Content area
Abstract
This study demonstrates that the consideration of external social as well as internal contextual factors can provide insight into the different uses of tense and mood forms. The study of syntax requires an extensive data set, but especially in the appropriate situational context specific forms occur frequently enough to allow quantitative analysis. Thus sociolinguistic methods can apply to the study of tense and, to a lesser extent, mood.
Specific findings include the identification of the preterite with full verbs as a sociolinguistic indicator of educational level and the use of the subjunctive II form as related to a speaker's age. Furthermore, parallels in the use of particular tense and mood forms in current speech point to the interdependence of the two systems.
