Subjectivity and intersubjectivity in conditionals: temporal backshifiting strategies in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This work takes a Cognitive Linguistics perspective on Brazilian Portuguese conditional constructions. Based on mental spaces theory (FAUCONNIER, 1994, 1997; FAUCONNIER; SWEETSER, 1996) and on mental spaces work on conditionals (SWEETSER, 1990; DANCYGIER, 1998; DANCYGIER; SWEETSER, 2005), the research relied on recent contributions on subjectivity and intersubjectivity (LANGACKER, 1990; TRAUGOTT; DASHER, 2005; VERHAGEN, 2005), and its developments based on the notion of Basic Communicative Space Network (BCSN) (SANDERS; SANDERS; SWEETSER, 2009; FERRARI; SWEETSER, 2012). Drawing on written corpus data, which includes journalistic and literary texts, we focus on conditionals which may alternate between the future of the subjunctive and the present of the indicative, in the protasis, and between the present and the future of the indicative, in the apodosis. Four groups of conditionals that displayed distinct relations between mood/tense selection and cognitive motivations were identified. The main contribution of the paper is that it provides a unified framework for relating mood/tense alternations in conditionals to the speaker’s subjective and/or intersubjective perspective.