| The main objectives of this investigation are: to describe the use of the present subjunctive with the purpose of confirming or discarding the possible attrition or erosion of Spanish subjunctive within a heterogeneous speech community as is the Mexican from Monterrey; to identify in order to classify all samples as uttered by three groups of 16 women and 16 men, who by educational level are identified as A, illiterate, B, with some schooling, and C, with a university degree; to find those similar syntactic contexts where there may be modal variation; quantify the resulting samples to compare and contrast by group as well as by gender; to establish possible equivalence with similar studies; and to show percentage rates and statistical indicators that may clarify one of the two criteria indicated on the first objective.; Theoretical linguistic approaches are discussed with respect to the concepts of mood and modality, from traditional to contemporary perspectives, the purpose being to find the present trend that situates and explains the non assertive role subjunctive mood has.; The linguistic analysis of the subjunctive mood that I followed is based on syntactic, semantic and pragmatic criteria in order to classify and explain all the samples which were collected from transcribed interviews whose duration averages 60 minute. The classifying methodology parallels that by José G. Moreno de Alba (1978) on the cultivated speech of Mexico City. This study is focused on the obligatory use of subjunctive in contexts that are favorable such as independent and subordinate clauses.; My linguistic approach centers on the grammatical description of the present subjunctive according to the classification proposed here for independent and subordinate structures. The former is divided into dubitative, optative and imperative. The last two are further divided into subgroups that match their assigned descriptive function. The subordinate or dependent structures are divided into, (i) nominal: subject and direct object ones; (ii) adjectival: relative, deictic relative and adnominals ones; and (iii) adverbials: circumstantial, quantitative and causative ones, these three further subdivided, and a brief group for adverbials with prepositional verbs.; The goal of the last part is to compare and contrast the results of the investigation that for the most part confirm, at least for the present, that the subjunctive in the speech of Monterrey shows signs of being effective, active and retained. It also shows that there is a fairly clear distinction as far as the use of indicative and subjunctive mood is concerned. |
