This study investigates the use of modal verbs in Chinese–English government press conference interpretation. Modal verbs mark the speaker’s opinion of or attitude toward the event described in a sentence. Interpreters also use modal verbs to indicate the stances of the source language speakers. The use of modal verbs has been examined in such contexts as research papers, textbooks, and second language learners’ output; however, studies that compare differences in modal (...) class='Hi'>verbs between source and target languages in the context of interpreting are sparse. The investigation being reported is based on a comparable corpus—an original Chinese GPC and its English-translated version—and a parallel corpus—a translated English GPC and the original English version from the US. The results of the comparable corpus analysis indicate that the frequency of modal verbs in translated English is significantly higher than in original Chinese, in which only 40% of the modal verbs in translated English are consistent with their Chinese counterparts, while others are employed through amplification and value variation. The results of the parallel corpus analysis suggest that the increase of modal verbs in the target texts may help to achieve certain types of pragmatic functions in English. (shrink)

Two uses of the modal verb would in police interrogation are examined. First, suspects use it to claim a disposition to act in ways inconsistent with whatever offence they are accused of. Second, police officers use it in challenging the suspect’s testimony, asking why a witness would lie. Both uses deploy a form of practical inferential reasoning from norms to facts, in the face of disputed testimony. The value of would is that its semantics provide for a sense of (...) back-dated predictability with regard to the actions in question. Further, although police officers provide minimal acknowledgement of suspects’ uses of the term, suspects tend to provide a response when police officers use it. This difference is explained by the different actions being done in each case - normative self assessments by suspects, and challenges by police officers - and their interactional and institutional relevance in and for police pursuit of factual testimony. (shrink)

Epistemic modal verbs and adverbs of necessity are claimed to be positive polarity items. We study their behavior by examining modal spread, a phenomenon that appears redundant or even anomalous, since it involves two apparent modal operators being interpreted as a single modality. We propose an analysis in which the modal adverb is an argument of the MUST modal, providing a meta-evaluation \ which ranks the Ideal, stereotypical worlds in the modal base as (...) better possibilities than the Non-Ideal worlds in it. MUST and possibility modals differ in that the latter have an empty \, a default that can be negotiated. Languages vary in the malleability of this parameter. Positive polarity is derived as a conflict between the ranking imposed by \—which requires that the Ideal worlds be better possibilities than Non-Ideal worlds—and the effect of higher negation which renders the Ideal set non-homogenous. Applying the ordering over such a non-homogeneous set would express preference towards both p and \ worlds thus rendering the sentence uninformative. Negative polarity MUST and possibility modals, on the other hand, contain an empty \, application of higher negation therefore poses no problem. This account is the first to connect modal spread to positive polarity of necessity modals, and captures the properties of both in a unified analysis. (shrink)

Since the bilateral commerce between the USA and China changes greatly and Chinese government continues to reform and delegate power in the economic field, it is of importance to study the Uniform Commercial Code of the USA. The study specifically studies the features of modal verbs in the UCC through the comparison with the United States Code and Frown. With the help of Antconc, the distribution of modal verbs, the modal value of the three sets (...) of corpora are examined and analyzed based on the theory of Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar. The results show that there are significant differences between the three sets of corpora and the three main features of modal verbs in the UCC are: the high frequency use of may, the relatively lower frequency use of legal modal verb shall, and the much higher frequency of must and may not. The seemingly contrary usages within the UCC are discussed and explained with the background of the legislation and the legal thoughts of the major legislator in a sociosemiotic approach. With both the quantitative and qualitative analysis combining the examples, the study hopes to shed light on the related legal translation and further enhance the understanding of the modal verbs in the UCC as well as legal discourse in a more general context. (shrink)

The Semantic-Pragmatic Analysis of Persian Modal Verbs Based on Papafragou's Model This paper aims at analyzing the semantics and pragmatics of Persian modal verbs based on Papafragou's relevance-theoretic model. Persian modals are defined in terms of logical relations and propositional domains. According to the findings of the research, two of the three modals, namely, šodan and tavân express the logical relation of compatibility with respect to different propositional domains: the three forms mišavad, mišod and mišode are (...) unspecified with respect to their propositional domains and take them directly from the context, whereas betavân and bešavad accept the desirability domain. Mitavân also expresses compatibility in relation to the propositions in the factual domain. However, bˇyad is the only modal that encodes the logical relation of entailment and is unspecified with respect to the type of propositional domain it accepts. (shrink)

