Imperfect subjunctive in La Sombra del Viento

Question

Why doe Ruiz Zafon in La Sombra del Viento use the imperfect subjunctive in these 2 sentences, separated by a couple of lines in chapter 25?

"¿Le suena a usted que Miquel se casara con una tal Nuria Monfort?"

Then the same character is asked if he ever heard Miquel mention the name of Nuria Monfort. He replies:

"No, nunca. Ni que pensara casarse o que tuviese una novia."

Many thx for sharing your thoughts.

My compliments on your taste in literature. - Lector_Constante, May 12, 2011

Answer 1

Well, in the first one I think that it's because of the interrogative sense of the sentence, in the second one it is an special case where you always use subjuntive after it.

That's one of my favorite novels.

Answer 2

"¿Le suena a usted que Miquel se casara con una tal Nuria Monfort?"

Borrego et al, "El subjuntivo: valores y usos", has a few pages about this kind of question:

Regla 42:

Con los verbos de percepción y de comunicación, cuando van en forma interrogativa, pueden suceder dos cosas:

a) El peso de la pregunta tiende a caer sobre el V2, es decir, se pide información sobre si la subordinada es verdad o no. En este caso hay verbos que sólo admiten el subjuntivo en el V2, y otros que, con pequeños matices diferenciales, admiten ambos modos.

b) El peso de la pregunta cae sobre el V1, esto es, se pide información sobre si es verdad que dijo, confesó, creyó, advirtió, etc. En este caso sólo es posible el indicativo.

They also explain how the question with subjunctive communicates a level of skepticism on the part of the speaker, in your case that would suggest that the character already had some doubts about whether Miquel really was getting married with Nuria.

"No, nunca. Ni que pensara casarse o que tuviese una novia."

This is semantically a short form for "No he oído que (etc)..." Are you with me? Using indicative here wouldn't make sense in this case.

If you use indicative in this kind of structure (a negated verb of perception, say), you would declare that the subordinate is indeed true, but you can't physically hear (see, smell, whatever...) it.

Many thx for this thorough response; I've just ordered the book you cite. - dreaming_of_wales, May 13, 2011

Good choice, I consider it a "must have". - Vikingo, May 13, 2011

Answer 3

"¿Le suena a usted que Miquel se casara con una tal Nuria Monfort?"

Using indicative would imply that you are informing a sentence that someone said (i.e. Miguel se casó con Nuria), so it would be almost like asking whether you are familiar with that statement. You don't intend to inform about this sentence so the other knows, but to find out what he thinks. No declaration, no indicative.

"No, nunca. Ni que pensara casarse o que tuviese una novia."

The person who asks is not informing that Miguel is marrying or having a girlfriend. No declaration, no indicative.