CHAPTER 8

THE SUBJUNCTIVE IN A SINGLE CONCEPT:

TEACHING AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO
MOOD SELECTION IN SPANISH1

JOSÉ P. RUIZ CAMPILLO

0. Introduction
I have always felt that beneath the sometimes perplexing quirks of
Spanish—and every other language—there must lurk a strict logic, a series
of rules without exceptions, that govern the creation of meaning. Students
are always asking us why, and in answer we turn not only to the inevitable
“Just because” but to a number of traditional explanations. These
incomplete and frequently ad hoc explanations have more often than not
been useless and therefore disappointing in an instructional context, where
explanations must be not only logical but also applicable and effective.
The theoretical rebellion led by cognitive linguistics has suggested that the
logic governing human communication is neither a propositional logic that
traces a direct relationship between language and a reality external to
language, nor a form-based logic that strives to fit language into
mathematical molds divested of any communicative content. Instead, it
has argued powerfully for a sort of natural logic of linguistic
representation, defined in terms of an experience and perception of the
world and developed in order to share that experience and perception with
other members of the species. A logic of meaning, not of form, and
certainly, I would argue, a logic of common sense, that basic quality all too
often absent from our textbooks’ discussions of grammar. In this sense, the
cognitive perspective has provided satisfying and surprisingly simple
explanations for a great number of grammatical phenomena that we had

1
This article is an updated version of Ruiz (2007a).
2 Chapter Number

nearly resigned ourselves to considering the arbitrary products of a

capricious language genie.2

In my view, however, if we wish to solve the problem of explaining—and

thus of teaching and learning—how a language’s grammar works, it is not
enough simply to agree to approach language from a more human
perspective. It is not enough establish a theoretical framework that can
patiently set out the whys and wherefores of each of a language’s formal
aspects. Also necessary is a strict, manipulable mechanism that explains
the means by which a particular form, one that is fundamentally the same
each time it occurs, is used to produce the variety of meanings observable
in everyday usage. In short, we must move from an interpretive extreme to
a productive one. Only then can we provide a consistent analysis of each
of the language’s forms so that both linguist and student are able to
reproduce these infinite iterations from a limited repertoire of forms, using
as their guide only that natural logic described above. It is to this
explanatory and predictive capacity of grammatical instruction that I refer
when I talk about operationality.

Some time ago now, I wrote a long essay uniting these two objectives in a
single theoretical model of the verbal system, 3 an essay whose main ideas
have since been incorporated into pedagogical materials and research.4 In
this article, I will attempt to describe how we might design an operational
sequence for teaching mood selection in Spanish that is based on a single
concept, one that identifies the essential value of the indicative and the
subjunctive. The aim of establishing this operational value is to offer the
student a single, stable foundation of meaning that can be employed any
time she needs to choose between moods, so that she can do so
automatically, deliberately, and justified by a natural logic—a common-
sense logic, one born of the human representation of the world and one
that can be used by speakers of any language.

In an attempt at orderliness, I will set out my argument in “phases”. In the

first phase, I will take a critical stance, examining a few of the myths that,
in my view, still persist in the teaching of the subjunctive. The rest of the
article will lay out in simple terms a protocol for understanding and

2
We should, at this point, recall the contributions of R. Langacker in his two-
volume Foundations of Cognitive Grammar (1987, 1991).
3
Ruiz (1992).
4
Alonso et al. (2005), Chamorro et al. (2006), Ruiz (2007b), Llopis (2011 and
2012).
 Chapter Title 3

teaching mood selection: a logical phase to begin to understand what the

subjunctive means in terms of communication; a legislative phase to
establish the foundation for a decision-making protocol; a cartographic
phase in which I will draw the map that will guide us in the learning
process; and finally a playful phase that, despite its whimsical name,
grapples with the thorny problem of how to handle the apparent departures
from protocol observable in native speech without resorting to an
unwieldy list of exceptions.

1. Mythological phase
Very few people still believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth, that
blood is made in the liver, or that the world ends at Cape Finisterre.
Although those notions could seem quite plausible at first glance, in the
end we have accepted the reasoning of Copernicus, Harvey, and
Columbus, and today we no longer think these things, much less write and
publish them. Astronomy, medicine, and geography, then, have evolved.
They have done so by recognizing that evidence that contradicts a theory
obliges the theorist to revise his theory, not cling to it. Can the same be
said of the “science” that teaches us about the workings of languages?

It seems to me that grammar is one of the few disciplines in which myths

not only resist being supplanted by the results of scientific—or merely
contradictory—observation, but they are persistently tolerated, even
treated with the kid gloves of a believer and all too often defended with
arguments based on nothing more substantial than faith. While the
scientific myths fade away, the grammatical myths fill books, inhabit
classrooms, and make life difficult for Margaret, an eager student in
Wisconsin who is always asking what, how, and why.

I feel some obligation to refer to these myths, as my proposed explanation

for mood selection will require a minor repositioning on the part of the
reader. I do so, then, with the hope that, having recognized these myths as
such, we might feel more motivated to take on the challenge of
overcoming them. Nevertheless, any reader who is already aware of these
myths can skip straight to the next phase without fear of missing
something essential.

For organizational purposes, I will differentiate among three kinds of

myths—“romantic,” theoretical, and didactic—although in truth the three
4 Chapter Number

are fairly similar. Perhaps they are simply different manifestations of the
same sort of magical thinking.5

Romantic myths.

Magical thinking has at times served as a culture’s only explanation for

phenomena that are not understood. It was thus that the gods who set the
sun or moon adrift in the heavens were born. Yet even today the magical
approach to thinking lives alongside and competes with the scientific one;
after all, astrology and parapsychology are alive and well. Sometimes,
however ridiculous it seems, the world of rational fantasy created by
magical thinking can produce a hyper-“real” reality that makes more
immediate sense to people than a valid scientific explanation.

This magical vision, which hovers somewhere between sentimentality and

folklore, has given rise to a sort of myth of the subjunctive exemplified by
Vicente Verdú in one of his newspaper columns. 6 What special value does
the subjunctive have that only a few languages enjoy? According to
Verdú:
Gracias al subjuntivo se añade una trasrealidad como el forro de raso a un
vestido de noche o, en suma, como la dimensión donde se desdobla el
soñado cuerpo del lenguaje.7

After titillating our linguistics-enamored senses with this lofty discussion

of a verbal mood, there is no room for bringing our feet back to earth and
considering the unrefined, even pedestrian, languages that lack the
subjunctive, such as English.8 Neither is there room for marching us into
the classroom and asking what practical use Margaret, the student from
Wisconsin, could make of this native speaker’s description of the
linguistic forms that make her academic life miserable. Of course not! This

5
The term “magical thinking” refers to the sort of reasoning used to support
opinions or explanations that lack a strict logical foundation and are based on the
subjective perceptions of an individual or group.
6
El País, 10-VII-1999.
7
The subjunctive adds a metareality like the satin lining of an evening gown or
like that dimension where the dream-like body of language unfurls.
8
The morphological, semantic, and distributional characteristics of the subjunctive
in Spanish are completely different from those linguistic features that are so often
identified as or associated with the “subjunctive” in other languages.
 Chapter Title 5

is poetic license, and one so contagious that it can apparently be felt even
by speakers of languages that do not have a subjunctive: 9

The subjunctive gets the job of describing “could-have-beens,” “might-

bes,” and “maybe-never-weres”. Anything that has happened, is
happening, or may happen on the borders of our consciousness gets
handled by the subjunctive.

Most interesting for language professionals, however, is when this

romantic approach invokes the supposed values and meanings of the
verbal mood, because it then connects with other explanatory myths whose
apparently rational foundation makes them much more influential in the
Spanish classroom. It is in this moment that primitive magical thinking
appears to give way to scientific discourse—without ever really ceasing to
shape that discourse.

Theoretical myths.

Take, for example, those ubiquitous myths that throw off concepts like
“real,” “unreal,” or “possible” like heavy boulders, which rumble along,
cutting a swath through the desks in the Spanish classroom. As Verdú
noted of Umberto Eco, both of them drifting dangerously from the magical
to the practical:

Pero ¿tan grave resulta la pérdida del subjuntivo?, le preguntaron a

Umberto Eco para el libro titulado significativamente El fin de los tiempos.
Y Eco contestó: “Me parece muy importante el subjuntivo porque él es el
único que expresa el tiempo de la hipótesis y de lo posible, de lo no-real”.
El subjuntivo es, en efecto, el tiempo que crea en el habla y la escritura la
escena cóncava de la suposición.10

A beautiful thought, no doubt. Yet if we plant our feet firmly back in their
accustomed place, we must acknowledge first that the title of the cited
book is not truly meaningful, as the subjunctive is not a “time” [tense] but
a “mood”. Second, along the same lines, Eco might want to calmly

9
Keenan (1994).
10
Is the loss of the subjunctive really such a big deal?, they asked Umberto Eco for
the book meaningfully titled Conversations about the End of Time. And Eco
replied, “I think the subjunctive is very important because it is the only tense that
expresses hypotheticals, possibility, the not-real”. The subjunctive is, in effect, the
tense that creates in speech and writing the hollow space where supposition
nestles.
6 Chapter Number

reconsider the “temporal” nature of hypotheticals, possibility, and not-

realness to avoid mixing these categories in an incoherent jumble. And
third, in quite practical and immediately verifiable terms, the subjunctive
is not, in fact, the only mood involved in the linguistic construction of
hypotheticals, possibility, not-realness, or supposition. For example:

a) It is no more closely related with the “hypothetical” than the indicative

can be:

1. Si vienes [ind],... [If you come, ...—“you-come” is a hypothetical

proposition.]
2. Yo que tú, iría [ind]... [I would go I were you ...—“I-go” is a
hypothetical proposition”.]
3. Me haces [ind] eso y no te hablo más en la vida. [You do that to me
and I’ll never speak to you again—“you-do” is hypothetical.]
4. Si pudiera, no dudes que iba [ind]. [You can be sure that I would go
[imperfect] if I could—“I-go” is as hypothetical as “to be able”.]

b) It is no more closely related to the “not-real” than any form of the

indicative could be.

5. Si te conviertes [ind] en rana, te lo doy. [If you turn into a frog, I’ll
give it to you—“to turn into a frog” is unreal.]
6. Imagínate que sale [ind] el muerto de la tumba. [Now imagine that
the dead are emerging from their graves—“to emerge from the
grave” is unreal.]
7. ¿Te casarías [ind] tú con un elefante? [Would you marry an
elephant?— “to marry an elephant” is unreal.]

What’s more, it easily represents tangible realities:

8. Estoy encantada de que estés [subj] aquí conmigo. [I’m delighted that
you are here with me—“you-be here” is real.]
9. Aunque seas [subj] mi hermana, esto no te lo perdono. [Even though
you are my sister, I can’t forgive you for this—“you-be my sister” is
real.]
10. No es porque lo haya hecho [subj] yo, pero queda mono, ¿no? [I’m
not saying so just because I made it, but it came out well, don’t you
think?—“I-make it” is real ...]
 Chapter Title 7

c) It is no more closely related with “what is possible” than the indicative

is, and in no sense can it systematically formulate “supposition,” which is
precisely the function of the future and conditional tenses and of operators
such as tal vez, quizá, and so on.

11. Ahora estará [ind] en el bar. [He is probably at the bar now—“he-be
at the bar” is a supposition.]
12. Estaría [ind] en el bar en aquel momento. [He must have been at
the bar right then—“he-be at the bar” is a supposition.]
13. Igual está [ind] en el bar. [Maybe he is at the bar—“he-be at the
bar” is just a possibility.]
14. A lo mejor ha olvidado [ind] algo. [Maybe he has forgotten
something—“he-forget” is just a possibility.]

