14.257, Review: Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics: Haverkate (2002)

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Subject: 14.257, Review: Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics: Haverkate (2002)

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Date:  Thu, 23 Jan 2003 11:30:33 +0000
From:  Jorge Porras <jorge.porras at SONOMA.EDU>
Subject:  The Synatx, Semantics, and Pragmatics of Spanish Mood

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Thu, 23 Jan 2003 11:30:33 +0000
From:  Jorge Porras <jorge.porras at SONOMA.EDU>
Subject:  The Synatx, Semantics, and Pragmatics of Spanish Mood

Haverkate, Henk. (2002). The Synatx, Semantics, and Pragmatics of
Spanish Mood.  John Benjamins Pubishers Co., paperback, ISBN 90 272
5347 1 (Eur) / 1 58811 252 6 (US) 235pp.

Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-2675.html


Jorge E. Porras, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA

DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK

In his introduction (p. 1), Haverkate states that this book is a
revised, Extended and updated version of his 1989 study, written in
Dutch. It provides A tripartite description and explanation of the
syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of the modal system of contemporary
Peninsular Spanish (basically, indicative and
subjunctive). Specifically, the syntactic analysis covers modal
variation in subordinate and non-subordinate clauses. The semantic
analysis covers the role of the truthfunctional categories of realis,
potentialis, and irrealis. The pragmatic analysis covers speech act
theory in terms of Grecian maxims, presupposition, relevance, and
politeness. Haverkate states that the present book has been especially
written for researchers and advanced-level students of Spanish
linguistics.

The book consists of a short introduction and six chapters, the last
one being The conclusion. Chapters vary considerably in length, from
three to four pages (1, 2 and 4) up to 141 pages (chapter 5). It also
contains a list of references and several indexes (corpus, subject,
proper names, and lexicion: pp. 225-235). In his conclusions
(pp. 197-98), Haverkate states that his book is a critical discussion,
revision, and elaboration of previous approaches to the study of
Spanish mood, where a new semantic classification of clause-embedding
predicates is proposed.

Chapter 1, ''Modal categories of the Spanish verb: Levels of
analysis'', Discusses five levels of analysis for the Spanish ''modos
verbales'': Phonetic, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and
pragmatic. About the phonetic level, Haverkate claims that
supra-segmental features play a major role, due to differences in
pitch and sentence stress, which he illustrates with an example:
''Cierra la puerta Juan'' (Juan closes the door) and ''Cierra la
puerta, Juan¡'' (Juan, please close the door). In the morphological
level, Haverkate equates the modal paradigms of Spanish to those of
tense, aspect, gender, number, and case, but he distinguishes the
imperative from the subjunctive by their functional role
(p. 4). Syntactically, he makes an analysis of subordinate and
non-subordinate clauses, with more attention put on the latter. He
notes that the occurrence of the imperative is restricted to
non-subordinate clauses. While the indicative is not subject to this
constraint, the main working area of the subjunctive is the
subordinate clause.  Haverkate makes a tripartite classification of
Spanish mood in terms of noun, adjective, and adverbial clauses, and
he claims that, semantically, ''the truthfunctional categories of
realis, potentialis, and irrealis play a major part in interpreting
the variation of the indicative and the subjunctive''.  He also claims
that mood selection in noun clauses is dependent to a large extent on
the lexical class-membership of the embedding predicate'' (p. 4).

Chapter 2, ''Functions of the modal categories of the Spanish verb''
outlines the features of the pragmatic component of the modos
verbales.  Haverkate considers these categories as expressions of
illocutionary functions, according to the theory of speech acts
(Searle 1976). Assertive speech acts are defined in terms of the
speaker's intention, and thus ''serve the purpose of convincing the
hearer that the speaker commits himself/herself to the truth of the
proposition expressed'', while directive speech acts '' influence the
intentional behavior of the hearer in such a way that the latter
carries out the action specified by the proposition'' (p. 7). In
non-subordinate clauses, the indicative mood characterizes assertive
sentences; the imperative typifies directive sentences. In turn, the
subjunctive is mainly restricted to subordinate clauses. This mood,
however, characterizes a type of speech act not explicitly mentioned
by Searle: oraciones optativas, that is, sentences expressing wishes
or desires that cannot be fulfilled by human agents, such as ¨''Muera
el general¡'' (Away with the general), ''Viva el presidente'' (Long
live the president).

