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SUMMARY
‘Is there an ongoing change in the use of the subjunctive mood?’
Keywords: syntax, mood, indicative mood, subjunctive mood, syntactic variation
This paper discusses the variation and change in Modem Icelandic in the use of pres-
ent indicative versus subjunctive mood in subordinate clauses with the conjunction
hvort ‘whether’. Lately there has been a debate about the decline in the use of the
subjunctive mood and concems have been expressed regarding this development.
This paper explores whether this is indeed the case by examining a corpus of hvort-
clauses in the present tense. It is argued that the use of the subjunctive is rather in-
creasing than decreasing.
The corpus includes 1484 examples from Old Icelandic to Modem Icelandic, i.e.,
ffom around 1200 to 2003. In the examples from the latter half of the twentieth cen-
tury, the subordinate clauses were also categorised according to the authors’ age.
This was done by using the decade of the author’s birth as a parameter in order to ex-
plore if the younger writers were more prone to use the subjunctive than the older
ones.
It was assumed that the meaning of the main verb in the matrix clause was signi-
ficant in the choice of mood in a /ivort-clause. For that reason this meaning was ana-
lyzed and the clauses classified accordingly into five groups labelled with verbs that
can be regarded as characteristic for the meaning of each group: spyrja ‘ask , vita
‘know’, athuga ‘examine’, ákveða ‘decide’, and efa ‘doubt’.
The study reveals great variation in the use of mood in /ívort-sentences in the
present tense. Occasionally the examples were too few in numbers for the research to
be applicable. However, it is apparent just by looking at Table /, that the use of the
subjunctive mood has been on the increase throughout the centuries in all five groups
of different meanings.
In Table 2, which contains examples from the latter half of the twentieth century
catagorised according to the authors’ age, it is apparent that all age groups use the
subjunctive when the meaning of the main verb in the matrix clause is spyrja ‘ask’.
There is not a noticable change when the meaning is efa ‘doubt’, but in the other three
groups, vita ‘know’, athuga ‘examine’ and ákveða ‘decide’, the use of the subjunc-
tive has increased substantially in the youngest age group.
The hypothesis that the use of the subjunctive mood in /nwí-sentences has in-
creased and is still on the increase appears to be fully substantiated. It also begs reflec-
fion if this is not also the case in other forms of syntax.
Guórún Þórðardóttir
Hávallagötu 39
IS-101 Reykjavík, ÍSLAND
Sl<drut@ismennt. is