The effect of extralinguistic variables on verb selection in Italian requests

2.1 Politeness and frames

Politeness in language is important for the maintenance and creation of relationships, and it is conveyed when the expected linguistic forms are used in a given situation (Kádár 2019; Terkourafi 2015; Watts 2003). Current approaches to politeness have focused primarily on the linguistic forms used to navigate social relationships in interaction. They have relied on a range of theoretical frameworks including speech act theory (Searle 1976), conversational implicature (Grice 1975), and relevance theory (e.g., Escandell-Vidal 1996). In recent decades, the field has expanded to address politeness and impoliteness, theoretical and lay definitions of what is (im)polite, and (im)politeness from discourse perspectives. Despite the breadth of the field, many investigations of (im)politeness share strong foundations in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory. Politeness theory introduced many fundamental questions surrounding politeness, including what the relationship is among context, linguistic forms, and politeness.^[1]

According to Terkourafi’s (2005, 2015] frame-based approach to politeness, speakers come to expect certain forms – conventionalized forms – through repeated exposure to linguistic expressions in certain contexts and considering individual interlocutors. This expectation is part of a frame, which is a cognitive construct that facilitates interaction (e.g., Ensink and Sauer 2003; Fillmore 1975; Schank and Abelson 1975). Terkourafi (2015) defines a frame as an expression with a minimal context. The minimal context includes extralinguistic variables such as the setting and details related to the interlocutors (e.g., sex, age), among other types of information. Thus, certain linguistic expressions are understood as polite when they are frequent in a given context, most often through the pragmatic process of generalized conversational implicature (see Terkourafi 2015 for expanded theoretical description). Through the existence of a frame, a speaker may understand the use of a given linguistic expression in a particular context to be perfectly expected and acceptable, leading to the evaluation of the speaker as polite (Culpeper and Terkourafi 2017). We adopt Terkourafi’s (2005, 2015] frame-based understanding of politeness, because it provides theoretical grounding for the analysis of the co-occurrence of contextual variables and how they jointly affect linguistic choices. While the literature that engages with this theory often considers linguistic constructions or linguistic chunks, the current paper focuses specifically on verb forms.

2.2 Politeness of verb forms

Research on requests, the speech act of focus in this paper, has traditionally analyzed them in terms of their directness (i.e., direct, conventionally indirect, non-conventionally indirect) (Blum-Kulka 1987). Verb forms in Romance languages carry important cues to directness and politeness (Félix-Brasdefer 2009; Haverkate 1994; Koike 1989; Meyer-Hermann 1988). One way in which verb forms can modulate the directness is via the deictic center of the verb, or in other words, by distancing the action from the present moment (Fleischman 1989; Koike 1989). For example, the present tense can index a more direct illocutionary force (Koike 1989), and a past or conditional verb results in a temporal distance from the moment of the request and a less direct request (Ackermann 2023; Koike 1989). Apart from tense, verbal mood also impacts the directness and politeness (Chodorowska-Pilch 1998). Realis verb forms (e.g., imperative, present) communicate more direct requests because of their deictic positioning in the reality, whereas irrealis verb forms (e.g., subjunctive) are associated with less directness as a result of their lack of centering in reality. Modal verbs of ability and possibility also serve to enhance the degree of mitigation and have been associated with politeness (Félix-Brasdefer 2005). Based on these understandings of verbs and mitigation, Chodorowska-Pilch (1998, 2004] proposed that politeness becomes encoded in the verb form.

Considering that directness and politeness are associated with verb forms, it is important to distinguish between the two. Whereas early discussions of politeness led to a general theoretical interpretation that more indirect language is more polite, this simple relationship represents an overgeneralization (for discussion, see the footnote in Terkourafi 2015: 12). Following Terkourafi (2015), politeness increases with increasing indirectness up to a point, after which the indirectness continues to increase but the politeness decreases. The maximum point of politeness is achieved via conventionalization. Conventionalization is the expected frame, consisting of a linguistic expression, extralinguistic variables, and interlocutors (Terkourafi 2015). While Terkourafi (2005, 2015] examines linguistic constructions, the theory seems to provide an explanation for verb forms and their association with politeness, or their encoding of politeness as indicated by Chodorowska-Pilch (1998, 2004]. Basically, if a verb form is used in a conventionalized expression frequently enough across a community, then in addition to the broader linguistic expression being considered polite by at least many speakers, the verb form itself would also become associated with the politeness of the expression. Verb forms appear in many types of constructions, and thus for a specific verb form to undergo the process of pragmaticalization and encode politeness, it would have to quite consistently be used within conventionalized expressions (i.e., expressions that are polite via conventionalization). In sum, Chodorowska-Pilch’s (1998, 2004] proposal that verbs encode politeness aligns with a frame-based understanding of politeness.