Chapter 3, ''The modal structure of non-subordinate clauses''
(pp. 11-40), Resumes topics outlined in the previous two chapters,
that is, the different Illocutionary functions fulfilled by the
imperative and the (optative) subjunctive, on the one hand, and the
indicative, on the other, in non-subordinate clauses.  Such functions
include, for the imperative and optative subjunctive, speech acts
Defined by the world-to-words direction of fit, which ''serve the
purpose of bringing About a state of affairs not existing at coding
time'' (p. 11).

This chapter consists of an analysis of the three categories, in
corresponding subdivided sections, following a tripartite
sentence-level model: syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. Here, and
throughout the book, Haverkate illustrates with examples taken from a
corpus, and critical revisions on previous research on each topic. It
is shown that selection is determined by the illocutionary function of
imperatives. After Dick 1980, he distinguishes four types of
predicates:action, process, position, and state, with two distinctive
features underlying this typology, control and dynamic; he concludes
with a survey that only action and position verbs may be inflected for
imperative mood. For the pragmatic function, Haverkate argues that,
unlike English, the Spanish imperative is commonly used to make a
request, not an order.

The section dedicated to indicative sentences, (p. 21), begins by
making a comparison between the paradigmatic systems of indicative and
imperative.  While the imperative consists of two paradigms only,
affirmative and negative, The indicative is made up of nine paradigms
which, in contrast to imperative, are distinguished by a set of
semantic parameters bearing on the categories of tense, aspect and
truth value (present, future, pluperfect, etc. Here, four parameters
are specified for the points of the realis-irrealis scale: real,
possible, probable, and unreal. The author also makes comments on a
set of adverbs and adverbials that can modify the assertive force of
indicative sentences: ''indudablemente'' (undoubtedly), ''de seguro''
(surely), and ''con certeza'' (with certainty), which are compatible
only with indicative moo. As for the pragmatic function of indicative
sentences, Haverkate discusses some typological matters such as the
non-existence of an interrogative mood and the fact that assertives
area crucial part of verbal interaction, hence their wide verb
membership, and that commissives are the mirror image of directives

The section on subjunctive sentences is devoted mostly to show the
considerable differences existing between the paradigmatic systems of
subjunctive and indicative (nine for the indicative and only for the
indicative); for example, there are no subjunctive counterparts of the
preterito indefinido and the preterito imperfecto. A syntactic
contrast of the two modal systems is made with comments on clitic
order and subject behavior, among others. The semantics of subjunctive
sentences is tackled from two different perspectives: the lexical
meaning of the predicate and the realis-irrealis scale, to which
Haverkate adds another scale: realizable and non-realizable wishes. In
analyzing optative subjunctive from a speech act point of view, the
author identifies for Spanish a world-changing function and an
expressive function.

Haverkate next examines assertive subjunctive sentences, which are
formally determined by the occurrence of dubitative adverbs or
adverbials. To cite just one example, ''Tal vez lo haya visto'' (May
be he - SUB - has seen it), is a statement referring to a state of
affairs which, according to the realis-irrealis scale, should be
qualified as hypothetical or possible, an interpretation stemmed from
the lexical meaning of tal vez. The author assumes, more generally,
that the use of the subjunctive in non-subordinate clauses is
relatively infrequent, something that is paralleled by limited
illocutionary potential.

Finally, as for the pragmatic function of subjunctive sentences,
Haverkate Defines optative sentences, within a speech-act frame of
reference, at the Linguistic output of a particular class of
directives. That is, optative speakers utter a wish to become true in
a future world For example, he shows that pluperfect optatives may
function as indirect speech acts and that the non-subordinate
subjunctive serves the purpose of either softening or strengthening
the force of the speech act. This past subjunctive also has the
perlocutionary effect of expressing more than conditionals. The
conclusion from this section is that research on this topic calls for
a distinction between three levels of analysis.