It is clear, I think, that concepts like unreality, hypothesis, possibility, and

doubt are not operational in a careful consideration of the value and
function of mood in Spanish, which is as relevant in grammatical theory as
it is in classroom instruction. What’s more, they in fact turn out to be anti-
operational, in the sense that, by relying on this unhelpful “rule,” students
will believe themselves perfectly justified in producing sequences like the
following, which are so lamentably prevalent in Spanish classrooms:

15. Yo creo que *venga [subj] mañana. [I think he’ll come tomorrow—
“I can’t swear it, I have doubts”.]
16. No lo sé, pero *esté [subj] en su casa. [I don’t know, but maybe he
is at home—“It’s just a guess”.]
17. Si *pueda [subj] ir mañana, iré. [If I can go tomorrow, I will—“It’s
just a hypothesis”.]
18. Me alegra que *has venido [ind]. [I’m glad you have come—“It’s
perfectly real”.]
19. Lucy dice que yo *sea [subj] una extraterrestre. [Lucy says I am an
alien—“It’s clearly unreal”.]

Another of the ancient myths used to describe mood selection in Spanish

(and, worse, to explain it) consists of positing a contrast between
“objectivity” and “subjectivity,” applied to the indicative and subjunctive,
respectively. This opposition arises from a colossal confusion of form and
syntax that would have us believe that the speaker in example 20 is
presenting the concept of “having someone with him” as a subjective one,
and that in example 21, “all blonde women’s being dumb” should be taken
as an objective fact.
8 Chapter Number

20. Me sorprende que estés [subj] aquí. [I’m surprised that you are here.]
21. Yo creo que todas las rubias son [ind] tontas. [I think that all blonde
women are dumb.]

Of course, we can feel a more or less subtle hint of “subjectivity” in the

case of 20, but that subjectivity comes in the speaker’s surprise, expressed
in the indicative (“Me sorprende”), and not in the subjunctive, which the
speaker uses to mention a real, incontrovertible fact. 11 Some might still be
tempted to defend the objectivity of the indicative in 21, claiming that the
fact is “objective for the speaker”, but they would surely have to admit that
such a notion is the very definition of “subjective”. These examples are
sufficient, I think, to allow us to gauge the value of traditional discussions
of differences in mood in Spanish.

In any case, I would argue that, pedagogically speaking, this myth is

basically harmless: it is so ambiguous and arbitrary that it simply does not
figure among the concepts that Margaret relies on when making decisions
about mood. It therefore does not steer her toward systematic error, unlike
so many of the theoretical myths discussed above, and unlike those myths
employed in the Spanish classroom or generated there, which we will
discuss next.

Didactic myths.

For me there is no doubt that recent developments in language pedagogy,

especially in Spanish, have compelled all of us, theorists and practitioners
alike, to reexamine the “mechanical apparatus” of languages—which is to
say, grammar. Everything that has traditionally been said, written, and
learned about the subjunctive has been done primarily in descriptive terms.
Native speakers have complacently accepted these terms, as they do not
need them in order to operate: native speakers produce the appropriate
mood for each case—for every case—naturally and unconsciously,
without any effort.12

11
In fact, it is the same sense of subjectivity present in 21, which poses the limited
intelligence of blonde women as a subjective opinion of the speaker (“Yo creo [I
think]”).
12
The same thing happens in language classes in Spanish-speaking countries
today: adolescent native speakers see no contradiction in studying for a test and
memorizing that the subjunctive mood is used to describe what is not real, and then
 Chapter Title 9

Yet when it comes time to teach a non-native speaker, every instructor or

materials designer equipped with such myths complains about their
distressing lack of operationality. To some extent, then, instructors have
felt the need to establish more easily navigated routes toward decisions on
mood for students who wish to emulate the incomprehensible exploits of
native speakers.

In this context, firmly situated in the contemporary Spanish classroom, a

survey of the field suggests that teachers make use of a web of rules that
haphazardly combine formal, syntactic, semantic, discursive, and
pragmatic values. In practice, what the student receives is a long list of
“verbs” that require—for no apparent reason—the subjunctive, and
another list, nearly as long, of key concepts (some inherited, others ad hoc)
that the student, in her innocence, puts into use as generalized rules:
desire, obligation, necessity, request, intention, influence, emotion,
unreality, incompletion, hypothesis, doubt, uncertainty, falsity, future
status, “Ojalá [If only],” negation, impersonal expressions, subjective
reaction, nonexistence, unfamiliarity, recycled information, and so on. The
taxonomic aspect of this teaching approach (lists of verbs, participles, etc.)
is based on at least three fallacies:

a) That it is possible for the instructor to describe the differing uses

of moods, in all their variety, through lists.
b) That it is possible for the student to memorize these lists.
c) That is possible for the student to learn to use differing moods
effectively by memorizing these lists.

The first of these assumptions collides immediately with an inescapable

truth of the Spanish language: only a small portion of the uses of the
subjunctive are truly “obligatory”.13 This select group consists of the

celebrating afterward, saying, “Me alegro de que haya caído [subj] esa pregunta
[I’m glad that question came up]”. Unlike a non-native speaker, they need no
“rule” to make decisions about mood, and so the “rule” can be reduced to a simple
test question, forestalling any attempt at explaining or predicting the phenomenon.
13
Strictly speaking, it is possible to establish a mandatory subjunctive rule for only
a very limited list of verbs, didactically formulable in the infinitive (because for
mood-selection purposes they are immune to factors such as changes in the time of
reference, changes in subject, negation, speaker intent, and so forth). These verbs
are part of what I will call here “context 1,” and they correspond to the so-called
10 Chapter Number

“verbs of desire and will” such as desear [to desire], querer [to want],
intentar [to attempt], or pedir [to request]: as it is not possible to use the
indicative with these verbs, memorization will in fact produce a “correct”
usage of mood when necessary. But this means only a tiny step forward in
learning, and one of limited communicative utility, since these
unambiguous cases arise in contexts in which mood is redundant, making
an ability to determine mood correctly rather superfluous. In addition, this
memorization approach, in which students are to assemble language like a
jigsaw puzzle (“With quiero que [I want], use the subjunctive; with creo
que [I think], use the indicative . . “.), encourages the student not to try to
make sense of what she is doing when she makes a grammatical decision.
What good is it to be “objectively correct” in a certain percentage of cases
if you do not understand what you are doing? And how does it then help
Margaret expand the list of fifteen verbs she has learned to associate
automatically with one mood or the other, so that she can make mood-
selection decisions in any of the varied and practically infinite contexts she
will encounter when using Spanish in real life?

Our use of the subjunctive in Spanish is in fact determined by something

more than a so-called syntactic government that is devoid of meaning and
blatantly inoperational. The endless variations range from possible subtle
manipulations of information (Yo no digo que eres tonto, aunque lo seas
[I’m not saying you are dumb, even if you are]—what does the speaker
think of the listener’s intellectual capacity?) to contrasts that clearly
establish changes in meaning (dice que viene / dice que venga). In
between, there is an infinite assortment of decisions that have nothing to
do with the “verb” in question as it appears on our lists. What sorts of
sentences will a Spanish student produce, having learned the following
(rampant, even pandemic) jigsaw-like rule?

“With verbs of ‘understanding’ (saber [to know], pensar [to

think], imaginar [to imagine], suponer [to suppose], recordar [to
remember], creer [to believe] ...), we use the indicative if they
are affirmative and the subjunctive if they are negative”.

Dutifully following this now classic formalist myth, Margaret will no

doubt manage to gather a little bouquet of apparent successes, especially in

predicates of deontic modality (jussive, optative, volitive) and, though only

partially, performative or causative predicates.
 Chapter Title 11

the limited context of her class and the fill-in-the-blank exercises in her
workbook.

22. Sé que estás ahí. [I know you’re there.]

23. No pienso que tenga esa edad. [I don’t think that’s how old he is.]
24. Recuerdo que tenía un caballo. [I remember that she had a horse.]
25. No creo que tarde mucho. [I don’t think he’ll take long.]

Yet obediently following the rule will also lead directly to failure (or error)
with some frequency, a failure that will affect not just the form but, in
many cases, the meaning that is actually being transmitted.

What MARGARET What MARGARITA

will say would say

26. Ella no sabe que tú *tengas 25 años. ...tienes ...

[She doesn’t know that you are 25
years old.]

27. Vale, está casado, pero yo no pienso ...está ...

que *esté casado. ¿Para qué voy a
torturarme? [All right, so he is
married, but I don’t think about the
fact that he’s married. Why torture
myself?]
28. ¿Acaso no recuerdas que yo te ...presté ...
*prestara cinco euros? [Maybe you
don’t remember that I lent you five
euros?]

29. Recuérdame que *compro el regalo de ...compre ...

Jorge. [Remind me to buy a gift for
Jorge.]
30. ¿Recuerdas que *llevaba algo en la
mano? [Do you remember that he was
carrying something?]
...llevaba ... (“He was
carrying it, remember?”)
...llevara ... (“I don’t know
whether he was carrying
something or not, do you?’)
12 Chapter Number

It seems to me inarguable that these lists are a tool of extremely limited

utility for the instructor;14 at the same time, for students they are a
permanent source of error, blinding them to the meaning of what they are
saying or could be saying with the selections they make. Yet by examining
that small part of the “list” approach that can lead to apparently positive
results, we can perhaps validate it as a tool of partial utility, or as one that
has utility in a particular phase of learning. And in fact we do, as seen in
the vast majority of our teaching materials.

At this point, one might wonder about the notions that we labeled above as
fallacies b) and c): Is it possible to memorize a list such that it allows us to
select mood correctly at an acceptable level of communication, or will we
come up against the limitations of our own memories? Worst of all, even if
we were to accept the idea that a student could make effective use of a
sufficiently lengthy list, would she be able to use that memorized
foundation to make decisions in real time, or would those decisions instead
be guided by a sort of intuition—that is, guided more by associations of
meaning than by form-based rules?

Retrieving endless memorized lists of formal patterns is obviously not the

procedure by which people learn to use a language effectively. It is no
doubt for this reason that educational discourse, in an effort to lend its
mythified jungle of verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, participles, and other
parts of speech a human soul, has always employed those key concepts to
which we referred above. In traditional pedagogy, knowing what the
subjunctive is or what it means is not important: it is enough to say that it
“is often associated” (though not always) with the expression of doubt,
unreality, emotion, or desire. Something is better than nothing, of course,
and in the absence of explanation, description will have to do.

But this kind of instruction, halfway between semantics and syntax, falls
apart for two reasons. One has to do with the way the student receives and
processes that descriptive information. Who is responsible when Margaret
uses the subjunctive in “Anna tenga novio [Anna has a boyfriend],”
believing that she should mark her uncertainty with the subjunctive? The

14
According to the typical syntactical jigsaw approach, the rule is V1[negative] + que
+ V2 [subjunctive]. However limited our descriptive ambitions, we nevertheless must
also acknowledge the frequent exception V 1[negative] + que + V2 [indicative] and, if we
are being thorough, a common third possibility, V1[negative] + que + V2
[indicative/subjunctive]. And of what practical use is all this to the student—or the
instructor?
 Chapter Title 13

other has to do with the operational validity of description, which presents

as qualities of the subjunctive meanings that are in fact simply products of
their syntactical or discursive context:

“Subjunctive of doubt”: Dudo que venga. [I doubt he will come.]

“Subjunctive of desire”: Deseo que venga. [I want him to come.]
“Subjunctive of unreality”: Es falso que venga. [It’s not true that he is
coming.]
“Subjunctive of emotion”: Me alegro de que venga, etc. [I’m glad he is
coming.]

Each of these examples communicates the idea of doubt, desire, unreality,

or emotion. Yet, as we saw earlier, the problem is that these ideas are
extrapolated from the main clause and not from the mood of the verb.
Although the student’s operational interpretation will quite logically be
that the subjunctive must mean all of those things and be used to express
all of them, that conviction will lead her into systematic error and an
inability to meaningfully use mood contrast in Spanish.

If we want to help that student who so eagerly tries to operationalize

general ideas in her use of the subjunctive, it is time to ask what meaning
all those “vengas” in the previous examples have in common. It is that
shared meaning—and not doubt, desire, unreality, or emotion—that
explains the use of the subjunctive in each of those contexts. And it is high
time we tried to figure out a logic to it.

2. Logical phase
The most finely honed instrument available for pulling apart the roots of
magical thinking is without a doubt the logical principle known as
Occam’s razor: Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.15 In the case
of the subjunctive, it is worth noting that if an explanation of the
phenomenon based on a single value is in competition with an explanation
that requires dozens of different values, the former (simpler) explanation is
always preferred. Saying that mood selection is logical implies that all of
the observable qualities of occurrences of the subjunctive could be reduced
to a single value or meaning, based on which it would be possible to
explain and predict all of its uses. Does such a value for the subjunctive
really exist?

