Extensional vs. intensional world anchoring

Farkas started out her analysis by looking at some of the earlier truth-commitment approaches to subjunctive vs. indicative mood distinctions, noting some problems with them and proposing to refine them. First of all, she proposed that the truth of the proposition must be relativized to what she calls individual anchors and the world(s) associated with those individual anchors, the latter functioning as the modal base for a given proposition. Thus, for instance, in simple assertions such as the one in (43), the individual anchor is the speaker and the modal base in which the proposition’s truth obtains is the actual world of the speaker.

(43) John has a sister.

On the other hand, when it comes to subordination, the relevant individual anchor is not the speaker but the matrix subject. Thus, if we look, for instance, at complements to epistemic predicates, as in in (44), the embedded proposition (i.e. “John has a sister”) is true in the world anchored to the subject, but not necessarily true in the actual world of the speaker, as shown by the possibility of contradictory continuation in (45):

(44) Mary thinks that John has a sister.

(45) Mary thinks that John has a sister, but he doesn’t.

One of the reasons why Farkas considered that truth commitment as such should not be seen as the crucial factor behind mood selection are data related to fiction verbs such as those

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in (46) and (47). These types of predicates introduce propositions that cannot be true either in the world of the speaker or in the world of the matrix subject, and are hence not veridical, but they still systematically select the indicative across languages, as we can see below.

(46) J’ ai rêvé que j’ étais au lycée à nouveau. (French) I have dreamt that I wasIND in high school again

‘I dreamt that I was in high school again.’

(47) Mintió que yo era el culpable. (Spanish)

lied3.sg. that I wasIND the culprit

‘He lied that I was the culprit.’

Farkas thus proposed that the relevant criterion behind mood choice is not truth commitment but rather the type of world anchoring associated with a given proposition. What distinguishes all of the indicative complements we observed in (43-47) from their subjunctive counterparts selected by verbs such as desideratives or directives is the fact that the propositions associated with the former are anchored to a single world (which may or may not correspond to the actual world), whereas subjunctive-related propositions can only be anchored to a set of possible worlds. Farkas defined the former type of anchoring as extensional and the latter as intensional.

The predicates that she defined as extensional (i.e. those that anchor the embedded proposition to a particular world; e.g. say, affirm, think, believe, lie, dream etc.) will select the indicative in the embedded clause, whereas verbs that can be defined as intensional (i.e. those that do not anchor the embedded proposition to any single world but to a set of possible worlds; e.g. want, desire, order, insist etc.) will select the subjunctive. This is the origin of the notion of intensional subjunctive that I use extensively in this dissertation as well.

Farkas recognized, however, that not all types of subjunctives conform to the definition of intensionality as I just described it. This is the case, for instance, with subjunctive complements introduced under factive-emotive or epistemic predicates (i.e. Subj2-type complements, as they were defined here), which involve extensional world-anchoring. Farkas accounted for those cases of subjunctive distribution on the basis of the observation that, unlike intensional subjunctives, where the use of subjunctive morphology is constant, these other types of subjunctives exhibit variability with the indicative mood (as we could already observe here in 1.2 as well). Farkas used this observation in order to propose a generalization which stated

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that those cases of subjunctive distribution which are not predictable on semantic grounds (i.e.

those which do not correspond to the definition of intensional subjunctives) involve complements selected through an arbitrary mood feature, which explains the variability in mood choice that they exhibit, whereas intensional subjunctives are selected through a specified subjunctive feature, hence the lack of mood-choice optionality in this type of complements. In this sense, my distinction between Subj1 and Subj2 in terms of selection is similar to, and partly based on, Farkas’ distinction between intensional subjunctives and other types of subjunctives on the basis of the type of mood feature that is used to introduce them.

Nevertheless, our two perspectives also differ in some important ways. Most significantly, I claim that mood selection by the matrix predicate involves different embedded clause types, and that the difference between the stable and the unstable use of subjunctive (Subj1 vs. Subj2, respectively) is related to whether the subjunctive is selected by the predicate under a separate subjunctive CP clause type or whether it is introduced through a different syntactic mechanism under a different CP clause type. The cases where we observe variability between the use of the indicative and the subjunctive mood in the embedded clause will be analyzed as involving indicative CP-complementation, with the possibility of introducing subjunctive morphology in the embedded clause through a later, post-selection syntactic mechanism.²⁴ The advantage of this approach is that it will allow me to explain why Subj2 complements, such as those introduced under factive-emotive or epistemic-type predicates, exhibit a cluster of formal and semantic clausal properties in which they differ from intensional (Subj1) subjunctive complements while patterning with indicatives, as we will observe in more detail once I focus specifically on this type of complements later on in 6. Such clausal contrasts between Subj1 and Subj2 complements are not explained under Farkas’ approach.

Nevertheless, some aspects related to Farkas’ theoretical perspective that I just briefly outlined will be greatly relevant for the analysis that I will propose in the subsequent parts of this dissertation. In particular, the distinction that she established between extensional and intensional world-anchoring will be crucial when it comes to accounting for the different types of selection mechanisms that underlie indicative and subjunctive complementation. This is because the semantic contrast between extensional and intensional world-anchoring will be seen as related to marked vs. default selection strategies in embedded syntactic environments.

More specifically, extensional anchoring, whereby the embedded proposition is anchored to a single, specific world will be analyzed as a more marked option from a conceptual point of

24 See Chapter 6, Section 6.1 for a more detailed presentation of this analysis.

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view than intensional anchoring, whereby the embedded proposition is only anchored to a non-specified set of possible worlds. This will allow me to justify the claim, briefly sketched out earlier on in 1.2.1, according to which extensionally-anchored indicative complements should be seen as selected as a marked embedded option, whereas subjunctive (in particular Subj1) complements, which do not exhibit this type of world-anchoring, are selected by default. This analysis will be further developed a bit later on, once I relate Farkas’ theoretical perspective to the one put forward in Portner (1997).