Chapter 4, ''Que-sentences'', deals with a brief examination of some
syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of this category.
Syntactically, que-sentences could be viewed as a hybrid category
sharing properties of both subordinate and non-subordinate
sentences. On one hand, que may function as a complementizer and, on
the other, these sentences are not embedded in a matrix clause.
Pragmatically, they perform a variety of illocutionary functions as
they may be used to express assertions, orders, promises, and
wishes. An example of an order (emphatic directive) is: ''¡Que se
siente Ud¡'' (Sit down, I say¡); ''¡Que se lo pagare todo¡'' (I
shall pay you everything¡), expresses a promise (emphatic assertive).
Haverkate places sentences such as ''Que en paz descanse'', (God rest
her soul), ''Que descanses'' (Sleep well), and ''Que lo pases bien''
(Good luck to you), in a separate class, optatives. These sentences
typically function as politeness formulas.  He explains that ''(d)ue
to their conventional use, they lack the emphatic or reiterative
strength typifying assertive and directive que-sentences'' (p. 43).

Chapter 5, ''The modal structure of subordinate clauses'', contains a
detailed, thorough account of the indicative and the subjunctive in
the subordinate clause within the framework of the tripartite
distinction between noun, adverbial and adjective clauses Four
syntactic functions of noun clauses are considered: Subject, direct
object, prepositional object, and nominal predicate, in each of which
both the indicative and the subjunctive may appear. The prototypical
complementizer of noun clauses is the conjunction que. In introducing
adverbial clauses, Haverkate finds that they differ from noun clauses
in important ways. First, they do not fill argument slots but maintain
a peripheral relation with the main predicate of the sentence;
secondly, they use many more conjunctions than just two in the noun
clause (que and si). The last type of subordinate clause, the
adjective (or relative) clause differs, at the same time, from the
preceding two in that the two former operate at the level of the
sentence, whereas the latter operates at the hierarchically lower
level of the noun phrase.  Haverkate introduces this section with a
review of relevant literature on the subject. He claims, for example,
that Terrell and Hooper 1974 analysis is not optimal because it lacks
appropriately defined taxonomic criteria, and is not maximal because
it does not specify the class of clause embedding predicates.  These
two terms come from his own proposal for the semantic classification
of clause-embedding predicates: ''Optimal means that the
classification reflects in both a consistent and a coherent way that
part of the world that is described by the predicates in
question''. Maximal means that, ''it includes all clause-embedding
predicates of the language'' (p. 132). Basically, Haverkate shows that
clause-embedding predicates share the property of providing
information on the set of mental processes that characterize
intentional human behavior. In chronological order, the first class
dealt with is the acquisition of knowledge predicates, which describe
the processing of perceptual and conceptual information. The second
class consists of predicates describing the storing and assessing of
the input information; there are two subclasses here: cognition and
evaluation predicates. The third class describes those categories
involved in the output of Intentional behavior, with three subclasses
denoting causative acts, mental acts, and speech acts For the
cognition predicates, Haverkate cites examples with verbs such as
saber (to know): epistemic; creer (to believe): doxastic), and dudar
(to doubt): dubitative. He makes an important distinction between
subject meaning and speaker meaning, which accounts for the use of the
indicative in the sentence, ''Mi novia duda que soy millonario'' (My
girlfriend doubts that I am - IND - a millionaire), which leads to the
interpretation that the speaker (not the subject) of the sentence, as
a polyphonic source, presupposes the factuality of being a
millionaire.

Another important distinction made by Haverkate is between foreground
(or focalized) and background (or de-focalized) information, to refer
to information which is either new or already known to the hearer
(cf. Tomlin 1985).  This concept is used, for instance, in his
analysis of evaluation predicates.  (both rational and
emotional). About the latter, for example the subclass describing
positive attitude, Haverkate states that the use of emotional
predicates, gustar (to like), encantar (to enjoy thoroughly) and
alegrar (make happy ''does not focalize the propositional content of
the subordinate clause but the evaluative judgment on that proposition
denoted by the main clause'' (p. 95). This implies that the use of the
subjunctive corresponds with a low degree of information value. Some
conclusions about the modal distribution in the subordinate clauses of
Spanish cognition and evaluation predicates are: In sentences
containing an evaluation predicate, backgrounding of the content of
the embedded proposition requires the use of the subjunctive, whereas
foregrounding of the content requires the indicative.  Epistemic and
doxastic predicates select the indicative; dubitatives select the
subjunctive if a judgment of true or false can be made; if the
proposition is deemed true, the indicative is used.

