Modally interpreted relative clauses in Spanish: The role of mood

Abstract

Volitional action verbs like comprar ‘buy’ allow for mood alternation between indicative and subjunctive in an embedded relative clause in Spanish, with subjunctive mood leading to a modally flavored interpretation absent in the indicative counterpart. To analyse this interpretive contrast, Alonso-Ovalle, Menéndez-Benito and Rubinstein (2024) treat mood as introducing world quantification. In the present paper, we present problems for such treatment of mood and develop an alternative proposal in which mood is treated as a world pronoun (Romero, 2024; cf. Schlenker, 2005). The results have repercussions for the locus of world quantification in event-anchored modal frameworks.