Forces behind the scene

Abstract This paper offers a semantic account of mood choice in non-subordinate subjunctive clauses, excluding those where the subjunctive is licensed by overt markers (e.g., Quizás ‘Perhaps’, Ojalá ‘I hope’/‘If only’). The analysis is based on the model proposed in García Yanes ( 2022 ; 2025b ), which has emerged as a compelling alternative to epistemic, truth-conditional, and pragmatic accounts of mood. From this perspective, the use of the subjunctive in these clauses is understood as a result of their profiling of a goal process within a force dynamics pattern, described from the antagonist’s perspective, as required by the model. Their different interpretations — as directives, optatives, or emotional-evaluatives — are, in turn, explained by their association with different types of force-dynamic patterns — sociophysical, volitive-epistemic, and emotional-attitudinal, respectively — a distinction that also underlies the categorization of nominal clauses proposed in my earlier work.