15
“Plurality should not be posited without necessity”.
14 Chapter Number

In answering this question, the most common approach has been to focus
on the context in which examples of the subjunctive mood appear,
constructing its meaning from the wide range of values seen there. I,
however, would respond with a second question: What does a subjunctive
mean in and of itself? If we manage to answer that one, we will have found
what we could call the operational value of the subjunctive: a single
meaning that is present now in isolated form, one that can explain every
value apparent in every instance, from the morpheme to the word, from the
word to the phrase, from the phrase to the sentence, from the sentence to
the discourse, and from the discourse to the contextual or pragmatic
interpretation. If we manage to answer this question, we will also have
found a starting point for a mood map that traces a logical path down
which we can invite our students to venture.

My proposal to get us started down this path is simple: if mood means

something in and of itself, it must communicate that meaning in and of
itself. To find out, we will use a test of “relative isolation”, in which an
occurrence of a form is interpreted as if in a real-life context, but deprived
of that context so that it is not contaminated by additional meaning
contributed by other elements of the environment. Take, for example, a
situation in which a girl named Margarita walks up to a group of people
who are talking about her and overhears only the following words:

31. ... Margarita es tonta ...

32. ... Margarita sea tonta ...

Which of the two would make Margarita angrier, more quickly and with
greater justification? Obviously the former. With the little information she
has gathered, Margarita can be certain that in example 31 the speaker is
communicating an opinion, whether his own (Yo creo que ..., Está claro
que ... [I think that ..., It’s clear that ...]) or somebody else’s (Ana piensa
que ..., Para ella es evidente que ... [Ana thinks that ..., It’s clear to her
that ...]). But in the case of 32, strictly speaking, she has no right to get
angry straight away: none of the earlier possibilities applies here. The use
of the subjunctive only allows her to imagine, for example, that her
dumbness is being suggested as a goal (para que ... Margarita sea tonta ...
[so that ... Margarita will be dumb]), questioned (no creo que ...
Margarita sea tonta [I don’t think that ... Margarita is dumb]), refuted (es
falso que ... Margarita sea tonta [it’s not true that ... Margarita is dumb]),
or simply commented upon (es una pena que ... Margarita sea tonta [it’s a
 Chapter Title 15

shame that ... Margarita is dumb]). But not even in this last case could
Margarita be “formally” offended: although commenting on something
could suggest a presupposition of the truth of that something, it never
implies the speaker’s responsibility for the formal declaration of that
supposed truth.

With all our focus on teaching the meaning of the subjunctive, have we not
forgotten to teach the meaning of the indicative? It could perhaps be
pedagogically fruitful to point out to students whose language has no
subjunctive morpheme the positivity of the indicative in Spanish. If we ask
Margaret whether she would have the right to get angry at hearing the
following speech fragment, it is quite probable that she will say yes:

33. ... Margaret is dumb ...

She will only realize the flaw in her reasoning when we point out to her
that, in addition to the possibility of interpreting “is” as somebody’s
opinion (I think / she thinks ... Margaret is dumb), the opposite is just as
likely (I don’t think ... Margaret is dumb). That is, that she should not take
offense until she hears the troublemaking utterance in its entirety. And it is
here that she can begin to understand the function of modal markers for
Spanish speakers: as a native speaker, I can go ahead and take offense
right away if the potential insult is expressed in the indicative, whereas I
would be well advised to refrain from drawing hasty conclusions if it is in
the subjunctive. We can thus devise a sort of rule—we might call it, for
pedagogical purposes, “the golden rule”—that could go something like
this:

En español, cuando alguien dice que llueve,

eso significa que alguien dice que llueve.

[In Spanish, when somebody says that it is raining,

that means that somebody is saying that it is raining.]

Yes, it seems like a crude tautology, and it is certainly a minor, deliberate

exaggeration. But I think it can be a useful starting point for understanding
the meaning of mood in Spanish. In this situation, for example, it allows
Margaret to put herself in Margarita’s interpretive position, and to become
justifiably angry if the speaker refers that information to her: “Si ese
hablante dice que soy tonta, es que alguien (el propio hablante u otro
sujeto) dice (cree, piensa, opina ...) que soy tonta [If the speaker says that I
16 Chapter Number

am dumb, it’s because somebody (the speaker himself or somebody else)

says (believes, thinks, is of the opinion) that I am dumb]”. On the
production side, Margaret could use this little rule—Assume that the
indicative, in Spanish, always represents a declaration16—to avoid
producing sequences like the following:

34. Quiero que llueve. (I want it to rain.)

¡Yo no quiero decir
35. No creo que llueve. (I don’t think it’s que llueve! (I’m not
going to rain.) saying it is raining!)
36. Es difícil que llueve. (It’s unlikely that it
will rain.)

But the most important thing is not that Margaret has interpreted a few
isolated words with precision nor that, in making a decision on mood, she
has avoided being “incorrect”. The most important thing is that Margaret,
perhaps for the first time, has been able to understand why the subjunctive
is used (not just that it appears, or does not, or “tends to appear”). She may
even have begun to feel it as a form that means something in and of itself.

In reality, such a rule only hints at a stricter definition of mood’s

operational value, one able to logically account for each and every case in
which a decision on mood must be made (or in which mood in others’
utterances must be interpreted). This stricter definition, absent the logic
that governs its use, will be for the purposes of this article (just as it is for
Margaret) as follows:17

The indicative represents a declaration of the concept it marks.

The subjunctive represents a non-declaration of the concept it marks.

If we posit that this is—and is always—the case, we can turn this

observation into a law, freeing it from the inconstancy of rules. It seems to
offer some evidence for its “legislative” nature; namely, a speaker’s ability
to deny responsibility for having declared something when he has
expressed it using the subjunctive. Even in contexts where the truth of
something is assumed:

16
In the sense that we will use the term later.
17
This unambiguous assessment of the indicative and subjunctive moods is also
theoretically justified in Ruiz (1998) and incorporated into a classical cognitive
model in Castañeda (2004b).
 Chapter Title 17

37. - No me gusta que grites. [I don’t like for you to yell.]

- ¡Pero si yo no grito! [But I don’t yell!]
- Yo no he dicho que grites, he dicho que no me gusta. [I didn’t say
you yell, I said I don’t like it.]

If the reader attempts this little linguistic game in any language, it will
work just as it does in Spanish. In many languages, however, this non-
declaration will only be interpretable contextually and will not be, as it is
in Spanish, grammatically marked by a mood whose purpose is precisely
the formal non-declaration of something.

Perhaps we can now begin to talk, with information rather than magic or
poetry, about the “spirit” of the subjunctive, identifying it with an
intelligible linguistic meaning that our students can understand. The next
step must be to establish a body of laws to help us move from the
universal meaning of non-declaration to the decisions on form that
Spanish, whether we like it or not, requires.

3. Legislative phase
In Spanish language instruction, as in grammar texts in general, we are so
accustomed to a merely descriptive and taxonomic approach that nobody
finds it odd to explain a single phenomenon by citing multiple rules and,
of course, the inevitable corresponding exceptions. In this article,
however, I hope to establish a single operational value for modal
morphemes, one that will function as an operational tool for students that
helps them logically deduce which mood is appropriate every time they
must make that decision. What I am proposing is a rule without
exceptions; it is thus no longer strictly a rule and is instead a law.18

The “law of usage”.

The fundamentals of the law I propose here have already been expressed
in the value attributed to moods above: that of declaration/non-
declaration. We might call it a “law of meaning”. But we could formulate
it in more didactic and manipulable terms by establishing a sort of “law of
usage” that might go something like this:

18
For a more precise understanding of the sense in which I use the concept of
“law,” see the last section of this article (“Playful Phase”).
18 Chapter Number

Does the meaning of the matrix imply that the dependent clause
(X) is a declaration?

Yes No

Use the indicative. Use the subjunctive.

The next few examples make a useful start point:19

Matrix X Logical reasoning

(dependent clause)

Está claro que ama a Laura. If I say that X is clear, that implies that
[It is clear] [that he loves Laura] I wish to declare X.

No creo que ame a Laura. If I say that I do not think X, that

[I do not [that he loves Laura] implies not that I wish to declare X
think] -rather the opposite.

Quiero que ame a Laura. If I say that I want X, then I will not
[I want] [him to love Laura] declare X: it would be a contradiction to
note X and ask for X at the same time.

We should not expect, however, that the complex problem of mood

selection can be resolved in the simple, intuitive way that these examples

19
For clarity’s sake, in these examples we have made the speaking subject
responsible for the declaration or non-declaration. But it should be noted that we
need only to know whether the dependent clause is a “declaration”; it does not
matter whose declaration it is. It could be the responsibility of the speaking subject
himself (Yo no creo . . . [I don’t think . . .], Yo quiero . . . [I want . . .], Está claro
[desde mi punto de vista] . . . [It’s clear (to me) . . .]), but it could also be the
responsibility of any other subject to whom the speaker attributes the information
(Ella piensa . . . [She thinks . . .], Todos niegan . . . [Everybody denies . . .], etc.) or
the responsibility of no subject at all (Han descubierto . . . [They’ve discovered . .
.], El resultado ha sido . . . [The result has been . . .]).
 Chapter Title 19

suggest. There’s no such thing as magic. In going to St. Ives, we can either
walk or go by car. A person who uses a vehicle will arrive more quickly
and better rested, but the apparent magic comes at a price: he must learn to
drive. In the same way, in learning to decide between the indicative and
subjunctive, the language learner can use either an infinitely varied and
arbitrary list of examples or a protocol that explains them all and offers a
logical path to comprehension and production. The only catch to this
reductive tool, of course, is learning to use it. The student will have to
practice with its control panel so as to avoid accidents. I will therefore
attempt to describe the functions and usage of the four main controls that
should be employed in operating this law if it is to take us to the intended
destination:

1. Why is it important to define a predicate X?

2. What do we mean when we say matrix?
3. Why do we talk about the meaning of the matrix, and not its form?
4. What, exactly, is a declaration?

Why “X”.

Let us now shift our discussion to subordination, a manner of configuring

information that poses complications when applying the logic of our new
law, thanks to the tendency of speakers (native and non-native alike) to
interpret utterances as a unit and thus to disregard their compositional
structure. It is therefore common for analyzers, faced with examples like
the following, to erroneously answer the question posed by the law of
usage—Does the meaning of the matrix imply that the dependent clause is
a declaration?—in the affirmative:

38. No creo que la ame. [I don’t think he loves her.]

39. Es mentira que la ame. [It’s a lie that he loves her.]
40. Es imposible que la ame. [It’s not possible that he loves her.]
41. Yo quiero que la ame. [I want him to love her.] (And so on ...)

Indeed, all of these are declarations, if what we interpretively extract from

them is the global sense of the utterance as a unit. The power of the law
will only be apparent once we separate the matrix (the basis of the
decision) from the concept X (the object of the decision). It will then be
obvious that the speaker, in all of these cases, is indeed declaring
something (with its corresponding indicative formulation): namely, that he
“does not think” X in 38, that X “is a lie” in 39, that X “is not possible” in
20 Chapter Number

40, that he “wants” X to be the case in 41. And it will simultaneously be

obvious that in none of these cases does he declare X; that is, at no point is
it his intention to declare that “he loves her”.

The fundamental difference between a declaration and a non-declaration

of a subordinate X can be made clear with a little reductive exercise that
highlights this compositional structure, which recurs continually in
everyday Spanish usage. What is the core declaration in the following
utterances? Which verb in each could we remove without altering the
meaning (mood) of the message? Or, to put it another way, what is it that
the speaker really means when he says this?

42. Sé que la ama. [(I know) that he

loves her.] I mean that, in my opinion,
he loves her (with more or
43. Creo que la ama. [(I think) that he
less certainty: knowledge,
loves her.] opinion, supposition . . .)
44. Me imagino que la amará. [(I
imagine) that he must love her.]

45. No creo que la ame. [I don’t think
(that he loves her).]
46. Es imposible que la ame. [It’s not
possible (that he loves her).]
47. Espero que la ame. [I hope (that
he loves her).]
I don’t mean that “he loves
her”: I just mean that I
don’t think that, that that’s
impossible, or that I hope
that.)