This study is concerned with the acquisition of the disjunction operator, or, in English. Two mutually inconsistent claims have been made about the acquisition of disjunction. One claim is that the acquisition of the adult truth conditions for logical connectives, including disjunction, is a late and not fully universal, achievement. With particular reference to disjunction, the findings from several studies are interpreted as showing that only the truth conditions associated with exclusive-or are available to young children (e.g., Beilin and Lust (...) 1975; Braine and Rumain 1981, 1983; Paris 1973). There is a related claim, that even when children respond as if they have access to a broader range of truth conditions, namely those associated with inclusive-or, children's adult-like responses are the result of a failure to distinguish or from and (Paris 1973). (shrink)

This study is concerned with the acquisition of the disjunction operator, or, in English. Two mutually inconsistent claims have been made about the acquisition of disjunction. One claim is that the acquisition of the adult truth conditions for logical connectives, including disjunction, is a late and not fully universal, achievement. With particular reference to disjunction, the findings from several studies are interpreted as showing that only the truth conditions associated with exclusive-or are available to young children (e.g., Beilin and Lust (...) 1975; Braine and Rumain 1981, 1983; Paris 1973). There is a related claim, that even when children respond as if they have access to a broader range of truth conditions, namely those associated with inclusive-or, children's adult-like responses are the result of a failure to distinguish or from and (Paris 1973). A different conclusion was reached in a recent study by Chierchia, Crain, Guasti and Thornton (1998), who conducted a series of experiments which revealed children's adult-like knowledge of logical connectives, including disjunction. To reconcile the findings from the Chierchia et al. study and those of previous research, Chierchia et al. (1998) draw upon a distinction between semantic and pragmatic knowledge. They argue that the acquisition of logical connectives is simply a process of mapping the appropriate truth conditions (associated with logical connectives in classical logic) onto the particular words of the language to which the child is exposed. In understanding sentences, however, children are also influenced by the pragmatic norms they follow. In many.. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper it is argued that Vendler's classification of verbs into aspectual categories, called activities, accomplishments, achievements, and states, is better seen as classifying the meanings of sentences, and a recursive scheme for describing the aspectual character of sentences is presented.In the second part, this scheme is applied to the discussion of the epistemic and deontic meanings of the modal verbs must, will, and may. In particular, the relation between the “future” and (...) “nonfuture” senses of epistemic will is examined. (shrink)

This contribution aims at providing an argumentative method to account for epistemic modality and evidentiality. I claim that these two linguistic categories can work as semantic components of defeasible argumentative schemes based on classification processes. This kind of approximate reasoning is, in fact, frequently indicated by appearance verbs which signal that the inferred standpoint is conceived by the speaker as uncertain due to the deceiving nature of perceptual data. Drawing from an analysis at the semantic-argumentative interface, the way in (...) which prototype theory sheds light on the processes of meaning construction underlying defeasible arguments from definition is also shown. (shrink)

This work investigates the role of semantic clause types and modality in argumentative texts. We annotate argumentative microtexts with situation entity (SE) classes and additionally label the segments that contain modal verbs with their modal senses. We analyse the correlation both of SE classes and of modal verbs and senses with components of argument structures (such as premises and conclusions) and their functions (such as support and rebuttal). We find interesting tendencies in the correlations between (...) both argument components and argumentative functions with SE types. We also see interesting differences in the distributions of modal verbs and senses within different argumentative components and functions, as well as evidence that modal senses can be helpful to distinguish conclusions and premises. We conclude that both semantic clause types and modal senses can be deployed for automatic recognition and fine-grained classification of argumentative text passages. (shrink)

This paper gives an outline of truthmaker semantics for natural language against the background of standard possible-worlds semantics. It develops a truthmaker semantics for attitude reports and deontic modals based on an ontology of attitudinal and modal objects and on a semantic function of clauses as predicates of such objects. It also présents new motivations for 'object-based truthmaker semantics' from intensional transitive verbs such as ‘need’, ‘look for’, ‘own’, and ‘buy’ and gives an outline of their semantics. This (...) paper is a commissioned 'target' article, with commentaries by W. Davis, B. Arsenijevic, K. Moulton, K. Liefke, M. Kaufmann, R. Matthews, P. Portner and A. Rubinstein, P. Elliott, G. Ramchand and my reply. (shrink)

This paper outlines a semantic account of attitude reports and deontic modals based on cognitive and illocutionary products, mental states, and modal products, as opposed to the notion of an abstract proposition or a cognitive act.

