Margarita Dimitrova, PhD
Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon
https://doi.org/10.53656/bel2022-5-3MD
Abstract. The subjunctive mood has been widely discussed from the perspective its selection in complements of volitional, directive and emotive-factive predicates (Picallo 1984, Raposo 1985, Ambar 1988, a.o.). Subjunctive questions and other type of subjunctive main clauses, on the other hand, have not been subject to much systematic research. Some works (Ambar 2016, Giannakidou 2016) suggest that, in main clauses, the selection of the subjunctive mood codifies the expression of the speaker’s evaluations. In line with this view, we discuss the syntactic expression of the Bulgarian dali-questions which do not consist in true requests for information but rather display a flavour of wondering encoded in the occurrence of dali and its morphological make up combining the subjunctive particle da and the interrogative particle li. Considering the properties of the Balkan subjunctive particles, we discuss the syntactic expression of Bulgarian dali-questions building on previous analyses of Bulgarian yes-no questions (Dimitrova 2020).
Keywords: Subjunctive mood; dali-questions; Balkan subjunctive particles