In terms of mood, it is clear that in the first group of utterances (42–44),

the function of the matrix with regard to the declaration is to establish a
level of conviction: in each case, the intention is to establish what is or
could be reality by means of the speaker’s knowledge of it. This
knowledge can be presented as complete (“I know”), fairly high (“I
think”), or simply an approximative interpretation of external indicators
(“I imagine”). In the second group of utterances (45–47), on the other
hand, the only things that are declared (the only indicatives) are the
speaker’s rejection, doubt, or hope with regard to a concept. All of these
attitudes suggest an avoidance of declaring that concept.
 Chapter Title 21

And to help Margaret understand that the logic of Spanish is simply the
formal manifestation of a universal logic that she can control, we might
present to her the following little exploratory exercise: Why do the
utterances marked (a) make sense, while those marked (b) do not?

(a) (a)

He loves her, I know. Él la ama, lo sé.

He loves her, I think. Él la ama, creo.
He loves her, I imagine. Él la ama, me imagino.

(b) (b)

He loves her, I don’t think. (??) Él la ama, no creo. (??)

He loves her, it’s impossible. (??) Él la ama, es imposible. (??)
He loves her, I want. (??) Él la ama, quiero. (??)

Easy: because, in accordance with the stance implied by the matrices at the
end of each example, the speaker makes no attempt in the (b) utterances,
in either Spanish or English (or any other language one might want to
translate into) to declare that he loves her. In the (a) utterances, of course,
he declares it quite clearly. The only thing distinctive about Spanish is that
non-declarations must be expressed using a morphological marker: the
(in)famous subjunctive.

Why matrix.

As we all know, every rule that attempts to describe mood usage must
refer to the element in the independent clause (or preceding the dependent
clause) that is considered to determine mood selection for the dependent
verb. These rules make exhaustive use of the term “verb” (with “verbs of
emotion,” “verbs of desire,” and so on), although at times they resort other
elements, as well (participles, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions ...) to
explain the “appearance” of one mood or another. The primary advantage
of the matrix concept in this regard is its didactic simplicity: by matrix we
always mean the element that introduces the verb whose mood we are
formulating and that determines mood selection. These matrices may be
verbs, but they can also take other forms:
22 Chapter Number

Querer que, Pensar que ...

No pensar, No creer ...
Ojalá, Quizá, Probablemente ...
Cuando, Donde, Como ...
Si ..., En el caso de que ... Matrix
Para que ..., con que ..., de que ...
Es + adj. + que ...
La + sust. + que ..., Lo que ...
Por más + adj./adv. + que ...
...20

Using the term matrix reduces the amount of meta language that the
student must master and formulates the syntactical phenomenon of
dependence in a more systematic way that is easier to implement in
practice. But there is another, much more important advantage to
identifying a “matrix” unit, one that affects the protocol’s operationality:
the matrix is referred to as a unit of meaning.21

Why the meaning of the matrix.

A cognitive analysis of grammar must recognize that the units being

manipulated are not merely formal units. Instead, it should be understood
that grammar manipulates meanings.22 I will therefore contend that no
explanation of the functioning of grammatical units will be sufficiently
operational if it is applied only to form. Instead, I will argue, an
explanation is operational to the extent that its rules are applied not to the
formal units but to the meaning with which those formal units are being
used in each instance. What advantage does this offer?

With one notable exception, which is only the tip of a massive iceberg of
inoperationality: in an instructional approach that makes use of “verb

20
To want that, To think that . . . / Not to think that, Not to believe that . . . / If only,
Perhaps, Probably . . . / When, Where, How / If . . ., In the case that . . . / So that . .
., given that . . ., because . . . / It is + adj. + that . . . / The thing that . . . / No matter
how + adj./adv. + that . . .
21
For a more detailed discussion of the concept of the matrix, see Ruiz (2008), pp.
9–11.
22
See Davis (2009) for an application of a meaning-based approach to English
teaching.
 Chapter Title 23

rules,” the verbs afirmar [to affirm] and pedir [to ask for] would be in two
different lists. According to this approach, “verbs of language” (afirmar,
contar [to recount]) call for the indicative when positive and the
subjunctive when negative, and “verbs of desire” (querer [to want], pedir)
call for the subjunctive. Yet within our list of verbs we must also create a
sublist of exceptions for those verbs whose meaning changes depending on
whether the indicative or the subjunctive is used (decir [to say], gritar [to
shout], repetir [to repeat], contestar [to answer] ...). What do we ask of
the student? The student, obviously, must memorize these lists (endless
lists that are also deeply flawed, as we will see), relying on memory each
time one of the verbs is used and juggling various sublists of “exceptions”.

How would the student’s task change if, on the other hand, we suggested
she consider not the verb as an item on a list but the meaning with which
she uses that verb in each instance? We would simply be asking her to act
like a native speaker: “Be aware of the declarative meaning you wish to
communicate, and act accordingly”.

48. Afirma que… (he wants to make a declaration)  eres [ind]

simpática.
49. Pide que… (he wants to make a request, not a declaration)  [subj]
seas simpática.
50. Dice que … (he wants to make a declaration)  eres [ind]
simpática.
51. Dice que… (he wants to make a request, not a declaration)  [subj]
seas simpática.

In teaching usage based on groups of “verbs” that triggers the mysterious

“appearance” of one mood or another, one of the greatest challenges is
that, as we have seen, it is not actually the verb, as a “type of verb,” that
triggers anything.23 Thus, a rule may supposedly be shared among various
lists of verbs (such as creer [to believe], sospechar [to suspect], pensar
[to think], recordar [to remind], ver [to see], gustar [to please], encantar
[to delight], alegrar [to make happy] ...), adjectives (triste [sad], alegre

23
R. Hadlich (1973), recognizing the inability of a generative-transformational
theory to satisfactorily explain mood in Spanish, and emphasizing that attempts at
explanation based on “syntactic features” had merely formalized traditional
taxonomic studies, called for a “descripción de alto nivel de la semántica de las
oraciones en su totalidad, más que de los verbos aislados (high-level description of
the semantics of sentences as a whole, rather than of isolated verbs)” for a more
complete description of the subjunctive in Spanish.
24 Chapter Number

[happy], estupendo [wonderful], importante [important]...), adverbs (bien

[well], mal [badly] ...), and so on, but as soon a student attempts to apply
it elsewhere, it turns out to be an only marginally operational
generalization.

The concept of the matrix therefore shifts student attention from a form-
based search for simple lexical elements to an interpretation of the real
meaning of those elements in each concrete context in which they are
produced. Mood selection becomes not a matter of identifying, for
example, occurrences of the verb pensar or its “negation,” but of being
aware of the meaning of the main predicate, interpreting its modal sense,
and acting accordingly. Consider, for example, the very different degree of
merely mechanical operationality offered by a form-based rule, compared
to the meaning-based proposal I have made here, and especially the
qualitative possibilities of the two options with regard to the student’s
understanding of what she interprets or produces:

FORM-BASED MODEL

Pensar, ver, creer ... que + IND. / No pensar, no ver, no creer ... que + SUBJ.

Pienso que estoy enfermo. [I think that I’m sick.]

No pienso que esté enfermo. [I don’t think he’s sick.]
Yo no veo que estés enferma. [You don’t look sick to me.]
No creo que sea tarde. [I don’t think it’s late.]

BUT also, inexplicably:

No pienso que estoy enfermo. [I don’t think about my being sick.]

Ella no piensa que estoy enfermo. [She doesn’t think about my being
sick.]
¿No crees que es un poco tarde? [Don’t you think it’s a little late?]
Yo no veía que estaba enferma. [I didn’t notice she was sick.]
 Chapter Title 25

MEANING-BASED MODEL

What do you mean when you talk about “(no) pensar que X, (no) ver que X, (no)
creer que X”?

Pienso que estoy enfermo. [I think that I’m sick.]

“I think X” ( I)

No pienso que esté enfermo. [I don’t think he’s sick.]

“I don’t think X” (S)

No pienso que estoy enfermo. [I don’t think about my being sick.]

“X is true ( I), but I don’t think about it”

Ella no piensa que esté enfermo. [She doesn’t think he’s sick.]
“She doesn’t think X” ( S)

Ella no piensa que estoy enfermo. [She doesn’t think about my being sick.]
“X is true ( I), even if she doesn’t think about it”

¿No crees que es un poco tarde? [Don’t you think it’s a little late?]
“I think X, and I’m asking for confirmation of that belief” ( I)

Yo no veía que estaba enferma. [I didn’t notice she was sick.]

“X is true, and I didn’t realize it before, and now that I realize it, I want to make it
quite clear” ( I)

Finally, in considering the possibilities offered by the matrix concept

defined in terms of modal meaning, it is worth considering here the
phenomenon of sub-subordination. When we remove Creo que ..., Deseo
que ..., and so on, from the textbook or the blackboard and employ them in
texts or real-life conversations, these straightforward formal or semantic
clues to mood frequently end up awash in a flood of other clues of various
sorts. How will Margaret decide what mood to use in the following cases?

52. Me parece ... verdaderamente ... bonito que ... [I think it’s ... truly ...
lovely that ...]
53. Me encanta que ... pienses que ... [I love that ... you think that ...]
54. Yo no veo ... en realidad ... interesante ... que pensemos ... en influir
... en lo que ... [I don’t actually find it ... interesting ... that we think
... about influencing ... what ...]
26 Chapter Number

Despite its apparent simplicity (it does not even include any sub-
subordination), many students would choose the indicative for example
52. These students have clearly been taken in by a formal clue: either by
“me parece,” which supposedly demands the indicative, or by
“verdaderamente,” which they associate with declarations of reality that
should also, according to their rules, call for the indicative. If we instead
base our instructional approach on identifying the matrix, recognizing that
its meaning is more important than its form and that it is the meaning of
the form or forms employed in speech that determines mood, the student’s
protocol for selecting mood will be simpler and more effective:

55. Es bonito que…

[It’s lovely that ...]

56. Me parece…
bonito que…
[I think it’s
lovely that ...]

57. Me parece…
verdaderamente…
bonito que…
[I think it’s truly l
ovely that ...]

58. Me parece…
muy bonito…
y realmente…
emocionante que…
[I think it’s quite
lovely and really
exciting that ...]

For 53, on the other hand, students tend to choose the subjunctive. This
error, too, is easily explained. It has to do with a phenomenon all too
common in the language classroom. The traditional inattention to meaning
gives rise to what I will call the subjunctive of subsequence: for example,
 Chapter Title 27

if students have been taught the rule “With verbs of emotion, use the
subjunctive,” they are quite likely to therefore identify any “verb of
emotion” and put the subjunctive on “what comes next,” typically
producing results like the following:

59. Me alegra mucho lo que *estés diciendo. [What you’re saying

makes me really happy.]
60. Me sorprende que lo que me *hayas dicho antes sea verdad. [I’m
surprised that what you told me before is true.]
61. Quiero que sepas que yo te *comprenda y te *ayude. [I want you to
know that I understand you and I’ll help you.] 24

Of course, any instructor could immediately attempt to correct these

errors, pointing out that the verb whose mood we select is actually
determined by the verb “pensar” (53) or “saber” (61), which “require” the
indicative, or that 59 and 60 likewise call for the indicative because they
are subordinate to a relative clause that implies knowledge of the
antecedent. This technique is not quite a strategy, but students will
nevertheless take it as such. It will help them avoid the errors mentioned
above, and even help them overcome the disorienting case of 54, which
combines in a single fragmentary utterance six of the clues that the student
is accustomed to using (no ver, en realidad, interesante, pensar, influir, lo
que [not to find, actually, interesting, to think, to influence, the thing
that]): mood must be decided based on the rules of the relative clause,
since it is the last one in the series. But, using this form-based and
persistently meaning-free stopgap, we will soon run into problems with,
for example, “long-distance dependence”. Without shifting from a merely
form-based analysis to an awareness of meaning, how can we know which
of the three matrices in the next utterance controls the verb in boldface?

62. Es imposible, como dicen todos los que saben, que haya sido ella.
[It’s impossible, as everyone who knows is saying, that it was her.]

There are also those innumerable cases in which the mood appears to be
controlled not by its own clause but by a higher-level one.

