Mood selection properties of desire verbs provide a rich source of evidence regarding the semantics of propositional attitudes. This paper approaches the topic by providing an analysis of crosslinguistic variation in the selection patterns of the desire verbs ‘want’ and ‘hope’, focusing on Spanish and French. There is no evidence that the meanings of ‘hope’ and ‘want’ differ between these languages, and yet in Spanish esperar ‘hope’ and querer ‘want’ both take subjunctive, while in French only vouloir ‘want’ selects subjunctive and espérer ‘hope’ strongly prefers the indicative. The inclination of ‘hope’ toward the indicative is manifest also in other Romance languages. Previous theories tie mood selection tightly to the verb’s modal backgrounds and do not anticipate such variation. We explain the consistency in mood selection with ‘want’ versus the variation with ‘hope’ in terms of two key ideas: (i) moods are modal operators that encode different degrees of modal necessity, and (ii) modal backgrounds can be manipulated by the grammar. In terms of (i), we argue, building on the comparison-based theory of mood, that the indicative is a strong necessity operator, while the subjunctive encodes a weaker necessity. Regarding (ii), we propose that two backgrounds may function as one under certain well-defined circumstances. Our proposal supports the decompositional approach to attitude verbs, where mood is responsible for the quantificational force traditionally attributed to the verb.

中文翻译：

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愿望，信念和语义组成：带有期望谓词的情绪选择变化

欲望动词的情绪选择特性为命题态度的语义提供了丰富的证据。本文通过对欲望动词“ want”和“ hope”的选择模式的跨语言变异进行分析来探讨该主题，重点是西班牙语和法语。没有证据表明，“希望”和“想”的含义在西班牙语两种语言之间的不同，然而esperar “希望”和querer “想”都接受虚拟语气，而法国只有vouloir “想”选择虚拟语气和espérer“希望”强烈倾向于指示性。“希望”向指示词的倾向在其他浪漫语言中也很明显。先前的理论将语气选择与动词的情态背景紧密联系在一起，并且不期望这种变化。我们从两个主要观点解释了情绪选择与“想要”的一致性与变异与“希望”的一致性：（i）情绪是模态运算符，可对不同程度的模态必要性进行编码；（ii）模态背景可以通过语法。关于（i），我们认为，基于基于比较的情绪理论，指示符是强必要性运算符，而虚拟语气则是较弱的必要性编码。关于（ii），我们建议在某些明确定义的情况下，两个背景可以作为一个背景。