Next, action predicates are analyzed. They describe the different
output Categories of intentional human behavior. Syntactically, there
are those which do not take complement clauses: viajar (to travel),
bailar (to dance), salir (to leave); And those which do: impedir (to
prevent), pensar (to think), informar (to inform).  Semantically,
complement-taking action predicates are classified as causative,
mental, and speech acts. Syntactically, causative predicates run
parallel with desideratives in that they select either the subjunctive
or the infinitive. In either case, the indicative is
excluded. Semantically, they are related, too, because their use
creates a temporal relation between the main and the subordinate
clause, defined in terms of prospectivity. Also, there is a large
class of two-place predicates, and a small class of three-place
predicates. An example of the latter is: ''La policia les obligo a
desalojar el lugar'' (The police obliged them to vacate the building).

Mental acts describe thinking processes. They are generated by acts of
thinking, acts of making a prediction, and acts of creating a world of
belief. Some predicates such as demostrar (to prove) are
process-oriented, while others such as inferir (to deduce) are
agent-oriented. Predicting acts, in turn, imply making an assertion on
a future; an example is adivinar (to guess). Although it means an
unreal state of affairs, these predicats take the indicative because
the speaker is confident enough about that the state of affairs will
become true. Last, acts creating a world of belief, such as fingir
(pretend), also perform in indicative because the speaker conceives
the states of affairs in the imaginary world as a reality in that
world. Direct discourse serves as an evidentiality marker.  In
indirect discourse, however, evidentiality applies to so-called de re
representations. Assertives use predicates such as decir (to say). In
both direct and indirect speech, the mood of the original assertion is
reproduced in the complement clause. Haverkate makes it clear that
agreement of mood is not matched by agreement of tense, and he
analyses examples.

The class of directive speech acts makes a distinction between
interrogative And non-interrogative acts; only the former elicits a
verbal response from the hearer. Another distinction holds between
direct and indirect performances As for the class of commissives
characterized by predicates such as prometer (to promise), garantizar
(to guarantee), and jurar (to swear), the indicative is used with
direct reports, whereas in indirect discourse this mood alternates
with the infinitive. Finally, expressives enable the speaker to
express a psychological state. They are realized by expressions
lacking propositional content, for example: gracias (thanks) and
perdon (sorry). The event described is backgrounded, so the
information is given by the performative use of the expressive main
predicate.  Thus, the subjunctive is used.

The second longest section of this book is the one on adverbial
clauses (pp.133-182. The following categories are considered: Time,
manner, purpose, cause, consequence, concession, and condition. To
begin with, temporal clauses are divided into three classes, according
to their simultaneous, successive, or temporal specification: Mientras
(while), despues (de) que (after), antes (de) que (before,), cuando
(when), are respective examples. The use of despues and antes creates
retrospective and prospective relation, respectively. This criterion
usually triggers subjunctive mood.

As happens with these and other conjunctions treated here, their use
may Express more than one relational meaning; mientras, for instance,
not only Expresses simultaneity, but its use also implies that the
speaker looks at the states Of affairs described from a contrastive
point of view, like in the following sentence: ''Yo me alojo en una
pension, mientras que el se hospeda en el Castellana Hilton: (I am
staying at a guesthouse, whereas he is ? IND ? staying at Castellana
Hilton. Some conclusions for these clauses are: with cuando, the
indicative is used in both factual and non-factual clauses. Just like
mientras and cuando, en cuanto (as soon as) and tan pronto como (as
soon as), may introduce iterative clauses; iterative aspect is
emphasized by cada vez (whenever), siempre que (whenever), and hasta
que (until). Subordinate clauses marking the beginning of the event
expressed by the main clause are generally introduced by the
conjunction desde que (since).

Manner clauses, such as como (as) and a medida que (as) allow both
moods to Appear as fillers of the modal slot of the clause, since it
must be attributed a realis or an irrealis interpretation. Purpose
clauses, Haverkate explains, are intrinsically related with cause,
consequence, concession, and condition- indicating clauses, and they
refer to the output of intentional behavior. The typical conjunction
of this class is para que (in order to). Cause and consequence clauses
are both dominated by the indicative pattern, whose primary function
is to enhance the relevance of the statement made in the main
clause. Typical conjunctions are porque (because) and por (lo) tanto
(therefore). After the tripartite analysis of these clauses, with the
customary critical revision of the literature, Concessive clauses are
introduced by a diversity of conjunctions and connectors, some of
which are: si bien (although), por mas que (no matter how), por mucho
que (no matter how much), and (aun) a riesgo de que (even at the risk
that). The most frequently used and extensively studied is aunque
(although). From a truthfunctional point of view, this conjunction
shows a maximum distributional potential, since it is employed to
introduce realis, potentialis, and irrealis clauses.  However, por mas
que and por mucho que, for example, only take the subjunctive.

