The Treatment of ‘Subjunctive Mood’ in the Description of Grammatical Systems of Spanish and Hungarian: A Comparative Study

The subjunctive mood (subjuntivo) is an integral part of Spanish. It is also a pivotal element of Hungarian. The acquisition of its use is a big challenge, both for learners of Spanish and Hungarian. In comparison to Spanish, however, the status of the subjunctive in Hungarian is a highly debated issue and, consequently, the intricacies of its semantics may be underappreciated and result in being neglected in many reference grammar books. In the study, we propose a typology of semantic functions of the subjunctive that takes into consideration the perspective of both language systems and which can be useful for the purposes of learning and teaching Hungarian as a foreign language.