Los modos y las modalidades del español como mezclas cromáticas

Abstract

This paper divides modal matrices into five classes as chromatic compounds of two basic colors, red and blue, which, in principle, are in direct correspondence with the basic speech acts in independent sentences: information (declarative and interrogative sentences) and interaction (imperative sentences). Between those two poles we distinguish three chromatic blends, opposed to those with just one single color. In this intermediate space, doubt is represented as more blue than red, and desire as more red than blue, while the same amount of red and blue, violet, characterizes the world of values, and assessment. This classification allows us to identify not only those five basic modal matrices but also new classes encompassing two or more basic ones, according to their respective chromatic proportions: one with blue as dominant, another one with red, and yet two more categories in which neither red, nor blue are dominant. All those categories so defined, either basic or compound, have grammatical and syntactic consequences. Summing up, the chromatic classification, without direct correspondence with interpretable semantic features, is incomparably more flexible than any other previous model when it comes to not only describing the syntactic properties of each class but also showing the mutual relationship between them.