Quantitative-statistic corpus analysis about mood variation in Spanish based on linguistic and social variables

Abstract

Mood is one of the most popular topics in Spanish and mood alternation occurs when the structure is just an adverb and a verb. Although many studies have addressed this subject, most focus on verbs. Some studies have discussed mood alternation with adverbs of doubt, but only a few use statistical methods. In addition, the existing research on speakers’ social factors is insufficient. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to reveal differences between the adverbs of doubt using statistical methods and to elucidate the relationship between mood alternation and social factors. To achieve these objectives, this corpus study extracts data from corpes xxi (2020) and preseea-Madrid ( distrito de Salamanca) and analyses 1,587 examples containing posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás, tal vez, a lo mejor, igual and seguramente using multiple correspondence analysis and decision tree analysis. The results show that adverbs of doubt can be divided into two groups. One includes posiblemente, probablemente, quizá, quizás and tal vez which are more likely to co-occur with the subjunctive. The other includes a lo mejor, igual and seguramente which have tendencies to co-occur with the indicative. Furthermore, for social factors, male, educated people, and peninsular Spanish relates more to the subjunctive.