This work investigates the role of semantic clause types and modality in argumentative texts. We annotate argumentative microtexts with situation entity (SE) classes and additionally label the segments that contain modal verbs with their modal senses. We analyse the correlation both of SE classes and of modal verbs and senses with components of argument structures (such as premises and conclusions) and their functions (such as support and rebuttal). We find interesting tendencies in the correlations between (...) both argument components and argumentative functions with SE types. We also see interesting differences in the distributions of modal verbs and senses within different argumentative components and functions, as well as evidence that modal senses can be helpful to distinguish conclusions and premises. We conclude that both semantic clause types and modal senses can be deployed for automatic recognition and fine-grained classification of argumentative text passages. (shrink)

Recent investigations on how people derive meaning from language have focused on task‐dependent shifts between two cognitive systems. The symbolic (amodal) system represents meaning as the statistical relationships between words. The embodied (modal) system represents meaning through neurocognitive simulation of perceptual or sensorimotor systems associated with a word's referent. A primary finding of literature in this field is that the embodied system is only dominant when a task necessitates it, but in certain paradigms, this has only been demonstrated using (...) nouns and adjectives. The purpose of this paper is to study whether similar effects hold with verbs. Experiment 1 evaluated a novel task in which participants rated a selection of verbs on their implied vertical movement. Ratings correlated well with distributional semantic models, establishing convergent validity, though some variance was unexplained by language statistics alone. Experiment 2 replicated previous noun‐based location‐cue congruency experimental paradigms with verbs and showed that the ratings obtained in Experiment 1 predicted reaction times more strongly than language statistics. Experiment 3 modified the location‐cue paradigm by adding movement to create an animated, temporally decoupled, movement‐verb judgment task designed to examine the relative influence of symbolic and embodied processing for verbs. Results were generally consistent with linguistic shortcut hypotheses of symbolic‐embodied integrated language processing; location‐cue congruence elicited processing facilitation in some conditions, and perceptual information accounted for reaction times and accuracy better than language statistics alone. These studies demonstrate novel ways in which embodied and linguistic information can be examined while using verbs as stimuli. (shrink)

The complement of intensional transitive verbs, like any nonreferential complement, can be replaced by a ‘special quantifier’ or ‘special pronoun’ such as 'something', 'the same thing', or 'what'. In this paper, I will defend the ‘Nominalization Theory’ of special quantifiers against a range of apparent counterexamples involving intensional transitive verbs.

The set of English modal verbs is widely recognized to communicate two broad clusters of meanings: epistemic and root modal meanings. A number of researchers have claimed that root meanings are acquired earlier than epistemic ones; this claim has subsequently been employed in the linguistics literature as an argument for the position that English modal verbs are polysemous (Sweetser, 1990). In this paper I offer an alternative explanation for the later emergence of epistemic interpretations by (...) linking them to the development of the child’s theory of mind (Wellman, 1990); if correct, this hypothesis might have important implications for the shape of the semantics of modal verbs. (shrink)

The main focus of this article is the occurrence of some polarity items (PIs) in the complements of emotive factive verbs and only. This fact has been taken as a challenge to the semantic approach to PIs (Linebarger 1980), because only and factive verbs are not downward entailing (DE). A modification of the classical DE account is proposed by introducing the notion of nonveridicality (Zwarts 1995, Giannakidou 1998, 1999, 2001) as the one crucial for PI sanctioning. To motivate (...) this move, it is first shown that two solutions in the direction of weakening classical monotonicity do not work: Strawson DE (von Fintel 1999) and weak DE (Hoeksema 1986). Weakening DE systematically either overgenerates or undergenerates, in either case failing to characterize the correct set of licensers. Nonveridicality is introduced as a conservative extension of DE and is shown to account for PIs also in contexts that are not DE (i.e. questions, modal verbs, imperatives, directive propositional attitudes). This theory, augmented with the premise that certain PIs (i.e. the liberal class represented by any) are subject to a weaker polarity dependency identified not as LICENSING but as RESCUING by nonveridicality, explains the occurrence of this particular class with only and emotive factive verbs. Crosslinguistic comparisons illustrate that the occurrence of PIs with only and emotive factives is not a general phenomenon, and further support the dual nature of polarity dependency and the semantic characterization of the elements that license or rescue PIs. (shrink)

