Regional variation of mood use in Spanish: A comparison among three Spanish-speaking regions

The current investigation is framed within variationist sociolinguistics, an area of study that examines how language varies and is influenced by linguistic and extralinguistic factors. Variationist research has reported that the use of verbal moods (the subjunctive and indicative) in Spanish is variable. One of the reasons for this variation appears to be a centuries-long process of language change, during which the subjunctive mood seemed to show a decline in favor of the indicative mood. Considering this gradual process of change, various investigations have examined how sociolinguistic factors condition variability in Spanish, focusing their analyses on different Spanish-speaking regions. To contribute to the understanding of mood variation in Spanish, this study explored a range of sociolinguistic factors across three Spanish-speaking regions (Rosario, Argentina; Barcelona, Spain; and Seville, Spain) by means of a conceptual replication of Gudmestad (2021), which studied variable mood use in Spanish across three regions (Quito, Ecuador; Mérida, Mexico; and Seville, Spain). The current study's participant pool (N = 107) consisted of Spanish speakers—men and women over 18 years old—residing in the three aforementioned metropolitan areas, who had lived in the same location for at least 15 years at the moment of the data collection. The data were collected via a written clause-elicitation task, with the purpose of having enough verbal-mood contexts to analyze, and a background questionnaire with basic demographic information. The results suggested that there was geographical variation of mood use, which reinforced the original study's findings on regional variation of mood use. Like Gudmestad (2021), the patterns of verbal moods with individual governors (e.g., preferir que 'to prefer that'), semantic category, and time reference diverged across the regions. The examination of gender and individual participants also pointed to a possible connection between these factors and variable mood use across regions. These findings indicate that the envelopes of variation of mood use may be diverse across the regions under investigation, which suggests that different geographical regions may have slightly distinct grammars.