, the various on-line newspapers, and the Google search
contained subjects in the third person in both the matrix and subjunctive
clauses. This, of course, is a feature of journalistic prose, as reported
events generally do not include the first or the second person. Further
studies must be carried out to determine if deixis will influence mood
choice, especially in Spain and Mexico. Similarly, there may be other
factors that condition mood choice either grammatically or semantically,
such as passive voice in the matrix or subordinate clause or, perhaps,
other inherent semantic properties, such as stativity, activity, telicity,
or punctuality, as suggested by Vendler (1967).
Finally, we have examined mood choice in journalistic prose in terms
of specific, and therefore linguistically arbitrary, geographic and
political boundaries. To examine variation in more detail, it is necessary
to examine data from various regions within the geographic boundaries that
have been described here.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The purpose of this article was to show that current hypotheses on
mood choice do not explain data collected from a wide variety of
journalistic sources. While I have postulated that mood choice is in
variation in Spanish-speaking countries other than Spain and Mexico, the
data from Spain show that this country almost universally prefers the
subjunctive after luego de que and después de que
in past temporal clauses, and that Mexico prefers the indicative. None of
the speaker/writer-intention-based hypotheses can account for this
dialectal variation.
Although mood choice in other Spanish-speaking countries is highly
variable, it has similarly been demonstrated by comparing data within one
specific country, one article, and one sentence, that none of the
hypotheses on mood choice adequately explain the discrepancy in mood
choice. In these other Spanish-speaking countries, there appears to be
neutralization of function and form. The subjunctive does not indicate
unfulfilled events after luego de que and después de
que, nor does it seem to provide any additional semantic or pragmatic
information. Journalists do not seem to take any functional differences
into account when using either the subjunctive or the indicative after
luego de que and después de que. This variation
does not seem to impede understanding of the information presented and,
therefore, the preterit subjunctive and the preterit indicative are likely
competing syntactic forms in these countries.
Haverkate (2002:140) agreed with this
analysis, specifically in reference to subordinate clauses headed by
después de que, “there are cases where no pragmatic
distinction holds between the indicative and the subjunctive, which leads
to the conclusion that free variation is at issue.” However, this
free variation does not seem to be an issue in Spain and Mexico, as
supported by the data in this investigation.
I would like to propose that the competing forms, the preterit
subjunctive and the past indicative tenses (preterit, imperfect, perfect,
pluperfect) in Spain and Mexico have come to resolution; the former opting
for the subjunctive and the latter for the indicative. In other
Spanish-speaking countries these forms are in a state of flux. Only the
future will bear out the resolution of these competing forms.