2.3 Italian verb forms in politeness research

Research on politeness in Italian has primarily concentrated on certain speech acts and linguistic expressions, including requests (Bartali 2022; Napoli and Tantucci 2022; Rossi 2012; Santoro 2017), apologies (Ghezzi and Molinelli 2019), compliments (Alfonzetti 2010), and discourse markers (Bazzanella 2006; Bazzanella and Borreguero Zuloaga 2011; Bazzanella and Miecznikowski 2009; Bazzanella et al. 2007; Fedriani 2019; Fedriani and Molinelli 2019; Ghezzi and Molinelli 2014, 2016]; Molinelli 2017, 2018]). Other related studies have addressed L2 Italian pragmatics (Nuzzo and Gauci 2014; Nuzzo and Santoro 2017), etiquette (Alfonzetti 2023), mitigation (Caffi 2007), meta-pragmatic discourse (Kádár and Paternoster 2015), non-canonical negations (Squartini 2017), and the use of the indicativo imperfetto ‘imperfect indicative’ (Bazzanella 1990).

Within the research on Italian requests and politeness, verb forms have been studied from various perspectives. For instance, Vedder’s (2008) review of morphosyntactic internal modifications highlighted the use of Italian verb forms such as the conditional and imperative as mitigation strategies in requests. From a historical pragmatics perspective, Paternoster (2019) found that conditional forms in present-day politeness models were similarly employed in nineteenth-century requests when asking for carità ‘charity.’ He also confirmed a limited use of imperative forms in Italian in that period. Despite acknowledging the connection among politeness, verbal mitigation, and specific contexts, few studies have directly examined the details of the relationships among these concepts in Italian.

Of the investigations that examined Italian and the effect of contextual variables, Napoli and Tantucci (2022) explored the ways in which power, social distance, and (in)directness impact the mitigation or intensification of requests during dialogic interactions in films. They compared Italian and English, and their findings on (in)directness highlighted that Italians used more mitigation when performing indirect requests. In a corpus study, Rossi (2012) found that the most common Italian request strategies used in informal situations included an imperative verb form or a construction with a turn-initial dative pronoun mi ‘me’ and a present tense verb, as in Mi passi il bicchiere? ‘Will you pass me the glass?’^[2] The findings identified that the imperative was used when both interlocutors were collaborating on a common project, while the mi + present tense construction was employed when there was no pre-established collaboration between the hearer. In sum, more direct verb forms were employed with pre-established collaboration. Santoro (2017) analyzed requests and mitigation in Italian and Brazilian Portuguese using a Discourse Completion Task. By comparing across languages, Santoro (2017) found greater reliance on mitigation strategies among Italians (e.g., modal verbs, temporally-dislocated verb forms). Venuti and Hinterhölzl (2019) compared requests in Italian and German, and found that Italians used more direct requests along with external modifications in more face-threatening situations compared to Germans. The findings from these studies show that Italians employ a range of verb forms to modulate the directness and imposition of a request. Imperative verb forms seem to be more expected when the distance between interlocutors is low (e.g., pre-established collaborators), whereas the less direct present tense request, as compared to imperatives, was shown to occur more frequently with a more distant relationship (Rossi 2012). Additionally, modal verbs and temporally-dislocated verbs were shown to be employed to reduce imposition (Venuti and Hinterhölzl 2019).

Drawing on the previous research on verbs, deixis, directness, and politeness, primarily that of Chodorowska-Pilch (1998), Koike (1989), Félix-Brasdefer (2005), Rossi (2012), and Santoro (2017), the current study adopts a seven-step verbal continuum as a measure of directness and a means of exploring the relative effect of contextual variables on predicting linguistic choices in Italian. The continuum, ranging from the least to the most direct verb forms, includes the subjunctive (scrivessi), modal conditional (potrei scrivere), conditional (scriverei), imperfect (scrivevo), modal present (posso scrivere), present (scrive), and imperative (scrivi!).^[3] Examples (1)–(7) demonstrate each verb form, using data from the current investigation.

