Open AccessThe Meaning of Mood – Embedded Clauses in Spanish as a Case in Point
Author(s) -
Helle Dam-Jensen
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
hermes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.759
H-Index - 7
eISSN - 1903-1785
pISSN - 0904-1699
DOI - 10.7146/hjlcb.v24i47.97566
Subject(s) - meaning (existential) , morpheme , linguistics , context (archaeology) , semantics (computer science) , point (geometry) , psychology , interpretation (philosophy) , cognition , mood , process (computing) , space (punctuation) , mental process , computer science , social psychology , mathematics , philosophy , psychotherapist , paleontology , geometry , neuroscience , biology , programming language , operating system
Mental space theory is a cognitive framework that explains the interpretation of linguistic expressions: it explains how interlocutors get from input to output. Whereas in traditional semantics words are taken to possess a static, prefabricated meaning, cognitive frameworks take meaning to be the result of an interpretive process.This article explains how mental space theory can be used in an analysis of mood in embedded clauses in Spanish. It starts from the assumption that the meaning of mood is constructed by interlocutors in an interpretive process on the basis of information from the modal morphemes combined with information from the linguistic as well as the extra-linguistic context. The interpretive process is represented as a sequence of mental spaces which are linked and structured on the basis of information from language and context.