Finally, the analysis of conditional clauses. Haverkate points out
that these clauses are fundamentally distinct from other types of
adverbial sentences in that the main and the subordinate clause are
strictly interdependent.  This can be seen by comparing the following
two sentences, where their coordinative constructions cannot be
paraphrased: '' Si tu padre viene, me marcho yo¨(If your father comes
- IND -, I shall leave) vs. ''Tu padre viene; me marcho yo'' (Your
father is coming; I shall leave). Haverkate shows that, consistently,
indeed, the si (if) conjunction takes the indicative, and embarks
himself in a truth functional analysis of conditional sentences. It
yields a threefold classification based on the realis, potentialis or
irrealis interpretation of the causal link between the protasis (the
subordinate clause), and the apodosis (the main clause). Haverkate.
concludes this section with three isolated phenomenon involving
morphological, syntactic, and semantic facts.

The next two sections close the book: Adjective clauses (pp. 182-193)
and de que-clauses (194-196). As for adjective clauses, a fundamental
point of departure is the traditional distinction between restrictive
and non-restrictive clauses, illustrated as follows: ''Los alumnos que
vivian lejos llegaron tarde a la escuela'' (The pupils who lived far
away arrived at school late). This sentence is restrictive or
especificativa. If the clause ''que vivian lejos'' is between commas
(or pauses), the sentence becomes non-restrictive or explicativa .
Restrictive clauses perform a referential function; non-restrictive
ones do not.  The realis character of the non-restrictive proposition
brings about the use of the indicative mood (with two exceptions, not
included here).

The analysis of restrictive clauses is more complex. Haverkate
examines their syntactic properties in terms of mood distribution as
well as their semantic characteristics in terms of the realis,
potentialis and irrealis parameter. He discusses the following four
situations: (I) The existence or non-existence of the entity referred
to is focussed in. (II) The entity referred to may exist in a virtual
world (III) The entity referred to cannot be identified.  (IV) It is
not obvious whether the entity referred to fits the description
given. Haverkate concludes that, despite statistical research showing
indicative predominance, modal distinction should be described in
terms of contrastive distribution.  The last section of Chapter 5, de
que-clauses, is short in length, but not easy. It deals with a ''minor
category'' of noun clauses which, despite their resem blance to
adjective clauses, have a quite different grammatical
status. Haverkate compares two sentences, one with an adjective clause
and one with a noun clause: ''La idea de que me hablaste ayer me
parece de dificil plasmacion'' (The idea you talked - IND - to me
about yesterday seems to me dificult to implant) vs. ''La idea de que
el presidente dimita inmediatamente no es compartida por todos'' (The
idea that the president should - SUBJ - immediately is not shared by
everyone). While the que element in the relative clause is a relative
pronoun that functions, among other things, as an anaphoric link to
the antecedent, and also as a prepositional complement of the
predicate hablaste, in the noun clause it is a complementizer with no
referential meaning.  Haverkate cites other examples and, following
Solano-Araya 1987, he points out that the lexical meaning of the
complement-taking noun, rather than the realis or the irrealis
interpretations of the complement proposition, may trigger the use of
a specific mood. However, H. does not buy Fente´s 1997 proposal that
there exists a tendency in formal speech registers to use the
subjunctive . Furthermore, the complement-taking noun is subject to
the constraint that it expresses abstract meaning. Instead, Haverkate
supports Guitarte´s 1984 proposal that in sentence-initial position,
the el hecho (de) que clause typically provides thamatic (i.e,
presupposed) information.  Haverkate provides the example: ''El heco
de que venga a vernos significa que nos tiene afecto'' (The fact that
he is -SUB - coming to see us means that he has affection for us), and
observes that since the front clause is de-emphasized the subjunctive
is used.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

This book clearly satisfies the goals set up by its
author. Furthermore, it presents a rigorous and detailed linguistic
analysis of Spanish mood. It is well written, well thought out, and
consistent in approach and theoretical conception. Certainly, it
proves to be a rich source of information and serious analysis about
the Spanish indicative and subjunctive. No doubt, it constitutes an
important contribution to the field.