24
A variation on the subjunctive of subsequence is what we could call the
subjunctive of proximity, which consistently dumps the subjunctive morpheme
onto the first verb after the matrix and lets up on the following ones, with
lamentable results: “Me sorprende que lo que me *hayas dicho antes *es verdad . .
. [I’m surprised that what you told me before is true . . .]”.
28 Chapter Number

63. Me resisto a creer que haya sido ella. [I refuse to believe it was
her.]
64. Es ridículo pensar que estén tramando algo. [It’s absurd to think
that they are plotting something.]

A strictly syntactic analysis would see the selection of a subjunctive that is

“formally” dependent on the verb creer or pensar as a surprising exception
that requires an explanation. Yet for an approach that instead consider
what what is said is really saying, the selection is perfectly logical;
utterances of this sort are not considered exceptions, saving us our initial
bewilderment and subsequent fumbling attempts to explain the
inexplicable.25 The reason could be a simple one: what if it is not the verb
that determines the selection but the matrix; that is, those words that
communicate the modal attitude with which the subordinate verb is
uttered? Could simply identifying and interpreting it correctly be enough
to enable even an intermediate language student to draw the appropriate
conclusions?

Of course, practically speaking, a teacher could decide to ignore these

MATRIX Declarative ‘X’
implication
about the content of X

65. Creo ... [I believe] (therefore, I declare) ... que quiere ...
[that he wants]

66. No creo ... [I don’t believe] (therefore, I do not

declare) ...

(that is to say, I’m not que quiera ...

67. Me resisto a creer ... [I am entirely convinced, [that he wants]
reluctant to believe] therefore I do not
declare) ...

68. Me resulta verdaderamente (that is to say, I

ridículo, a pesar de lo que absolutely do not
digas, creer ... [I find it believe, therefore I do
patently ridiculous, despite not declare) ...
25
See,what
for you
example, believe] N. (1990), “Sobre la cláusula superregente,” in
say, toFukushima,
Bosque (ed.), Indicativo y subjuntivo, Madrid: Taurus, to get a good idea of the
ease with which a formalist analysis can turn normal, logical phenomena into
exceptional and inexplicable ones.
 Chapter Title 29

ambiguities: the indicative is a possibility for both 63 and 64, so they

could still reflect the application of the rule “creer/pensar + indicative”.
This would reinforce the pattern set forth in the two examples, but in
exchange it sets the student up for confusion every time she runs into
reality. And the reality is that mood is not created by the mere proximity
of a particular verb in a line of text but by the speaker’s awareness of what
he means by what he says.

By employing the concept of matrix, understood as a group of words used

by the speaker to express his modal attitude toward some concept, we can
not only see both options as possible but, more importantly, understand the
difference in their meanings. In the case of 64, if the speaker’s intention is
to question X, he will use as his matrix “It is ridiculous to think X,” with
the concomitant awareness of saying that “he does not share a belief in X,”
and he will communicate that modal attitude with the subjunctive:

(“no se puede pensar X” [it’s impossible to think X], “es falso

X” [it’s not true that X] . . .)
que + subjuntivo
“Es ridículo pensar . . “.
[that + subjunctive]
[It is ridiculous to think]

If, on the other hand, the speaker wishes to refer only to what others think
about X, he will use “pensar” as his matrix for X and will signal the
content of that outside opinion with the indicative:

“Es ridículo . . . . . . pensar . . . que + indicativo

And I do not claim merely that this awareness of meaning could help
Margaret to use mood in Spanish properly. Without this awareness
(whether learned or simply acquired through use), Margaret is doomed to
30 Chapter Number

error, if not on this part of the road then a little further on.26 How else can
she overcome, for example, typical mistakes in communicating indirect
requests? Any experienced teacher will recognize these structures:

(“Tienes que venir con nosotros. [You have to come with us.]”)
69. Me han pedido que *tenga que ir con ellos. [Lit. They’ve asked me
to have to go with them.]
(“Necesitas descansar. [You need to rest.]”)
70. Me ha aconsejado que *necesite descansar. [Lit. He has advised
me to need to rest.]

I do not see many options: either Margaret ends up realizing that what is
being asked or advised is not “tener” or “necesitar” but “ir” and
“descansar,” or the mistake will persist, however repeatedly it is corrected.

It is precisely this constant awareness of what we are saying with what we

say—a transcendence of formal units by indissolubly uniting form and
meaning—that the concepts of the matrix and of “X” are intended to
contribute to theoretical explanations of and pedagogical approaches to
mood selection.

Why “declaration”.

Various studies have attempted to establish a concept or set of concepts

that could provide a global explanation of the contrast between indicative
and subjunctive. These studies have therefore sought a law that can
unfailingly identify the moods’ contrastive value, which I have located
here in the modal value of declaration. Because of its apparent similarity
to what I am proposing in this article, I must inevitably refer to the
semantic concept of assertion.27 My intention, however, is to differentiate
the concept of declaration from its inoperational cousin.

The most immediate problem with using the concept of assertion as the
value for the indicative mood as compared to the subjunctive is that it fails
to explain the selection of the indicative in the context of what we could
call “supposition matrices”. Strictly speaking, asserting something (like

26
I want to emphasize that, however subtle the difference in meaning in this last
example may seem, the logic that a student would have to apply in order to
understand it is exactly the same one she has to apply in basic cases such as
Pienso que . . . / No pienso que . . . .
27
Bybee and Terrell (1990).
 Chapter Title 31

affirming or avowing) implies stating it with assurance and confidence.

How then, could this definition of the indicative include all those matrices
that select the indicative for X without thereby signaling an affirmation of
X? (Creo que lo saben and Pienso que lo saben [I think they know it] are
not assured or confident statements that they know it.)

The act of declaring (or manifesting) something, on the other hand, does
not necessarily imply the truth of what is said: the things that somebody
can explicitly make known as a formal manifestation of his state of
knowledge of the world28 may be affirmations of a particular reality X (as
in 71), but they may also be suppositions29 of a possible state of things that
should not be judged in terms of X’s verifiability (72):

71. Os aseguro que está debajo de la cama. [I assure you that it is

under the bed—affirmation that it is there.]
72. Me parece que está debajo de la cama. [I think that it is under the
bed—supposition that it is there.]

The concept of declaration should therefore be understood technically as

an act of representation by the speaker that is further back in the line of
descent than an affirmation, and so is broader and more inclusive:

Assertion (positive declaration)

DECLARATION
Supposition (approximative declaration)

If we apply these definitions to the following examples, we will find that

assertion is an accurate label only for the indicatives from 73 to 75, while
the concept of declaration, as we understand it here, can be associated
with all of the examples and can thus be appropriated as a value for the
indicatives in 76 through 78, as well:

73. Sé que está durmiendo. [I 76. Creo que está durmiendo. [I

28
“Declare: to make known formally, officially, or explicitly”(Merriam-Webster
definition)
29
It is important here not to interpret my use of “supposition” in terms of
differentiating the concept from “imagination,” “prediction,” “belief,” “personal
conviction,” “suspicion,” etc. Indeed, I use it here in a technical sense precisely to
refer to what all of these terms have in common: namely, a subject’s lack of total
control over a reality (an affirmation or avowal) that he nevertheless manifests
(that is, declares) as part of his vision of the world.
32 Chapter Number

know that she’s sleeping.] believe that she’s sleeping.]

74. He visto que está
durmiendo. [I’ve seen that
she’s sleeping.]
75. Es evidente que está
durmiendo. [It’s clear that
she’s sleeping.]
77. Supongo que estará
durmiendo. [I imagine she
must be sleeping.]
78. Me parece que está
durmiendo. [I think that she’s
sleeping.]

This is a major problem for assertion as an explanatory concept, yet I find

a second problem much more relevant: the explanation’s apparent
dependence on propositional logic and thus the ease with which it is
associated with ideas, such as “truth value,” that are of very limited
operationality with respect to language.

Mythical pairs such as objective/subjective or real/unreal, built on this

simplistic foundation, have proven to be failures as “laws” in many ways.
Among their greatest failings is their inability to explain the selection of
the subjunctive with “verbs of emotion” (or as arguments in factive-
emotive predicates, to use the more technical, if not more useful,
terminology). As has so often been noted, these well-intentioned theories
have real difficulty accounting for cases such as 79 and 80, where the
subjunctive is selected to refer to concepts whose objectivity, reality, and
truth value are not in question—are in fact inarguable—and such as 81 and
82, in which, although the reality of the content is not demonstrated, the
alleged “mood of reality” is nevertheless selected.

The utterance “The truth”

79. Me alegra que estés [subj]  The listener, in fact, is there.

aquí. [I’m glad you’re here.] 
80. Siento mucho que fracasaras.  The listener, in fact, failed.
[subj] [I’m really sorry you
failed.] 

81. Yo creo que está [ind] en  Is she really at home?
casa. [I think she’s at home.] 
82. Me imagino que se lo  Will they take it or not?
llevarán. [ind] [I imagine
they’ll take it with them.]
 Chapter Title 33

In my view, it is clear that any theory that establishes reality, objectivity,

or affirmation as qualities of the indicative must also grapple with this
point30 or will otherwise inevitably fall headlong into the simplistic naiveté
of magical thinking.31

In the context of the so-called “comment matrices,” the discourse

perspective—which sees the indicative as rhematic, or new, information
and the subjunctive as thematic, or shared, information—offers a good
explanation for this apparent contradiction. 32 Without having to call into
doubt the truth of the dependent proposition X, the subjunctive can be
understood from this perspective as a way to signal that the predicate is
merely the subject under discussion and about which the matrix is saying
something:

83. Me alegra que lo hayas decidido. [I’m glad you’ve decided.]

(“I report that something makes me happy; I do not report that ‘you
have decided,’ because that information is shared and there is no
need to declare it again”.)

In my view, this approach has the indisputable advantage of clearly

distinguishing between linguistic and extralinguistic realities. The belief,
even unconscious, in an inevitable relationship between these two realities
has for centuries made grammatical rules, which arose from entirely
accurate intuitions, quite inoperational. And yet the approach has obvious
limitations: the evaluation it carries out is discursive in nature, but values
do not inhere in the form itself. Rather, they manifest themselves in a
fairly advanced level of actualization of grammatical meaning, which is
inevitably influenced by a number of factors in addition to the operational
value of each form. Almost certainly for that reason, despite partial
successes in that area (pragmatic-discursive information management),

30
For precisely this reason, Bybee and Terrell’s sensible study must reject the
elegant hypothesis of assertion/non-assertion; resigned to the model’s asymmetry,
they add the concept of presupposition.
31
As does, for example, the famous “explanation” given by the RAE in 1973: “Es
tal la fuerza subjetivadora de los sentimientos, que imprimen su matiz modal al
verbo subordinado, afirme o no la realidad del hecho [Such is the subjectivizing
power of emotions that they impose their mood upon the dependent verb, whether
or not that verb affirms the reality of the sentence’s content]” (Esbozo de una
nueva gramática de la lengua española).
32
See Mejías-Bikandi (1994). In Spanish teaching, this position is well represented
in Matte Bon (1992).
34 Chapter Number

this hypothesis has been unable to offer a universally applicable and

operational analysis of mood.33

The concept that I propose here, on the other hand, is defined on the more
formal basis of the system’s accumulation of meanings, where a form (a
morpheme) is linked to a meaning (a declaration)—even in isolation, as
we saw earlier. Furthermore, it establishes no necessary relationship
between language and extralinguistic reality: the conditions under which
the speaker declares or does not declare a matrix-dependent X are shaped
not by the verifying possibilities offered by external reality but by the
speaker’s declarative attitude. It is this attitude which through a natural
logic compels or enables the meaning of the matrix that the speaker has
chosen. It thus becomes clear why, for example, either mood might easily
be used to formalize the single discursive function of “supposition”.

84. Supongo que se habrá casado. [I suppose he’s probably gotten

married.]
(“I suppose X” implies that X is a declaration by the subject.)
85. Es posible que se haya casado. [It’s possible that he’s gotten
married.]
(“It’s possible that X” does not imply that X is a declaration by the
subject: the subject is merely classifying X as “possible”.)

It seems particularly relevant to wonder, in cases like these, whether it is

really the discursive status of the information that determines mood, since
both examples could perfectly well represent new information.

