Chapter published in:
Variation and Evolution: Aspects of language contact and contrast across the Spanish-speaking world
Edited by Sandro Sessarego, Juan J. Colomina-Almiñana and Adrián Rodríguez-Riccelli
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 29] 2020
► pp. 34–54

Mood selection in a contact variety

The case of Yucatec Spanish

| New Mexico State University
Researchers have noted unique qualities of Yucatec Spanish with regard to phonetics, syntax, and pragmatics (Bove, 2019; Hoot, 2016; Michnowicz, 2009, 2012; Solomon, 1996, 1999). The objective of this study is twofold: to describe mood in Yucatec Spanish and to identify how bilingual and monolingual speakers’ mood selection differs. Results indicate that volitional predicates categorically license subjunctive while alternation exists under emotive and epistemic predicates. This alternation highlights statistically significant differences between monolingual and bilingual speakers of Yucatec Spanish (p = 0.01 and 0.04 respectively). Emotive predicates pattern with previous accounts of Mexican Spanish (e.g., Lope Blanch, 1989), but unanticipated subjunctive selection in epistemic assertions, interrogatives, and statements with past temporal reference highlight a difference between monolingual and bilingual participants.
Keywords: Yucatec Spanish, mood selection, language contact
Published online: 11 August 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.29.02bov
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