While prior research on Italian politeness and the examples (1)–(7) show that many linguistic expressions are important in the communication of politeness, the present study exclusively focuses on the use of verb forms considering that verbs have been found to be the minimal expression of the illocutionary force of the request (Félix-Brasdefer 2005). Considering the work of Terkourafi (2015) on conventionalization and the verb forms available in Italian, the verbal continuum provides a suitable and complex enough system that serves the purpose of investigating the intertwined effects of contextual variables.

2.4 Contextual variables

The main topic of interest for the current study is the joint effect of contextual variables. It is clear that humans perceive many extralinguistic variables during their interactions, yet there is little evidence about which variables have more or less salience or importance for speakers when making linguistic selections in interaction.

Terkourafi’s (2015) framework includes contextual variables as part of the minimal contexts that co-occur with linguistic structures. The most commonly examined contextual variables in politeness research have been power, distance, and imposition (Brown and Levinson 1987). As described by Brown and Levinson (1987), power refers to asymmetrical social hierarchies present in a society. Distance, which is often based on frequency of contact, refers to how close or distant a relationship is. Rank of imposition accounts for the degree to which a speech act is considered to interfere with the hearer’s wants or desires of being self-determined. Speakers rely on these three variables to weigh face threatening acts and to determine to what degree the threat should be minimized through linguistic mitigation (Brown and Levinson 1987). Many researchers have confirmed that linguistic structures vary in response to the variables of power, distance, and imposition, highlighting how these play a crucial role for understanding politeness (e.g., Astruc-Aguilera et al. 2016; Blum-Kulka et al. 1989; Brown and Levinson 1987; Brown et al. 2014; Czerwionka et al. 2023; Félix-Brasdefer 2005, 2009]; Félix-Brasdefer and Koike 2014; Hübscher et al. 2017; Nadeu and Prieto 2011).

With a specific focus on Italian requests, research examining the contextual variables of power, distance, and imposition provides some insight into the different effects of these variables on linguistic choices. Bartali (2022) investigated Italian requests, paying special attention to the variables of social distance and weight of imposition. Utilizing open-ended role-plays, she investigated the use of request strategies in 15 distinct scenarios with three degrees of distance (strangers, acquaintances, and friends) and three degrees of imposition (low, medium, and high). The findings highlighted that the variable of distance affected the Italian speakers’ choice of request orientation (i.e., speaker or hearer oriented) and formal/informal pronouns more than imposition. Returning to prior investigations introduced in Section 2.3, Napoli and Tantucci (2022) investigated how power, social distance, and (in)directness affected the modification of requests by examining mitigation and intensification in Italian and English films. By employing a random forest model and a multinomial logistic regression analysis, the authors illustrated that power had no effect on mitigation and intensification of requests in either language, whereas (in)directness and social distance had an effect on request forms. More specifically, Italian speakers intensified their requests more often when the interlocutors were close to each other. Both Rossi (2012) and Santoro (2017) also explored the effects of a subset of contextual variables on requests. The work of Rossi (2012) identified an effect of distance (i.e., pre-established collaboration resulted in increased use of imperative forms). Santoro’s (2017) comparative analysis of requests in Italian and Brazilian Portuguese shed light on how Italian speakers increased the use of modal verbs and verbal deixis when the degree of imposition was high.

The contribution of these studies on Italian requests that examined the effects of contextual factors provide an understanding of how power, distance, and imposition affect linguistic behavior, and they highlight the importance of distance for Italian speakers (Bartali 2022; Napoli and Tantucci 2022; Rossi 2012). Whereas these studies have examined contextual variables, none have performed a systematic analysis of the collective effects of power, distance, and imposition.

Despite the well-established influence of the contextual variables on linguistic behavior, prior research has overlooked the examination of the contextual variables themselves. Given the inherent variability in how different cultures interpret contextual factors and situations (Spencer-Oatey 1996), and given that certain cultures or social groups may differentially value one variable over another (e.g., Fukada and Asato 2004), questions arise about the comparative importance of contextual variables on linguistic behavior, the collective impact of them, as well as the differences across cultural and social groups. While literature on politeness has produced an abundant amount of research, the variable effects of power, distance, and imposition have been seldom examined (Spencer-Oatey and Žegarac 2017).