At this point I think we can posit declaration as the operational concept so

that the law remains unambiguous. I will formulate the concept in two
ways. The first will be more rigorous and technical in nature; I propose the
second for pedagogical purposes.

1. A declaration is the formal expression34 of a subject’s vision of

the represented world, through which he establishes a particular
state of things in that world, regardless of the degree of certainty
that he has and expresses about that state of things.

33
A lengthy discussion of the problems with this discursive analysis of mood can
be found in Ruiz (2008).
34
Remember the formal sense of the word itself: “to make known formally,
officially, or explicitly”.
 Chapter Title 35

2. A declaration is the formal expression of what a subject wishes to

make “public” that he knows (assertion) or thinks (supposition).

As will be clear by now, each of these formulations includes the two basic
ideas that I have indicated are necessary for the concept to function as an
operational tool:

a) A declaration is not an assertion. It is, in fact, what an

assertion and a supposition have in common (“a subject’s vision
of the represented world”; “what a subject makes public as what
he knows or believes”).

b) Declaring or not declaring something is not a question of

accuracy with regard to extralinguistic reality. It is rather a
question of the subject’s declarative attitude, in accord with the
meaning of the matrix he chooses, aware of its implications.

In practice, I prefer to describe the modal contrast established by the

subjunctive in terms of the negative concept of non-declaration. It suggests
an attitude of declarative inhibition that in my view is most immediately
comprehensible to a person who, oblivious to terminological subtleties,
must use it in mood selection. But if there were a concept formulated in
positive terms that could confer some interpretive advantage, it would
probably be the concept of “mention,” understood technically as mere
“naming”, as when we refer to “making mention” of something.35

In this regard, it should be clear that a subject declares the concept of

“being daytime” (offering it as his vision of the world) through the
matrices of the (a) utterances, and only mentions that concept (by naming
it) through the matrixes of (b):

(a) Declaration [ind] (b) Mention [subj]

Sé que es de día. Es posible que sea de día.

[I know] [that it’s daytime] [It’s possible] [that it’s daytime]

Me parece que es de día. Me gusta que sea de día.

35
A thorough theoretical justification of this concept can be found in Ruiz (1998);
the concept is also taken up by Castañeda (2004) and can be linked to the cognitive
notion of “basic reality” (as opposed to “elaborated reality”) identified by Achard
(2002) as a characteristic of the subjunctive in French.
36 Chapter Number

[I think] [that it’s daytime] [I like] [that it’s daytime]

¿No ves que es de día? No veo que sea de día.

[Can’t you [that it’s daytime] [I don’t see] [that it’s daytime]
see]

And so, now equipped with our “machine” and having defined the
meaning and effects of the four main “buttons” on its control panel, we
can set out. Although for that, I think, a map would come in handy ...

4. Cartographic phase
The appendix included at the end of this article shows a possible sort of
“mood map” in Spanish, designed for pedagogical purposes. But why
should we need a map for a theory that is proposing a single value for the
indicative and subjunctive in every context? The theory implies that a
teacher could explain any concrete example of mood using only the
concept of declaration, and that the student would be able to figure out the
appropriate mood supplied only with that concept. And that is, indeed, the
hypothesis.

Yet we are all aware that mood selection requires near-constant decision
making in a wide variety of contexts. It would be naïve in the extreme to
think that there was no need to accompany the person learning to make
these decisions as she ventures out onto the roads, learning the shifting
local conditions under which she will apply our “law of usage”.

What the map offers us, then, is a didactic route. Before beginning, the
student is provided with a compass; the route leads from the starting point
to all possible destinations, preferring boulevards to side streets, side
streets to dirt roads, and dirt roads to a trek across the fields. All along this
route—and this is the important part—the student will have at her disposal
a logic that will help her make decisions. A communicative logic, a logic
of the linguistic representation of the world that can tell her not only why
the indicative or subjunctive but at the same time why not the other. I will
now describe this logic for each context and offer examples for expanding
it to include other matrices.
 Chapter Title 37

Context 1: Declaring an objective Quiero que S

Why subjunctive. When a person says that he wants something, that

something is not what the subject knows or thinks: it is only what he
wants. He therefore does not declare that something formally: Quiero que
Ana sea mi amiga [I want Ana to be my friend]. He does not say that she
“es” my friend.

Why not indicative. If we said, Quiero que Ana es mi amiga, we would

be saying that, in our opinion, Ana es mi amiga [Ana is my friend].36 So
why say quiero, thus presenting it as an objective to be fulfilled? Is it a
desire or a belief? Would this not be a huge little contradiction?

In the pedagogical context, distinguishing this sort of matrix from all the
others is a fairly easy exercise: begin with simple matrices (such as [no]
querer X [(not) want X], [no] desear X [(not) desire X], [no] aconsejar X
[(not) advise X], [no] prohibir X [(not) prohibit X], and so on) and
gradually incorporate others in which the logic is less immediately
apparent (as occurs with performative or causative predicates). But
identifying these matrices is above all tremendously productive for
explaining the way mood functions, as it provides a useful meaning-based
(not form-based) maxim:

“If the matrix is from context 1, never declare X: it would be a terrible

contradiction”.

36
Remember our “golden rule”: cuando alguien dice que Ana es su amiga, dice [he
declares] que Ana es su amiga.
38 Chapter Number

This apparently simple maxim is important for a number of reasons, but

mainly for the certainty it provides the student that no contextual accident
(no obstacle on the “road”) can modify it. The difference between verbs
like creer and verbs like querer is that, while the use of mood for the
former must be decided with careful attention to all sorts of contextual
factors (e.g., negation, time, subject, speaker intention), querer should
always not-declare the subordinate predicate, no matter the context (quiero
+ S, no quiero + S, quería + S).37

In developing a way to teach this logic, teachers could begin by helping

students learn to be alert to the somewhat abstract idea of “objectives”.
Other, more immediate concepts to guide students toward the sense that
“X is an objective” could be those of desire, request, intention, or
acceptance. Although the classification is only lexical, and therefore
debatable, it can point toward the idea that, at bottom, all of these matrices
suggest the same thing: when someone declares that he desires, requests,
or intends X (or does not desire, request, or intend X), X is posited only as
a virtual objective, desirable or not, that depends on further action or
circumstances to become a reality that can be positively declared.
Likewise, accepting or rejecting the notion that somebody is doing
something (or not) or that something is happening (or not) implies the
presence of a somebody/thing that has been previously established as an
objective and that depends on a subject’s consent in order to be produced
or not:38

37
This would be, as indicated in note 13, the only homogeneously identifiable
group of verbs that could be taught as such without encountering any exceptions;
that is, as “verbs that (in every context) require the subjunctive”. Nevertheless, as
will be seen shortly, we must also include a wide range of elements that should,
like those verbs, be considered intention matrices, in that they carry the same
meaning in terms of declaration (ojalá [if only], la intención de que [the intention
that], etc.).
38
Desire: To desire, to want, to need, to appeal, to aspire . . .
Accept: To allow, to oppose, to resign oneself, to prevent, to tolerate, to permit, to
consent . . .
Attempt: To attempt, to intend, to contribute to, to make an effort to, to try, to
avoid, to make, to provoke, to achieve, to obtain . . .
Request: To request, to encourage, to instruct, to command, to forbid, to oblige, to
plead, to pray, to advise, to invite, to beg, to demand, to propose . . .
 Chapter Title 39

Desire for X
Desear, querer, necesitar, apetecer, aspirar a . . .
Acceptance of X
X IS AN Permitir, oponerse a, resignarse a, impedir, tolerar,
OBJECTIVE dejar, consentir . . .
(desirable or Attempt at X
not) Intentar, pretender, contribuir a, esforzarse por, tratar
de, evitar, hacer, provocar, lograr, conseguir . . .
Request for X
Pedir, animar a, mandar, ordenar, prohibir, obligar,
rogar, aconsejar, invitar, suplicar, exigir, proponer . . .

The protocol, then, offers Margaret two options: memorizing a virtually

unlimited list of verbs of this sort that “must” take the subjunctive, or
developing her understanding and awareness of those verbs’ modal
implications. To put it another way: she can either learn the list and rely on
her memory in her real-life linguistic production, or she can become
capable of generating the list on her own by understanding the modal
implications of the items on it. After all, that list is not a collection only of
verbs, as one might expect. The same logic shapes sequences as formally
diverse as the following:39

Ojalá, Quiera Dios que . . .

Tener ganas de que . . ., estar dispuesto a que . . ., hacer
X IS AN falta que . . .
OBJECTIVE Tu intención de que . . ., la finalidad de que . . ., destinado
(desirable or a que . . ., el deseo de que . . .
not) Ser imprescindible que . . ., ser necesario que . . ., ser
recomendable que . . .
A condición de que . . ., siempre y cuando . . ., sin que . . .,
para que . . .

39
If only . . ., God willing . . . / To feel like . . ., to be willing to . . ., to need to . . . /
Your intention that . . ., the goal of . . ., destined to . . ., the desire that . . . / To be
essential that . . ., to be necessary that . . ., to be advisable that . . . / On the
condition that . . ., As long as . . ., Without . . ., So that . . .
40 Chapter Number

All in all, the most important advantage of becoming aware of context 1’s
local logic is, in communicative terms, the ability it offers to make a
correct decision for every instance of “two-context matrices”:40 What list
of forms will enable us to organize matrices like the ones underlined
below? What rule will enable a student to perceive the differences in
meaning among the these utterances?

86. ¿Te parece que me veo muy gorda? [Do you think I’m looking
really fat?] / ¿Te parece que nos vayamos ya? [Is it okay if we
leave now?]
87. Mi sueño es que viene Claudia y me besa. [My dream (that I have
at night) is that Claudia comes over and kisses me.] / Mi sueño es
que me bese Claudia. [My dream is for Claudia to kiss me.]
88. Yo friego siempre que tú quitas el polvo. [I’ll scrub whenever you
dust.] / Yo friego siempre que tú quites el polvo. [I’ll scrub as long
as you dust.]
89. La cosa es que no sabe dónde están. [The thing is, she doesn’t know
where they are.] / La cosa es que se lo digas, lo demás no importa.
[The important thing is that you tell her; nothing else matters.]

Will she be able to understand that difference—and then produce it

herself—based only on the “feeling” that something is a declaration
(information) when interpreting or uttering an indicative, and the “feeling”
that something is an objective (something that must be done or that has to
happen) when interpreting or uttering a subjunctive? Furthermore, will she
even need to understand it? In my view, she quite clearly will. In addition,
having been trained to use this logic of declarative meaning, she might
very well end up using the mechanism to accurately interpret and engage
in mood selection for a formally unlimited number of these “two-context
matrices”. In addition to those cited above, for example, there are:41

40
In the examples provided here, matrices that belong to both contexts 1 and 2A.
41
He says that . . ., Remind me to . . ., She shouted that . . ., With his cry that . . ., I
repeat that . . ., Do not insist that . . ., She wrote me that . . ., He insinuated that . .
., I answered that . . ., The police suggest that . . ., What I propose is that . . ., We
have decided that . . ., The decision is that . . ., Our conclusion is that . . ., The
consul has determined that . . ., Be assured that . . ., etc.
 Chapter Title 41

Dice que . . ., Recuérdame que . . ., Gritó que . . ., Con

X IS A su grito de que . . ., Te repito que . . ., No insistas en
DECLARATION que . . ., Me escribió que . . ., Me insinuó que . . ., Le
/ contesté que . . ., La policía sugiere que . . ., Lo que yo
X IS AN planteo es que . . ., Hemos decidido que . . ., La
OBJECTIVE decisión es que . . ., La conclusión es que . . ., El
cónsul ha determinado que . . ., Asegúrate de que . . .,
etc.

Context 2A: Declaring a piece of que + I

Yo creo
information

Why indicative. When a person says that he believes something, he

means that that something comprises part of what he knows or thinks
about the world: Yo creo que Ana es mi amiga [I believe that Ana is my
friend].

Why not subjunctive. If we say, Yo creo que Ana sea mi amiga, we are
saying that we believe it (that Ana es mi amiga) but we avoid making a
declaration of it. Is it not a huge little contradiction to declare that we
believe something and not then declare it formally?