This squib presents two puzzles related to an ambiguity found in for-infinitival relative clauses (FIRs). FIRs invariably receive a modal interpretation even in the absence of any overt modal verb. The modal interpretation seems to come in two distinct types, which can be paraphrased by finite relative clauses employing the modal auxiliaries should and could. The two puzzles presented here arise because the availability of the two readings is constrained by factors that are not otherwise known (...) to affect the interpretation of a relative clause. Specifically, we show, first, that “strong” determiners require the FIR to be interpreted as a SHOULD-relative while “weak” determiners allow both interpretations (the Determiner-Modal Generalization). Secondly, we observe that the COULD-interpretation requires a raising (internally headed) structure for the FIR, while the SHOULD-interpretation is compatible with either a raising or a more standard matching (externally headed) structure (the Raising/Matching Generalization). (shrink)

This paper shows that direct-object perceptual verbs, such as "hear", "smell", "taste", "feel", and "see", share a collection of distinctive semantic behaviors with depictive verbs, among which are "draw'', "paint", "sketch", and "sculpt". What explains these behaviors in the case of depictives is that they are causative verbs, and have lexical decompositions that involve the creation of concrete artistic artifacts, such as pictures, paintings, and sculptures. For instance, "draw a dog" means "draw a picture of a dog", (...) where the latter occurrence of "draw" denotes a creative activity. While perceptual verbs are not obviously causatives, they have analogous decompositions involving noun phrases that denote modality-specific sense-objects, such as a sounds, smells, flavors, touches, and sights. Thus, "hear a trumpet" means "hear the sound of a trumpet", and the same holds, mutatis mutandis, for verbs denoting the other sensory modes. If we take this analogy at face value, our perceptual reports will commit us to a form of the sense-datum theory of perception. While the analogy can be resisted, resistance requires taking on unexpected commitments. (shrink)

In serial verb constructions (SVCs), multiple independent lexical verbs are combined in a mono-clausal construction. SVCs express a range of grammatical meanings and are attested in numerous spoken languages all around the world. Yet, to date only few studies have investigated the existence and functions of SVCs in sign languages. For the most part, these studies—including a previous study on Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT)—relied on elicited data. In this article, we offer a cross-modal typological contribution to (...) the study of SVCs by investigating the phenomenon based on naturalistic corpus data from NGT. A search of the Corpus NGT yielded 41 mono-clausal utterances in which one of a closed set of verbs—namely go, give, take, and call —combines with another lexical verb. While the combinations we found are in important respects reminiscent of SVCs described for spoken languages, our data also confirm the previous finding that the fixed verb in the SVC serves to express agreement (by means of spatial modulation) when the other verb cannot do so. In addition, we identified some novel uses of the verbs go and give: (i) go functioning as a future tense marker and (ii) give functioning as a light verb. We will also discuss aspects of the grammaticalization of SVCs in NGT: from lexical verb to light verb to auxiliary, again offering some comparison to grammaticalization paths described for spoken languages. (shrink)

The set of English modal verbs is widely recognised to communicate two broad clusters of meanings: epistemic and root modal meanings. A number of researchers have claimed that root meanings are acquired earlier than epistemic ones; this claim has subsequently been employed in the linguistics literature as an argument for the position that English modal verbs are polysemous (Sweetser 1990). In this paper I offer an alternative explanation for the later emergence of epistemic interpretations by (...) liniking them to the development of the child's theory of mind (Wellman 1990). If correct, this hypothesis might have important implications for the shape of the semantics of modal verbs. (shrink)