Few investigations considered the interrelation of contextual variables and cross-cultural comparison (e.g., Czerwionka et al. 2023; Holtgraves and Yang 1992; Tamaoka et al. 2010). Holtgraves and Yang (1992) explored the weight of power, distance, and imposition by comparing requests from Korean speakers and American English speakers. The results of multiple regression analyses indicated that the three contextual variables were significant predictors. In addition, the effect of the contextual variables was not additive. For example, as the perceived degree of imposition increased, the effect of power and distance decreased. Holtgraves and Yang (1992) also noted that the weighting of the contextual variables was different between cultures. Korean speakers were more responsive to changes in power and distance than American English speakers.

Another investigation that analyzed the interrelation of contextual variables was Tamaoka et al. (2010). They examined the hierarchical, predictive power of power, distance, and gender on perceived politeness expectations considering interactions with given interlocutors. Using a decision tree analysis and comparing Japanese and Korean speaker responses, distance was the highest-level predictor for Japanese participants, followed by power. For the Korean participants, power was the highest-level predictor and distance was not a significant predictor. Similarly, in an examination of the hierarchical effects of power, distance, and imposition on verb forms in Peninsular Spanish requests produced by women and men, Czerwionka et al. (2023) found differences in how women and men relied on contextual variables to select verb forms. Power was the main predictor of verb form for both groups, but distance and imposition were weighted differently by women and men. As one example of a difference, whereas the female participants’ data indicated that when interacting with someone of greater power, power and imposition were important predictors, the male participants’ data indicated that power and distance were important predictors. These findings indicate that despite the situations having the same contextual variables present, the degree to which they influence linguistic behaviors varies by group. In other words, the results point to different frames held by different participant groups, and they show variation in the perception of contextual variables and their effect in interactions.

These types of quantitative approaches offer insight into speakers’ frames and possibly the moment-by-moment decision-making that occurs in interaction. Considering the prior research on Italian that highlights social distance as an important contextual variable and the emerging research trends that explore the hierarchical and collective effects of contextual variables on linguistic production, questions remain about the effect of contextual variables on speakers of Italian.

2.5 The current study

While previous research and theories have noted the important role of the contextual variables of power, distance, and imposition, there remains a general lack of systematic empirical examination about how these variables interact to impact linguistic behaviors. Addressing this gap, the current study provides a quantitative approach to examining politeness frames by exploring the hierarchical and weighed effect of power, distance, and imposition on verb form selection among Italian speakers – a sensitive marker of linguistic politeness that serves to express the illocutionary force of the request (Félix-Brasdefer 2005). In order to assess the interrelations between the variables of power, distance, and imposition, the following research questions were addressed:

1. Are the variables of power, distance, and imposition significant for the selection of verb form in Italian?

2. Is there evidence of a hierarchical relationship among power, distance, and imposition in their joint effect on verb form selection in Italian?

To answer these research questions, an experimental approach to data collection controlling the contextual variables of power, distance, and imposition in different situations was conducted. A quantitative analysis was used to analyze the data, using a conditional inference tree to model and interpret the relationship among contextual variables (i.e., power, distance, imposition) and verb forms used. The analysis provided details about the hierarchical structure of the contextual variables and their joint effect on verb forms. For the first research question, it is hypothesized that power, distance, and imposition will affect verb selection as broadly indicated in prior research (see Section 2.4). For the second research question, we expect that the analysis will identify hierarchical structures that include power, distance, and imposition. More specifically, because of the demonstrated importance of distance between interlocutors in Italian request research (Bartali 2022; Napoli and Tantucci 2022; Rossi 2012), it is hypothesized that distance will be the highest-level predictor. The quantitative approach to these research questions provides new details about the relationships among contextual variables, considering Italian data. Thus, it will offer greater insight into the participants’ politeness frames when selecting request forms that include verbs, the complex consideration of contextual variables, and it will provide an opportunity for initial cross-cultural comparisons by comparing with results about Spanish from Czerwionka et al. (2023). While the focus of this article is on the contextual variables, the results also provide details about the use of Italian verb forms.

3.1 Participants

A total of 28 native speakers of Italian (21 females and 7 males) participated in the study. The mean age was 33.5 years old (SD = 2.8). All participants obtained a degree from a university in Italy or were enrolled at an Italian university when they participated. Thus, their level of education was uniform, and they were familiar with academic settings represented in the task.