Context 2B: Questioning a piece of No creo que + S

information

Why subjunctive. If we say we do not believe something, it is clear that

we are questioning its content and that we therefore have no intention of
42 Chapter Number

declaring that something. We intend to declare only that we do not believe

it.

Why not indicative. If we said, No creo que Ana es mi amiga [I don’t

think that Ana is my friend], we would be declaring that Ana es mi amiga
[Ana is my friend]. So why would we say something that we do not
believe, explicitly bringing into question the very concept that we are
declaring formally? Would it not be a huge little contradiction?

Context 2C: Commenting on a piece Es bonito que + S

of information

Why subjunctive. When we say that something es bonito [is lovely], it is

true that we could sometimes declare that something (in the sense that it
could be, in fact, what we think or know). But if we say that something es
bonito, we wish only to declare that it es bonito. Everything else is just the
subject that we are speaking about (such as the concept that Ana sea mi
amiga [Ana is my friend]).

Why not indicative. If we said, Es bonito que Ana es mi amiga [It’s

lovely that Ana is my friend], we would be doing two completely different
things at the same time: declaring that the concept that Ana is my friend
“is lovely”, and also declaring that Ana “is” my friend. And that is not the
way these things generally work (in Spanish or in other languages). When
we want to declare that Ana is my friend, we simply say Ana es mi amiga
(…y eso es bonito) [Ana is my friend (…and that is lovely)], or we choose
matrices that make it clear that what follows is a declaration: Creo que
Ana es mi amiga [I think Ana is my friend], Sé que Ana es mi amiga [I
know Ana is my friend], Supongo que Ana será mi amiga [I suppose Ana
must be my friend], Está claro que Ana es mi amiga [It’s clear that Ana is
my friend], etc. But we choose comment matrices such as Es bonito [It’s
lovely], Me encanta [I love it], or Me parece bien [I think it’s great]
because it is already declared or assumed that Ana es mi amiga, and the
only thing we wish to declare now is our opinion of that concept: (Eso) es
bonito [It’s lovely]. In any language.

As represented graphically here, the greater difference between contexts 1

and 2 is a result of their different functions: whereas context 1 defines
matrices in which X is not information but simply the virtual projection of
an objective, the matrices for context 2 are used to manipulate information
 Chapter Title 43

about the represented world. Therefore, unlike context 1 (where the law
compels the use of the subjunctive, without any possible play), context 2
constitutes the very center of the conflict between moods in Spanish. Here,
indicative and subjunctive are options that are recommended by law in
some cases, prohibited in others, and often subject to the speaker’s
willingness to play with that law in order to create special effects of
meaning (as will be discussed later).

In pedagogical terms, however, protocol permits a progressive approach

that starts small and eventually encompasses the entire process. This
approach involves distinguishing among three possible attitudes toward
information, which can be formulated as phases of the treatment of
information in conversation:42

PHASE ATTITUDE MOOD

A DECLARING
Saying what one thinks, what one knows, or Ind.
what considers obvious; or confirming what
Verific others think, know, or consider obvious.
ation

B QUESTIONING
Calling into question established or suggested
information, to varying degrees, whether merely
indicating the possibility or expressing doubt
about it, or flat-out denying or contradicting it. Subj.

C COMMENTING
Once a corpus of previously established
information is available, with enough consensus
Comm for the affirmative phase to be said to have ended
ent and for that information to have become a topic
of conversation (as “concepts”), it is no longer a
matter of verifying those concepts but of
evaluating them, opining on them, saying
something about them.

By relating each of these possible attitudes toward a concept X with the

matrices logically used to communicate those attitudes, we can easily draw
up a list of matrices for context 2 and identify their corresponding

42
For a practical examination of these phases in the classroom, see Ruiz (1995).
44 Chapter Number

“recommended moods” (indicative for A, subjunctive for B and C).

Moving down the road step by step, and focusing for now on affirmation
matrices, would a student skilled in this logic be able to guess in which
phase to place each of these basic sequences (using their meaning to
associate them with a particular mood)?43

Next, expanding this logic to comment matrices, would she be able to

distinguish which of the following sequences belong to each group,
despite their formal similarity?44

43
A. DECLARING X: I believe that . . ., There’s no doubt that . . ., I imagine that .
. ., I think that . . ., It seems to me that . . .
B. QUESTIONING X: I don’t believe that . . ., It’s not possible that . . ., I don’t
think that . . .
44
A. DECLARING X: I think that . . ., It seems to me that . . ., It’s clear that . . .
B. QUESTIONING X: I don’t think that . . ., It doesn’t seem to me that . . ., It’s
not true that . . .
C. COMMENTING ON X: I hate it that . . ., I think it’s great that . . ., It’s
wonderful that . . .
 Chapter Title 45

And now, incorporating context 1: could Margaret distinguish among the

boxes on the right only by interpreting the modal sense of each matrix,
despite their formal resemblance?45

45
1. X is an objective: It is necessary that . . ., I propose that . . .
2A. DECLARING X: It’s true that . . ., I think that . . .
2B. QUESTIONING X: It’s a lie that . . ., I deny that . . .
2C. COMMENTING ON X: It’s logical that . . ., They object that . . .
46 Chapter Number

Although this logic requires a drastic shift in the student’s approach to

grammar, any student can begin to employ it once she understands it. Two
possible challenges might be the unfamiliarity of the process and the
necessity of student reflection on language in general (rather than on what
we understand as “grammar”).46 But it also offers a number of advantages.
It provides a meaning-based (not memorization-based) approach to
learning—that is, a permanent invitation to feel the subjunctive as a
meaning, not to use it like the pieces of a meaningless jigsaw puzzle. And
the ability it cultivates is certainly much more broadly applicable than that
acquired by fracturing mood usage into endless, nearly useless lists of
rules.

. . . una cosa que + I

Context 3a: Identifying an entity

Why indicative. When someone refers to una cosa que tiene / tendrá
cuatro patas [a thing that has four legs], that person is formally declaring
that the thing tiene / tendrá cuatro patas. By declaring that he knows or
supposes that it has four legs, he makes it clear that he knows what
specific thing he is talking about and has identified it (for example, a
chair).

Why not subjunctive. If somebody refers to a thing that he knows and

has identified but says ... una cosa que tenga cuatro patas, then he is
avoiding declaring his knowledge of the characteristics of a thing that he
nevertheless knows and has already identified. Is that not a huge little
contradiction?

46
It must be acknowledged, however, that it is rather odd that a demand for
reflection on language should be considered a challenge in a language classroom.
 Chapter Title 47

. . . una cosa que + S

Context 3b: Not identifying an entity

Why subjunctive. When someone refers to una cosa que tenga cuatro
patas [a thing that has four legs], that person is avoiding declaring that the
thing tiene cuatro patas. By not declaring the object’s characteristics, he
makes it clear that he does not know what specific thing he is talking
about; that is, he has not yet identified it among all those objects that
might aptly be described in that manner (a chair, a cat, and so on).

Why not indicative. If somebody refers to a thing that he does not know
and has not identified but says ... una cosa que tiene cuatro patas, then he
is declaring his knowledge (tiene cuatro patas) of a thing that he has not
yet identified. Is this not yet another huge little contradiction?

The logic of mood selection here clearly depends on the concept of

identification and is based on a prior theoretical reasoning that is not
strictly necessary in an instructional context:

The declaration or non-declaration of the verb X (given that the

verb’s only function is to characterize the entity) suggests the
declaration or non-declaration of the entity itself (in this case, a
nominal syntagm: a thing, a person…).

As a result, just as the declaration of a concept X implies partial

or total experience of that concept, the declaration of an object
should be understood as indicating the subject’s experience of
that object and thus that the subject has identified that object.

I admit, in any case, that this contrast formulated between identified and
unidentified objects may be just as pedagogically problematic as the
traditional formulation, especially in cases such as the following:

90. Tráeme EL vaso que esté más limpio. [Bring me the glass that is
cleanest.]
91. LA mujer que me haya robado va a tener problemas. [The woman
who robbed me is going to be in trouble.]
48 Chapter Number

Why do we use the subjunctive here, if the glass or the woman is, in a
sense, identified, as the definite articles suggest? 47 The answer involves
recognizing a difference in concept between the kind of identification
produced by the article and the kind of identification produced by the
indicative. To avoid having to define these terms with precision, however,
it will perhaps suffice to specify the different senses that article and mood
can be understood to identify in each case:

a) The article implies that the object is identifiable for the listener.

Dame el libro. [Give me the book.]

(“You know what book I mean”.)

b) The indicative (in relative clauses) implies that the object is

identified by the speaker:

Dame el libro que hay en el cajón. [Give me the book that’s in

the drawer.]
(“I know what book I mean”.)

In my view, this approach offers satisfactory explanations for the above

examples. In 90, the definite article indicates that the listener can identify
the glass in question, given that only one of the possible glasses can be
“the cleanest”. The subjunctive merely indicates that the speaking subject
has not yet identified it among all the others; that is, he does not determine
which of them it is. And an identical analysis can be made for 91: a woman
has stolen something, and that woman in particular, whom the speaker
nevertheless has not yet identified or distinguished from the others, is the
one (“la”) who is going to be in trouble.

Whether through this technical definition of identification or any other

definition applied to the same meaning, the implications of context 3’s
particular logic do not stop here. I have used as my example a fairly
typical relative clause, with a person or thing as an antecedent, to provide
a traditional, easy, and immediate route toward the reasoning that should
guide our mood-selection process in this context. Yet this same local logic
can be applied to any structure whose purpose is to specify the entity being

47
This widespread notion has even generated rules such as “If the object has a
definite article, use the indicative” and similar.
 Chapter Title 49

discussed, whether it be an object, a person, a place, a way of doing things,

a quantity, or a moment, regardless of its formal nature: 48

... that the speaker ... that the speaker

identifies does not identify

An object ... Una cosa que tiene pelos Una cosa que tenga pelos
[A thing that has hair]
Lo que tiene pelos Lo que tenga pelos
[The thing that has hair]

A person ... La chica que me quiere La chica que me quiera

[The girl who loves me]
Quien me quiere Quien me quiera
[Whoever loves me]

A place ... El sitio que te dije El sitio que te dijera

[The place I told you]
Donde te dije Donde te dijera
[Where I told you]

A way of La manera en que lo hace La manera en que lo haga

doing things [The way he does it]
... Como lo hace Como lo haga
[How he does it]
Según te dijo [According Según te dijera
to what he told you

An amount ... La cantidad que necesitas La cantidad que necesites

[The amount you need]
Cuanto necesitas Cuanto necesites
[However much you need]

48
Clearly, the traditional adverbial clauses of time, manner, quantity, and place
can be explained with the same logic as relative clauses. For more on causal and
temporal adverbial clauses, see Chamorro (2006), pp. 189–190. A discussion of
“if” conditional clauses is found in Ruiz (2008), pp. 28–31.
50 Chapter Number

A moment ... El día que llega El día que llegue

[The day she arrives]
Cuando llegó Cuando llegara
[When she arrived]
Hasta que llega Hasta que llegue
[Until she arrives]
En cuanto llega En cuanto llegue
[As soon as she arrives]
... ...

Certainly, it should be understood that the logic generated by applying the

“law of meaning” to the specific conditions of each context can expand to
become a universal logic, in that it treats mood selection as a meaning-
based phenomenon accessible to the cognitive and communicative
schemas of speakers of any language. These speakers must learn to
associate the formal markers of mood in Spanish with an understanding of
the declarative import of each predicate. If Margaret, for example, can
answer the following questions about what she is doing in her own
language and the declarative import thereof, she will be on her way to
understanding the functions of the indicative and subjunctive in Spanish:

When you say in English ... ... do you mean to declare that
Ana is your friend?

1. I want Ana to be my friend. NO (it’s just a desire)

2A. It is true that Ana is my friend. YES (it’s my opinion)

2B. It is doubtful that Ana is my friend. NO (it’s not exactly my opinion)

2C. It is cool that Ana is my friend. NO (the only thing I’m trying to
say, really, is that that concept is
cool)

... are you referring to

something that you’ve
identified?