This chapter presents a survey of the most important features of the formal semantic analysis of modality and mood. It first focuses on modality as exemplified by the modal verbs, presenting the main concepts and introducing the most common basic formal apparatus used in its analysis, and surveying some of the issues that are currently central in the field. The chapter then turns to the treatment of mood, discussing formal semantic treatments of both “sentential mood” and “verbal mood”. (...) The last part of the chapter addresses the issue of modal subordination. The chapter aims to give a sense of the major phenomena and theoretical approaches, as well as introduce the primary literature. (shrink)

Quantification over individuals, times, and worlds can in principle be made explicit in the syntax of the object language, or left to the semantics and spelled out in the meta-language. The traditional view is that quantification over individuals is syntactically explicit, whereas quantification over times and worlds is not. But a growing body of literature proposes a uniform treatment. This paper examines the scopal interaction of aspectual raising verbs (begin), modals (can), and intensional raising verbs (threaten) with quantificational (...) subjects in Shupamem, Dutch, and English. It appears that aspectual raising verbs and at least modals may undergo the same kind of overt or covert scope-changing operations as nominal quantifiers; the case of intensional raising verbs is less clear. Scope interaction is thus shown to be a new potential diagnostic of object-linguistic quantification, and the similarity in the scope behavior of nominal and verbal quantifiers supports the grammatical plausibility of ontological symmetry, explored in Schlenker (2006). (shrink)

The class of true modal verbs in English is usually understood to include auxiliary verbs conveying possibility and necessity (including predictive future) that lack non-finite morphological forms; from a syntactic perspective, these verbs occur only in finite clauses (as opposed to infinitives or gerunds). Nevertheless the true modals do not inflect for third-person singular agreement, unlike normal present-tense verbs. When they are negated, true modals always precede the negative particle not, regardless of their understood scope (...) relative to negation, and never give rise to do-support. (shrink)

This book develops a novel generalization of possible world semantics, called ‘world line semantics’, which recognizes worlds and links between world-bound objects (world lines) as mutually independent aspects of modal semantics. Addressing a wide range of questions vital for contemporary debates in logic and philosophy of language and offering new tools for theoretical linguistics and knowledge representation, the book proposes a radically new paradigm in modal semantics. This framework is motivated philosophically, viewing a structure of world lines as (...) a precondition of modal talk. The author provides a uniform analysis of quantification over individuals (physical objects) and objects of thought (intentional objects). The semantic account of what it means to speak of intentional objects throws new light on accounts of intentionality and singular thought in the philosophy of mind and offers novel insights into the semantics of intensional transitive verbs. (shrink)

Summary Verbs of creation (create, make, paint) are not transparent. The object created does not exist during the event time but only thereafter. We may call this type of opacity temporal opacity. I is to be distinguished from modal opacity, which is found in verbs like owe or seek. (Dowty, 1979) offers two analyses of creation verbs. One analysis predicts that no object of the sort created exists before the time of the creation. The other analysis (...) says that the object exists throughout the act of creation. I investigate three theories: Theory I says that no object of the sort created and which is caused by the very act of creation exists before the creation. In this theory, verbs of creation must embed a property. Theory II can regard the indefinite object of a creation verb as a quantifier and gives it wide scope with respect to the verb. The theory has to make sure that the objects quantified over exist only after the event. While Theory I and II start from the assumption that the extension of all nouns depend on time, Theory III says that Individual Level predicates do not depend on time. This ontology will enable us to treat verbs of creation as first order relations. The theory will entail that a picture does not mean the same as there is a picture. The paper discusses various approaches to the problem: Krifka, Parsons, Landman, Kratzer and Zucchi. (shrink)

This paper will discuss the role of modality in UN Security Council resolutions. As a work in progress on whether the use of strategic vagueness in UN resolutions has contributed to the outbreak of the second Gulf war, this work proposes a qualitative and quantitative analysis on the role of vagueness of the central modal verbs shall, should, and may in the institutional language of the UN, drawing upon Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach and Jenkins, Gotti, and Trosborg's theories on (...) modality. Observing the semantic and linguistic values of these modals, the analysis investigates their double-faced strength: though they can be used to guarantee a wide degree of applicability of the resolutions, their subjective interpretability might become a source of manipulation and elusiveness, supporting a legislative intent of using vagueness as a political strategy. (shrink)