3.2 Materials and procedure

A DCT was employed as a data collection method for the current experiment. Research on pragmatics has widely employed DCTs, because they allow for the collection of a large amount of data in controlled situations – something that can be difficult with naturalistic data. Although DCTs have been criticized for representing metapragmatic data instead of naturally occurring data (e.g., Golato 2003), Márquez Reiter and Placencia (2005) noted that there are more similarities across naturalistic and DCT data in the head act than in other aspects of the interaction (see discussion in Márquez Reiter and Placencia 2005: 226). Additionally, Bataller and Shively (2011) found similarities in requests across DCT data types and naturalistic data types in the variability of the request type. Thus, considering that the current project requires comparable data collected in strictly controlled situations and that the linguistic analysis focuses on the verb in the head act, a DCT was a useful approach.

The DCT consisted of 16 situations that were balanced and normed for two levels of each independent variable: power (asymmetrical, symmetrical),^[4] distance (distant, close), and imposition (high, low). Every situation consisted of interactions in an academic setting, which varied in terms of power (student – student vs. student – professor relationships), distance (close vs. distant relationships based on frequency of interaction), and imposition (low vs. high) (see Appendices A and B for details). The situations were also controlled for the type of request (a good or a service), a variable mentioned by Brown and Levinson (1987) and one that provided a wider range of controlled situations and more responses per participant. Participants were asked to perform a student role, addressing a fellow student or a professor in all the situations. Participants read a description of each situation that prompted a request, and they were asked to indicate what they would say in the given situation. Each prompt served to describe the varying levels of power, distance, and imposition. The following example illustrates a context characterized by asymmetrical power (+power), greater distance (+distance), and a high imposition request:

Situation 3. +power, +distance, +imposition

Devi consegnare una tesina il prossimo lunedì però non hai il libro adottato nel corso. Vedi [nome del professore che conosci ma con cui non hai una relazione stretta]. Vuoi usare il suo libro durante il fine settimana. Che cosa le/gli dici?

‘You have to submit an essay next Monday, but you don’t have the textbook used in the class. You see [name of the professor that you know, but with whom you don’t have a close relationship]. You want to use the professor’s book over the weekend. What do you say?’

The data for this study were collected electronically. The participants were contacted by email and through social media by employing snowball sampling for recruitment. Upon consenting to participate in the questionnaire in Qualtrics, participants provided the names of two professors and two classmates, one whom they knew well and one with whom they were not very close. The provided names were automatically embedded in the DCT situations to achieve more authentic situations in which the participants interacted with professors and classmates from their own experiences. Then, participants completed the DCT. The order of the 16 situations was computer-randomized. Finally, participants completed the background questionnaire, which requested information about gender, age, education (high school, university, public or private), and languages spoken.

Prior to the data collection, a norming procedure was conducted online with a different set of participants. A total of nine native speakers of Italian assessed the levels of power, distance, and imposition represented in the request scenarios in the DCT. The norming procedure served to verify that the two levels of the contextual variables were understood as such by Italian speakers. The norming procedure participants provided names of two classmates and two professors, like the participants in the experimental study. Then, they judged each scenario in terms of the degree of imposition, from the perspective of the person who received the request, using a sliding 9-point Likert scale with endpoints of chiedere poco ‘undemanding’ and chiedere molto ‘over-demanding’ (see Figure 1 below). Then, they rated their relationships with the interlocutors in terms of power and distance, also using 9-point Likert scales. The Likert scale to rate power ranged from tra pari ‘equals’ to disuguali ‘unequals’. The scale to rate distance had the endpoints of stretta ‘close’ and distante ‘distant.’

Figure 1:

Task example for +power, +distance, and −imposition (Situation 2).

Three separate paired sample t-tests were conducted for power, distance, and imposition. The results showed a difference of 3.88 on the scores for +power and −power relationships (p < 0.001), a difference of 5.28 for +distance versus −distance relationships (p < 0.001), and a difference of 4.5 when comparing the rating scores for +imposition and −imposition contexts (p = 0.05). Taken jointly, the results of the norming study demonstrated that the two levels of the variables of imposition, power, and distance, as evident in the descriptions of the situations, were perceived as different by Italian native speakers who were the norming study participants.

3.3 Data coding

Relying on the DCT with 16 situations, the experimental participants produced a total of 448 responses (28 participants × 16 situations). A total of 31 responses were removed due to the participants failing to perform the speech act or omitting the use of a verb form. For each of the 417 responses included in the analysis, the verb used to perform the request was coded according to the verb tense, mood, and presence of modal verbs, in accordance with the politeness continuum (see Section 2.3). Considering prior research related to the politeness continuum and the current data, the following verb forms were coded: subjunctive, modal conditional, conditional, imperfect, modal present, present, and imperative. Exemplifying the coding, a response that represented each verb type found in the data is presented, from subjunctive to imperative. The following response was provided in Situation 1:

[…]Le arrecherebbe molto disturbo se le chiedessi una lettera di presentazione

‘[…]Would it cause much inconvenience if I asked for a cover letter?’