3a. (I can see) a thing that has four legs. YES (because I can see it)

3b. (I can’t see) anything that has four NO (because I can’t see it)
legs.
 Chapter Title 51

A direct application of the law will inevitably lead to the expansion we

have indicated in each case. Similarly, assuming that real-life use of
Spanish is the goal, learners must also understand the logic of the many
cases in which native speakers, blessed with the knowledge and freedom
to do so, play with this law in order to say something special.

5. Playful phase
Just as every rule has its exceptions, every law has a little play in it. We
must come to grips with instances of mood that do not seem entirely
consistent, at first glance, with the basic logic that we have outlined
previously in the “law of usage”. For example, the following:

92. Se sospecha que estén escondidos. [One suspects that they’re

hiding.]
(subjunctive with declaration matrices: 2A)
93. Es falso que están escondidos. [It’s not true that they’re hiding.]
(indicative with questioning matrices: 2B)
94. Lo que me sorprende es que me quiere. [What surprises me is that
she loves me.]
(indicative with comment matrices: 2C)

But these usages are only apparently inconsistent. If we apply a formalist

rule (e.g., O1 [alegrar, encantar, gustar ...] + V2 [subjunctive]), we will also have to start
drawing up a list of exceptions to account for cases such as example 94—
and despite all our efforts, our understanding of this phenomenon will be
no more complete. If we apply the law, on the other hand, we are able to
understand the decision as a logical one and interpret it correctly:

a) The subjunctive is always permitted (by law) in evaluation or

comment matrices—Lo que me sorprende es que me quiera
[What surprises me is that he loves me]—so the expectation is
that the speaker would use it.
b) If the speaker has chosen the indicative anyway, he has done so
deliberately.
c) As the indicative always means a formal declaration, the
speaker’s intention was to declare that the person loves him,
while at the same time expressing his evaluation of that concept.
d) As a result, the speaker has simply made use of the
communicative schema of evaluation, and he declares the concept
52 Chapter Number

in a marked way, believing that in formulating his utterance he

should make it clear to the listener that, in fact, she loves him (for
example, because the listener was not already aware).

Applying a law enables us to determine which mood is canonically

indicated and at the same time to understand what special effect can be
created through the deliberate logical manipulation of that law. This
manipulation constitutes what I call play. The fundamental difference
between play and exception is that while an exception suggests a simple
contradiction of the rule, play always moves within the established
boundaries of what the law permits. This necessary obedience to the law’s
logic explains the two most important characteristics of play:

a) that it is not always possible to play;49

b) that whenever there is play, there is also, intentionally or not, the
expression of differentiated communicative effects with respect
to the “lawful” formulation.

These two characteristics can be seen just as clearly in the other two
examples presented above. Utterance 92 is a case of play within a context
(declaration matrices) in which, logically speaking, it is not always
allowed (for example, matrices that affirm or verify X—sé que ... [I know
that ...], he visto que ... [I’ve seen that ...]—or those that only speculate on
the possibility of X—es posible que ... [it’s possible that ...], es probable
que ... [it’s likely that ...], es verosímil que ... [it’s plausible that…]). As
the first condition—play being permitted with a supposition matrix—has
been fulfilled, we can recognize the variation in the degree of supposition
between Se sospecha que están and Se sospecha que estén. This difference
is the logical result of declaring or not declaring the informational content
of the supposition. Similarly, in the case of 93, on the one hand play
should logically be permitted (for example, somebody must have
previously declared that están escondidos [they’re hiding] for the speaker
to deny that declaration as a declaration, and not just the idea it contains).
On the other hand, it should be understood that the decision to play makes
that differentiated meaning (rejection of the declaration as a declaration,
not just the idea) explicit.

49
For example: contexts 1 and 3, in an absolute way; matrices of context 2A that
imply verification (“factive” predicates), such as “Sé que . . . [I know that . . .],”
“He descubierto que . . . [I have discovered that . . .]”; or any of the other cases that
lack the necessary environmental or intentional conditions.
 Chapter Title 53

In any case, it is essential to understand that play does not occur any time
either mood could logically be selected (we could simply call that “double
option”). In order to be truly explanatory as a concept, play must be
understood as an apparent violation of the “law of usage” that in fact
instrumentalizes its own law (the “law of meaning”) to create a
differentiating effect. For example, the indicative in 95 and the subjunctive
in 96 are not examples of play, as both are in strict accordance with the
law of usage (you will recall that what we must consider is the meaning of
the matrix):

95. Dice que vienes [He says that you’re coming; dice = declares  I]
96. Dice que vengas [He says for you to come; dice = asks  S]

The most operational way to explain these situations is simply to

recognize that “decir” is a “two-context” matrix (1/2A): a single matrix for
which mood selection depends on the meaning that infuses each utterance.
On the other hand, even using the same verb, we find moments of play, as
in the following:

97. Yo no he dicho que somos hermanos. [I didn’t say that we are

siblings.]

Strictly applying the law “Saying I don’t say X does not mean declaring X
but in fact quite the opposite,” I then choose the subjunctive:

98. Yo no he dicho que seamos hermanos.

And, in fact, any native speaker will read utterance 97 as “canonical” (that
is, obtained via a strict application of the law and thus pragmatically
unmarked), just as that same native will see 98 as less “canonical” (that is,
marked in some way), and thus feel compelled to reinterpret:

“If somebody says that he is not saying X but in fact says X, then:

a) he is referring to an earlier declaration made by another person

(someone has declared that ‘we are siblings’ and the speaker
rejects that person’s declaration);
54 Chapter Number

b) or in fact he is telling me that he is declaring X (claiming that

they are siblings)—that is, that the facts are as he has declared
them: he’s not just going around saying it”.50

The concept of play is not simply tacked on here to rationalize those

apparent inconsistencies that can arise in real-life usage of mood with
respect to a particular operational hypothesis (in this case, the “law of
usage” established above). It is, rather, a necessary demonstration that the
law works without exception. This hypothesis is, of course, quite relevant
for instruction: in a learning context, play reinforces law, offering it as a
valid tool for grammatical decision making (“If you always follow the law,
you’ll always do the right thing”). The student can at last take in and
comprehend the idea that other options are possible when she learns to use
the law in this direct manner. And so I would offer Margaret a simple
recommendation: “Don’t play until you know how to play”. After all, we
can claim no pedagogical success when Margaret produces an objectively
correct utterance such as “Lo que más me gusta es que tiene mucho dinero
[What I like best is that he has a lot of money]” if she is not aware that she
is playing; that is, if she is not aware that she is positively declaring that he
has a lot of money and not merely commenting on it. (Our supposed
success falls even more dramatically to pieces if he does not, in fact, have
a lot of money.)51

6. Conclusion
This, in short, is the foundation, the geographical model, and the guiding
logic for our excursion. We must build on it further: more work, reflection
on language in general and on Spanish in particular, confirmations that the
logic works and allows effective decision making, gradual expansion to
new matrices, immersion in the arena of discourse, awareness of pragmatic
circumstances. Because although offering Margaret a metaphorical car
may put her learning on wheels, she still has to learn to drive. First by
going in circles on a closed track, avoiding accidents and getting a feel for
being in control, then cruising in the city and on the highway, and finally
navigating rough dirt roads. Or, less whimsically, simply traversing those
paths that the student tends to or wishes to wander in her use of Spanish.

50
In fact, in the case of this matrix, there is yet a third “lawful” interpretation of
the subjuntive, the intentional subjunctive (context 1): “Yo no he dicho (pedido)
que seamos amigos” [I haven’t said (asked) for us to be friends].
51
More examples of play can be found in Chamorro (2006), pp. 183, 184, 189.
 Chapter Title 55

By this logic, then, we will have to patiently accompany Margaret on the

long road of trial and error that will one day lead her to “feel” the
subjunctive the way a native speaker feels it in everyday use. Or maybe
even feel it—why not?—like the satin lining of an evening gown. But
that’s another story.52

6. References
Achard, Michel. “The Meaning and Distribution of French Mood
Inflections”. In Frank Brisard (ed.): Grounding: The epistemic footing of
deixis and reference. Cognitive Linguistics Research Series 21. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 2002. Print.

Alonso Raya, Rosario, Alejandro Castañeda Castro, Pablo Martínez Gila,

Lourdes Miquel López, Jenaro Ortega Olivares and José Plácido Ruiz
Campillo. Gramática Básica del Estudiante del Español. Barcelona:
Difusión, 2005. Print.

Borrego Nieto, Julio, José Jesús Asencio Gómez and Emilio Jesús Prieto
de los Mozos. El subjuntivo. Valores y usos. Madrid: Sociedad General
Española de Librería, S.A., 1985. Print.

Bosque, Ignacio (ed.) Indicativo y subjuntivo. Madrid: Taurus, 1990. Print.

Brisard, Frank. (ed.) Grounding. The Epistemic Footing of Deixis and

Reference, Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002. Print.

Bybee, J., and T. Terrell (1990) “Análisis semántico del modo en

español,” in Bosque, I. (ed.). Print.

Castañeda Castro, A. “Implicaturas generalizadas de cantidad en el

rendimiento de algunas formas y oposiciones del sistema verbal español”
Language Design V. 5, 2004, 79–103. On line PDF file available:
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<http://elies.rediris.es/Language_Design/LD5/castaneda.pdf>

52
A lengthy real-life example of a didactic application of this approach can be
found in Alonso et al. (2005) for levels A1–B1 of the Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages, and in Chamorro et al. (2006) for level C1.
56 Chapter Number

——— . “Una visión cognitiva del sistema temporal y modal del verbo en
español,” in L. Cifuentes Honrubia and C. Marimón Llorca (eds.),
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(Estudios de Lingüística de la Universidad de Alicante), 2004, pp. 55–71.
Print.

Chamorro Guerrero, María Dolores, Gracia Lozano López, Aurelio Ríos

Rojas, Francisco Rosales Varo, José Plácido Ruiz Campillo and
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Davis, Joseph. Rule and meaning in the teaching of grammar. Language

and linguistics compass, vol. 1, issue 3, 2009, 199-221. Print.

Hadlich, Roger. Gramática Transformacional del Español, Madrid:

Gredos, 1973 Print.

Keenan, Joseph. Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish, Austin: UTP, 1994.

Langacker, Ronald Wayne. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume I:

Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University P, 1987. Print.

———. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume II: Descriptive

Application. Stanford: Stanford University P, 1991. Print.

Matte Bon, Francisco. Gramática Comunicativa del Español, Madrid:

Difusión, 1992. Print.

Mejías-Bikandi, Errapel. “Assertion and speaker’s intention. A

pragmatically based account of Mood in Spanish”, Hispania 77:529-39,
1994. Print.

Llopis García, Reyes Gramática Cognitiva para la Enseñanza del Español

como Lengua Extranjera. ASELE, Colección Monografías, nº14.
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Llopis García, Reyes, Juan Manuel Real Espinosa and José Plácido Ruiz
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 Chapter Title 57

Ruiz Campillo, José Plácido. “El subjuntivo es lógico: una actividad de

concienciación,” in Cervantes no. 2, pp. 33–36, Istanbul: Instituto
Cervantes de Estambul, 1995. On line PDF file available: Sede electrónica
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Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Web 24 marzo 2012.
<http://www.educacion.gob.es/redele/revistaRedEle/2004/segunda.html>

———. La enseñanza significativa del sistema verbal: un modelo

operativo, en Biblioteca RedELE, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia,
1998. Web 24 marzo 2012.
<http://www.educacion.gob.es/redele/Biblioteca-Virtual/2004>

———. “El concepto de no-declaración como valor del subjuntivo.

Protocolo de instrucción operativa del contraste modal en español”, in
Pastor, C. (coord.): Actas del programa de formación para profesorado de
ELE 2006–2007. Instituto Cervantes, Munich, Germany, 2007(a). Web 24
marzo 2012.
<http://www.cervantes-muenchen.de/es/05_lehrerfortb/Actas05-
06/3JosePlacido.pdf>

———. “¿El subjuntivo es lógico? Aprendiendo a pensar en subjuntivo /

Aprendiendo a decidir en subjuntivo”. Flash presentations in MarcoEle,
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<http://marcoele.com/el-subjuntivo-es-logico>

———. “El valor central del subjuntivo: ¿informatividad o

declaratividad?”. MarcoEle. Revista de Didáctica ELE, nº 7, 2008. Web
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