This article discusses deontic modality in the context of legal documents and its divergence from the natural, conventional, interpretation. This work demonstrates that the meaning of the performative verb is not purely linguistic. A number of non-linguistic factors cause the variation of meanings of performatives, in this case, when expressing prohibition, permission, recommendation, advice, proposal or request. These factors include: status of the addressee, type of the relationship between the author and the addressee, type of the document, possibility of control (...) and subsequent punishment for the breach of a norm, methodology of legal drafting, traditions of the Russian document processes. There is no direct association between the type of the legal norm and the meaning of the performative. To express its will, a regional law-maker, to a varying degree, uses orders, prohibition and permissions. These are dictated by the type of the document. (shrink)

The study considers development and use of verb/predicate chaining constructions by Hebrew speakers from early childhood to adolescence, based on analysis of authentic conversational and narrative corpora. Three types of such constructions are considered, ordered hierarchically by stage of acquisition: (1) monoclausal extended predicates consisting of a verb (modal, aspectual, or evaluative) marked for tense or mood and followed by one or more complements in the infinitive – e.g., yaxol la-asot ‘can, is able to-do’; (2) coreferential interclausal predicate chaining; (...) and (3) mature discursively-motivated topic-chaining. Relevant typological features of Modern Hebrew are reviewed to explain the lack of canonic clause-chaining construction in the language (e.g. the paucity of non-finite constructions in everyday usage, lack of an uninflected basic form of verbs, lack of auxiliary verbs expressing categories of aspect and voice, and monolexemic verb-internal complexity). Monoclausal verb-chaining emerges early in the speech of toddlers in interaction with their caretakers, whereas predicate chaining by coordination across clauses occurs only later, and chunking of such constructions at the service of discourse connectivity is a late-developing device. Nonfinite subordination is an advanced form of clause-combining, in contrast to straightforward subordination with the multifunctional subordinator še’that’. The conclusion is that, unlike the obligatorily fused monoclausal “extended predicates”, bi- and multi-clausal predicate chaining represents an optional rhetorical choice on the part of a given speaker-writer in a particular communicative context. (shrink)

Great thinkers have devoted to explaining morality and ethics in human beings. The major reflections have resulted in a well-known dichotomy, that of matters of fact and matters of value, or what is known as the theoretical world, which is objective, and the practical world, that of affections. With the birth of analytic philosophy, the emphasis is placed on language allowing to explain philosophical problems, such as validity. This study proposes the following thesis: it is possible to derive “ought” from (...) “is”, as it is evidenced in the Spanish verb “tocar” and several of its verbal periphrasis. To achieve this, a naturalization of morality is proposed from the postulates of two theories, namely, cognitive semantics (Talmy 2000) and the Modular Theory of Modalities (Gosselin 2010). The methodology applied consists of both a semantic and a cognitive analysis of “tocar”, for which a corpus was collected in literary texts and presidential speeches. The main result shows that “tocar” has a prototypical descriptive semantic value, alethic value, and new prescriptive semantic values. It is concluded that the new semantic values for this verb and its periphrasis are the deontic and the axiological ones, which demonstrates once again the evolutionary character of language and the need to provide empirical information on philosophical issues, such as morality. (shrink)

The chapter considers two semantic issues concerning will-sentences: Stalnaker’s Asymmetry and modal subordination in Karttunen-type discourses. The former points to a distinction between will and modal verbs, seeming to show that will does not license non-specific indefinites. The latter, conversely, suggests that will-sentences involve some kind of modality. To account for the data, the chapter proposes that will is semantically a tense, hence it doesn’t contribute a quantifier over modal alternatives; a modal feature, however, is (...) introduced in the interpretation of a will-sentence through a supervaluational strategy universally quantifying over possible futures. That this is not part of will’s lexical semantics is shown to have consequences that ultimately contribute to explain Stalnaker’s Asymmetry. Furthermore, that a modal quantification is present in the interpretation of a will-sentence is shown to imply the availability of modal subordination in Karttunen-type discourses. (shrink)

