Some Optional Rules in Spanish Complementation, towards a Study of the Speaker's Intent

What is it about?

The goal of this book is to investigate the applicability of certain syntactic rules from the grammar of Spanish to the analysis of texts (written performances). The main rule considered is Mood-Insertion (Indicative vs. Subjunctive), which has the feature of being "optional", at least from a syntactic point of view. This rule, being optional, should not change meaning. However, pairs of sentences whose differences consist only in the application of the rule do show some difference of meaning, be it considered semantic or pragmatic. A "recognition" mechanism should thus be developed which applies to a text and shows certain "intention" which the speaker (or writer) had in uttering the message the way he or she did. Finally, chapter V shows how the rule can be applied to Certain Spanish texts drawn from the Press of the forties, to unmask the writer's intentions in producing the message the way it has been produced. I propose this chapter as a possible line of research to be further developed.

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Why is it important?

It simultaneously deals both with formal and applied linguistics.