Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

(30) a. Plou sense PRO semblar que plogui
Rains without to-seem that rains-SUBJ
'It is raining without seeming to'
b. *Agafo el paraigua sense semblar que plogui
I-take the umbrella without to-seem that rains-SUBJ
'*I take the umbrella without seeming to rain'
One qualification should be made to above hypothesis: the way we presented the contrast
in 0, we seem to suggest that indicative/subjunctive mood is a contrastive property of the two
verbs semblar. Now, while it is clear that subjunctive is an exclusive property of semblar-2 (i.e.,
it has the 'mere appearance' interpretation only), indicative is not clearly an exclusive property of
semblar-1: 0.a) can be used in the 'mere appearance' interpretation. So the contrast is half-way:
- semblar-1: indicative
- semblar-2: subjunctive (or indicative) 62
In this connection, it is not a problem that the clitic ho can pronominalize both an
indicative and a subjunctive CP, which appear as dislocated: both 0.a) and (.b) would be cases of
semblar-2:
(ii) It's raining without it/*PRO being late in the
afternoon (in a country where it usually rains late
in the afternoon)
In (ii) a weather quasi-Argument cannot control a time
quasi-Argument, because they do not refer to the same entity
(however cloudy to conceptualize these entities are). Here the
lack of identity is too strong, while in (0.a) and (i) it would
be milder.
62 Hernanz (1982) does not consider the indicative/
subjunctive distinction (which holds in Spanish the same as in
Catalan) and simply asserts that the constructions with
indicative (as in (0.a)) are ambiguous, which we agree upon.
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