The Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Spanish Mood (review)

This book is a revised version, in English, of Henk Haverkate’s study originally published in Dutch in 1989. It consists of six chapters of very unequal length and depth, ranging from 3 pages to nearly 150. The degree to which syntax, semantics, and pragmatics figure in H’s analysis also varies widely. While syntactic issues are limited to traditional classifications of phrases and clauses that permit the subjunctive mood, semantic issues have a much more prominent role, culminating in a new classification of complement-taking predicates. The bulk of the book is centered around a discussion of the modal structure of subordinate clauses in Spanish, and the semantic and pragmatic factors that impact on the use or nonuse of the subjunctive mood in such clauses.

Ch. 1 (‘Modal categories of the Spanish verb: Levels of analysis’, 3–5) describes very briefly how verbal mood in Spanish can be analyzed at five different levels: phonetic/prosodic, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic.

Ch. 2 (‘Functions of the modal categories of the Spanish verb’, 7–9) is also extremely brief. It outlines the pragmatic functions of Spanish mood, taking John R. Searle’s well-known taxonomy of speech acts as its central framework.

In Ch. 3 (‘The modal structure of non-subordinate clauses’, 11–40), H examines in more detail the use of the subjunctive in main clauses, a topic that has traditionally been slighted in the study of Spanish mood. H’s findings, however, are more heuristic than conclusive in nature. He suggests that in future research a three-way distinction is needed between subjunctive verbs triggered by adverbials, subjunctives indicating optative speech acts, and subjunctives employed to soften or strengthen illocutionary force.

Ch. 4 (‘Que-sentences’, 41–44) also examines a structure that has not often received attention in the study of Spanish mood, sentences introduced by the subordinating conjunction que ‘that’ which are otherwise not subordinate. Unfortunately, however, H does little more than present a handful of disparate examples of such sentences, without providing an accompanying analysis of how verbal mood is distributed within them.

Ch. 5 (‘The modal structure of subordinate clauses’, 45–197) makes up nearly 65% of the book. In this chapter, H follows the Spanish grammatical tradition by dividing his study into noun clauses, adverbial clauses, and adjectival clauses. Regarding the first class of subordinate clauses, H proposes a novel semantic classification of clause-embedding predicates that broadly distinguishes among acquisition of knowledge predicates, cognition and evaluation predicates, and action predicates. The two latter classes of predicates, in turn, are subdivided into a number of smaller subclasses, which differ with respect to the kind of cognitive process or evaluation at issue, or to the type of action (e.g. causative acts vs. speech acts) that the speaker is intending to carry out.

Ch. 6 (‘Conclusion’, 197–98) summarizes very briefly the main findings of the book and concludes that the distribution of Spanish mood is ultimately reflective of H. Paul Grice’s first maxim of quantity.