The development of subjunctive use with expressions of emotion from Latin to Spanish.

The use of the subjunctive with expressions of emotion in Modern Spanish has proved difficult to classify and is not easily explained using traditional subjunctive semantic domains. Furthermore, there is a tendency in the modern language to prescribe the exclusive use of the subjunctive after all expressions of emotion, although actual usage shows that both the indicative and the subjunctive can be found with expressions of emotion in Spanish. A comparison of the syntax of complement clauses following expressions of emotion in Latin shows almost an exclusive use of the indicative, except with expressions of fear which always took the subjunctive. This dissertation seeks to provide a historical explanation for the development of the subjunctive with expressions of emotion in modern Spanish by examining the syntax of these expressions in texts extending from early Latin to Old Spanish and early modern Spanish. The Latin texts are: Aulularia and Casina (Plautus), Epistolae ad familiares (Cicero), Cena Trimalchionis (Petronius), the Vulgate (Jerome), the Vindolanda Writing Tablets, Peregrinatio Aetheria, and Historiae francorum (Gregory of Tours). The Spanish texts are: El Poema de Mio Cid, Calild e Dimna, the I.1.6 translation of the Vulgate, Estoria de Espanna (Alfonso X), El Conde Lucanor, Libro de buen amor, El Corbacho, La Celestina , and a sixteenth century translation of Cicero's Epistolae ad familiares. The data from the Latin texts indicate that the use of the subjunctive with expressions of emotion in modern Spanish can be traced to two sources in Latin. One is the required use of the subjunctive with expressions of fear, and the other is the use of the subjunctive to convey reservation, disapproval or disassociation on the part of the speaker. The data from Old Spanish suggest that the future and conditional were not yet fully grammaticized indicative tenses because of their frequent use in expressions of fear alongside forms that are clearly subjunctive. The Old Spanish data also indicate that since the thirteenth century both the indicative and the subjunctive have been used after expressions of emotion in the spoken language. The prescriptive rule establishing the use of the subjunctive with expressions of emotion does not appear until 1847.Ph.D.Language, Literature and LinguisticsLinguisticsModern languageUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131645/2/9929821.pd