Publication ｜Sophia Linguistica
Daisuke Inoue
The aim of this article is to demonstrate that factors other than commitment can have
influence on the mood choice between the indicative and the subjunctive in the completive
of Pourquoi crois/penses-tu que P?. Previous studies have shown that prise en charge
（commitment） can be a factor in the mood choice of French indicative/subjunctive which
could be similar influences to Pourquoi crois/penses-tu que P?. However, Soutet （2000）
indicated that the explanation according to prise en charge cannot be applied to the
construction of Pourquoi crois/penses-tu que P?. To shed further light on this issue, we
performed an investigation into several French corpuses. It turned out that two factors, the
meaning of P in the completive of Pourquoi crois/penses-tu que P? and the information
structure, can be also influential on the mood choice, even though they have not been
indicated as such before. Overall, this research indicates that several factors are linked to
the mood choice, which leads to the complex usage of the subjunctive.
