Abstract
In: Perspectives in Foreign Language Teaching. Vol XI. Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Oh, 1998. Edited by John Sarkissian.
This article draws on King's characterization of the subjunctive to show how an explanation of the indicative/subjunctive contrast with his [+objective] and [-objective] features can be rendered in terms that students can understand, without the need to go into much linguistic explanation and without the loss in descriptive adequacy that tends to go hand-in-hand with pedagogical explanations. Contrary to virtually all presentations of the subjunctive, which explain its use in nominal clauses and then in adjectival clauses, we will also propose that the main rule needed to explain the subjunctive is better understood if it is first presented for adjectival clauses, and then for nominal and adverbial clauses. We will present some arguments in favor of our proposal and we will also discuss some possible counter-arguments. In addition to the gain in the simplicity and understandability of the rules needed to learn this difficult part of Spanish grammar, this article offers specific suggestions on how to implement a more systematic presentation of the subjunctive in textbooks. And although this unified treatment has been a goal in Spanish linguistics (King, among others), we claim that such an approach can also be used in textbooks, which, to date, have for the most part featured a cleary atomistic explanation.