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

(31) a. Ho sembla, que plou
It-ACC seems, that rains-IND
b. Ho sembla, que plogui
It-ACC seems, that rains-SUBJ
If anything, 0.b) appears to more strongly suggest that 'raining is a mere appearance' than
0.a), but they are essentially synonymous, as is in accordance with our claim that both must be
cases of semblar-2.
Another factor can disambiguate the semblar+indicative construction: in Catalan or
Spanish an Experiencer dative accompanying semblar cannot cooccur with subjunctive (i.e.,
semblar-2), as shown in 0.a) This suggests that the Experiencer dative is not compatible with
semblar-2. And in fact when the indicative co-occurs with a clitic, only the 'convincing evidence'
interpretation (i.e., semblar-1) is available (as in 0.b)): 63
63 Torrego (1989) distinguishes between two verbs parecer
(the Spanish equivalent of semblar) and argues that the presence
of the Experiencer is coextensive with one of them. So there are
two verbs parecer: parecer+ experiencer and parecer-epistemic.
They are distinguished by a set of criteria:
a) only parecer-ep. can take subjunctive:
(i) Me parece que llueve/*llueva
Me seems that rains-IND/SUBJ
b) only parecer-exp. can occur in a perfective tense:
(ii) Hoy *(me) ha parecido que llovía
Today (me) has seemed that was-raining
c) only parecer-ep. is a raising verb:
(iii) *Juan ha parecido haberlos encontrado
J. has seemed to-have-them found
In her analysis, resultar is rather like parecer-exp. So
her analysis is clearly at odds with the one we propose here,
for she assumes that raising parecer is precisely the one
allowing subjunctive (we assume the opposite) and resultar does
not for a class with raising parecer.
In fact, I do not agree with some of the data either:
parecer without Experiencer can appear in perfective tense:
(iv) Por un momento, ha parecido que llovía
For a moment has seemed that was-raining
(v) ?Juan pareció querer decirnos algo
J. seemed to-want tell-us something
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