Some critical comments follow, which should not affect the overall
high quality of the book. Two topics are treated somewhat hastily,
considering their importance, On one hand, chapter 4, Que-sentences,
appears to fall short in exploring some pragmatic approaches such as
ellipsis resolution in conversational discourse, particularly in
relation to mood selection. It needs some expansion, for example, on
the semantic analysis of its logical form. On the other hand, section
5.4, on de que-clauses, needs more clarification on the typological
status of the category involved. Also, it is not quite clear that the
mere position of the el hecho que-clause determines mood selection
(p. 194). Both orders sound grammatical: ''El hecho de que venga a
vernos significa que nos tiene afecto'' (The fact that he is - SUB -
coming to see us means that he has affection for us), and ''Significa
que nos tiene afecto el hecho de que venga a vernos''. What seems
clear, however, is that the indicative is excluded at sentence-initial
position, but not at final position, which is consistent with the
(de)-focalization theory. This fact should put in perspective the
convenience of a pragmati consideration in this respect.

Also mentioned should be the fact that the analysis of conditional
clauses Calls for a more comprehensive account. One point that comes
to mind is a treatment of conditionals in terms of modal variation in
the apodosis: ''Si tuviera dinero, compria, compraba, comprara un
coche'' (If I had money, I would - COND, IND, SUB - buy a car), (See
e.g. Silva-Corvalan 1982); Sohrman 1991); another point may emerge in
connection with tense (see e.g, Tynan 1997). Similarly, the analysis
of the imperative, although relevant in regard with the speech act
theory, needs to be tackled more aggressively from a morphological
point of view. A question to pose would be whether there are
imperative parameters the way there are imperative rules. (See e.g,
Harris 1997). By the way, morphological accounts are frequent
throughout the book, which suggest that a consideration about a fourth
level of analysis could be useful.

Although this reviewer does not concur with the grammaticality of some
examples In the book, it is proper to acknowledge that Peninsula
Spanish differs from Latin American Spanish in potentially important
respects, and also that dialectal variation has been taken into
consideration throughout the book. In a different vein, a semantic
disparity is observed in the concept deonti c, as used by Haverkate,
on one hand, and by F. R. Palmer 1986, on the other. Haverkate uses
This term to refer to predicates that, ''express the necessity that a
certain change In the world take place'' (p. 91), and he cites the
expressions ser preciso, ser imprescindible, and ser conveniente,
Palmer, in turn, uses it (in opposition to epistemic) to refer to
volition predicates such as querer, desear, and the like. The latter
are termed desideratives by Haverkate. (See Porras 1990 for an
analysis of Spanish subjunctive in Palmer´s terms).

A final comment on the organization of the book is in order. This
reviewer found it a little difficult to read through the
chapters. This is probably due to the scarcity of summaries and
diagrams. A more reader-friendly layout would be to divide the book in
three parts, one for each level of analysis, and to make a more
balanced distribution of chapters and sections.

Bibliography

Harris, James (1997). ''There is no imperative paradigm in Spanish'',
in Martinez-Gil, Fernadoñ Morales-Front, Alfonso, eds .Issues in the
phonology And morphology of the major Iberian languages. Washington,
DC: Georgetown UP

Porras, Jorge E.  (1990).  ''Analisis semantico del uso del subjuntivo
espanol'', in Discurso hispanico 7.2, pp. 387-394

Serrano, Maria J.  (1996) ''El subjuntivo ?ra y ?se en oraciones
condicionales'', in Estudios filologicos 31, pp. 129-140

Silva-Corvalan, Carmen (1982) ''Conditional for subjunctive in Old
Castile'', in Maccauley, Monica et ale, eds. Proceedings of the Eighth
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley: UCB UP

Sohrman, Ingmar (1991). Las construcciones condicionales en castellano
contemporaneo. Upsala: Upsala UP

Tynan, John; Delgado Lavin, Eva (1997) ''Mood, tense, and the
interpretation of conditionals'', in Dirven, Rene, ed. On conditionals
again. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jorge Porras is Associate Professor of Hispanic linguistics at Sonoma
State University (Rohnert Park, California), and serves as coordinator
of the Spanish Program. His research interests include phonology,
morphology, Spanish for native speakers in the US, and
sociolinguistics (especially, Spanish-based Creoles and language
contact).


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