For this response, the verb chiedere ‘to ask for’ expressed the request, and the verb form was coded as subjunctive. Subjunctive forms appear in embedded clauses, and they communicate a modulated request (Chodorowska-Pilch 1998). The subjunctive forms identified used the present subjunctive and the imperfect subjunctive, yet due to their shared status as irrealis verbs, they were considered together in the analysis.

As an example of the modal conditional, a participant provided the following response to Situation 3:

Vorrei utilizzare questo libro per la preparazione della tesina da consegnare lunedì. Potrei prendere in prestito il suo?

‘I would like to use this book to prepare the essay that I have to submit on Monday. Could I borrow yours?’

In the head act of this request, the participant used the modal verb potere ‘can’ in conditional mood. In response to Situation 11, one participant responded with the following:

Martina mi daresti una mano a preparare l’esame?

‘Martina, would you give me a hand with preparing for the exam?’

This request contained the verb dare ‘to give’ in the head act, an example of the simple conditional mood (daresti); hence, the verb form was coded as conditional. A verb form was coded as imperfect as in this example from Situation 6:

Professoressa, scusi, come si chiamava l’autore che ha citato più volte a lezione?

‘Professor, excuse me, what was the name of the author you quoted several times in class?’

With regard to the realis verb forms, a form was coded as modal present when the verb phrase contained the verb potere in present tense followed by an infinitive verb, as in this response to Situation 3:

Posso prendere in prestito il libro?

‘Can I borrow the book?’

When the verb in the head act was conjugated in present tense, the request was coded as present, as in Situation 12:

Scusa, per caso hai una penna in piu?

‘Sorry, do you happen to have an extra pen?’

Lastly, imperatives were identified when a clitic occurred in the post-verbal position, such as in this response to Situation 14:

Meli, buttamelo per favore

‘Meli, throw it for me please’

Post-verbal clitics indicate the imperative, whereas pre-verbal clitics occur with the present tense (Rossi 2012). In the data, all imperative verbs had post-verbal clitics. Considering the proposal of the verbal politeness continuum based on prior literature and the modulating force of verb forms (Chodorowska-Pilch 1998; Félix-Brasdefer 2005; Koike 1989), a 7-point directness scale was applied in the analysis of the combined effect of contextual variables on verb selection in Italian.^[5]

3.4 Analysis

A conditional inference tree was conducted to determine the level of significance and hierarchal order of each predictor variable (i.e., power, distance, imposition) on the selection of verb form in requests in Italian. This type of analysis uses tree-structure regression models and conditional inferences to determine the significance of potential splits in the tree (Hothorn et al. 2006) and whether a variable is a useful predictor or not by providing the significance of each predictor (Tagliamonte and Baayen 2012). Furthermore, through machine-learning algorithms, the conditional inference tree provides a visual representation of the interactions among independent variables or predictors. Prior linguistics research has utilized similar statistical approaches (e.g., Sainzmaza-Lecanda and Schwenter 2017; Tagliamonte and Baayen 2012; Tamaoka et al. 2010).

The conditional inference tree (ctree) model was constructed using the party package (Hothorn et al. 2006) in R (R Core Team 2022). The predictor variables of power, distance, and imposition were used to construct the model, and each predictor variable was coded at two levels (Power: asymmetrical power [+], symmetrical power [−]; Distance: distant [+], close [−]; Imposition: high [+], low [−]). The dependent variable for the model, the verb form, was analyzed across seven levels of the verbal continuum: subjunctive, modal conditional, conditional, imperfect, modal present, present, imperative. Subject was included as random variable. Overall, the results demonstrate how the two levels of the independent variables of power, distance, and imposition predict speakers’ verb form selection, and thus highlight the importance of the predictors and relationship among them in contexts where certain verb forms are used. Implementing this type of analysis has previously led to more complex understandings of how contextual variables are considered in moment-to-moment decision-making about linguistic variables, the variability of the impact of the contextual variables, and cross-cultural comparisons (Czerwionka et al. 2023; Tamaoka et al. 2010).