CHAPTER 8
Modal subordination Goal: unify several disparate observations under one general principle Anaphors and accessibility Quantifier scope is sentence-bounded: Every frog that saw an insect ate it. #It was a fly. But not always: Every frog that saw an insect ate it. It disappeared forever. Propositional attitude verbs and world-creating (i.e. intensional) predicates (de dicto) Jan expected to get a new puppy soon. She intended to keep it in her back yard. But not always: Jan expected to get a new puppy soon. #She managed to housebreak it quickly. The issue arises when anaphora occurs in intensional contexts. 2-sentence discourse fragment 1 st has irrealis/intentional predicate 2 nd has modal
Not just anaphora presupposition as well Usually Fred buys a muffin every morning. He buys [a cup of coffee] F, too. First sentence s operator doesn t need to be intensional, either: John doesn t have a car. It would be in the garage. General logical form for modal subordination: operator[ S π ] operator intensional [ S presupposition of π ] operator[ S NP x [-def] ] operator intensional [ S NP x [+def] ]
Modal operators and ambiguity As we ve already seen, modals are massively ambiguous. However, they re pragmatically restricted by contextually relevant/salient propositions/premises. Modal base: sets of premises for a given modal Function from circumstances to sets of circumstances Modal accessibility: set of all worlds accessible to the world of evaluation Given pragmatically and are accommodated by the hearer Relevance to modal subordination: Sentence 1 (i.e. material under the scope of a wide-scope operator) triggers a proposition. That proposition serves as one of the premises to restrict the domain of the intensional operator in Sentence 1.
Other observations You can felicitiously paraphrase the interpretation of the item in Sentence 2. Local accommodation Proposition that has been introduced not as an asserted proposition, but rather under the scope of an operator. You should buy a lottery ticket and put it in a safe place. locally accommodated proposition: the hearer buys a lottery ticket It might be worth a million dollars. Two-sentence fragments aren t necessary, either: You should buy a lottery ticket and put it in a safe place.
Two types of explanation Semantic: based on entailment She reviews the literature with lots of interesting examples, explanations She rejects this kind of account because: It s too loose and too restrictive (i.e. doesn t always match intuitions very well). Entailment is doxastic. Even entailment-based accounts sometimes rely on accommodation. Pragmatic: based on accommodation
Applying her analysis Lots of interesting examples Susan wants a pet. She believes she will look after it. John wants to catch a fish. He plans to eat it for supper. John wants Fred to come, and he wants Jim to come too. #John wishes to find a unicorn and tries to eat it. #You are permitted to find a bear and required to take its picture. Jan expected to get a puppy.?#she managed to housebreak it quickly. Repair (global and local) is possible Your are permitted to find a bear; if you do, you are required to take its picture. Context revision: the pragmatic equivalent of garden-path sentences, requiring a reparsing of the sentence up to the point of a misleading turn Implicature cancellation: a re-construction of the intended context of interpretation
Conclusions and future work Modal subordination: Select an appropriate modal base for an intensional operator Entertain propositions restricting the domain of that operator Where pragmatics require, allow for local accommodation Beyond and within the sentence Both anaphora and presupposition Not just intensional operator scope (negation, quantifiers too) Common ground Local accommodation first (i.e. default), then global accommodation if necessary
CHAPTER 13
Background Don t confound tense and aspect Tense is expressible in many different ways Verbal morphology, adverbs, PP s, adjective Working hypothesis: natural languages have three tenses Past, present, future Chinese has no tense Maybe English doesn t either Comrie: two levels of meaning Basic Secondary
Tense in English -ed is a true past will is the future auxiliary Also a modal verb: epistemic, deontic, doxastic, etc.: non-future uses! Is the future really certain? If not, modality is surely appropriate!
Sequence of tense Shifted Simultaneous