How do modal expressions determine which possibilities they range over? According to the Modal Anchor Hypothesis (Kratzer in _The language-cognition interface: Actes du 19_ _e_ _congrès international des linguistes_, Libraire Droz, Genève, 179–199, 2013 ), modal expressions determine their domain of quantification from particulars (events, situations, or individuals). This paper presents novel evidence for this hypothesis, focusing on a class of Spanish relative clauses that host verbs inflected in the subjunctive. Subjunctive in Romance is standardly taken (...) to be licensed only in a subset of intensional contexts. However, in our relative clauses, subjunctive is exceptionally licensed in extensional contexts. At the same time, the interpretation of these relative clauses still involves modality, a type of modality that targets the goals of the agent of the main event. We argue that the pattern displayed by these relative clauses follows straightforwardly if subjunctive is associated with a modal operator that, like modal indefinites (Alonso-Ovalle and Menéndez-Benito in _Journal of Semantics_ 35(1):1–41, 2017 ), can project its domain from a volitional event. Overall, our proposal supports the event-based analysis of mood (Kratzer in Evidential mood in attitude and speech reports. Talk delivered at the 1st Syncart Workshop, Siena, July 13, 2016 ; Portner and Rubinstein in _Natural Language Semantics_ 28:343–393, 2020 ) and extends its application beyond attitudinal and modal complements. (shrink)

This paper offers a renewed construction grammar analysis of linguistic constructions in a diachronic perspective. The present theory, termedAgentive Cognitive Construction Grammar(AgCCxG), is informed byactive inference(AIF), a process theory for the comprehension of intelligent agency. AgCCxG defends the idea that language bear traces of non-linguistic, bodily-acquired information that reflects sémiotico-biological processes of energy exchange and conservation. One of the major claims of the paper is that embodied cognition has evolved to facilitate ontogenic mental alignment among humans. This is demonstrated by (...) the results of a corpus study in which the patterns of association between verbs, the particle UP and argument structure in Old and Middle English have been studied. The conclusion is that, similar to biological systems, the linguistic sign system displays patterns of equilibrium and non-equilibrium. In other words, while in Old English usage near equilibrium was reached through the use of a conservative set of constructional semiotic templates (attachment patterns), associated with motor modalities, Middle English displays high rates of randomness resulting in a less stable, yet distinct, system of constructional attachment. (shrink)

In this paper, the meanings of sentences containing the word or and a modal verb are used to arrive at a novel account of the meaning of or coordinations. It is proposed that or coordinations denote sets whose members are the denotations of the disjuncts; and that the truth conditions of sentences containing or coordinations require the existence of some set made available by the semantic environment which can be ‘divided up’ in accordance with the disjuncts. The relevant notion (...) of ‘dividing things up’ is made explicit in the paper. Detailed attention is given to the question of how the proposed truth conditions are derived from the syntactic input. The account offered allows for the derivation of both the disjunctive and the nondisjunctive readings of modal/or sentences, including the much-discussed free choice readings of may/or sentences. (shrink)

Operators can be compared in at least two respects: expressive strength and deductive strength. Inspired by Hintikka’s treatment of question embedding verbs, the variations of noncontingency operator, and also the various combinations of modal operators and Boolean connectives, we propose a logic with strong noncontingency operator as the only primitive modality. The novel operator is deductively but not expressively stronger than both noncontingency operator and essence operator, and expressively but not deductively weaker than the necessity operator. The frame-definability (...) power of this new logic is in between standard modal logic and noncontingency logic. A notion of bisimulation is proposed to characterize this logic within standard modal logic and first-order logic. Axiomatizations over various frame classes are presented, among which the minimal logic is related to the treatment of an alternative semantics of the agreement operator proposed by Lloyd Humberstone. (shrink)

The article tackles the problem of studying diachronic semantic changes of modal markers in Latin. It proposes to do so by using context as a proxy for tracing the development of otherwise unchanging forms. In the first part, the main theoretical positions in modality studies are presented, especially the notions of deontic modality, epistemic modality, and pathways of modality. In the second part, Heine’s model for studying the role of context in language change is presented and applied to the (...) modal verb licet. In the case study of licet, an attempt is made to identify the so-called switch context which co-creates the conditions necessary for the semantic change. (shrink)

In opposition to a common assumption, this paper defends the idea that the auxiliary verb will has no other semantic contribution in contemporary English than a temporal shift towards the future with respect to the utterance time. Strong reasons for rejecting the idea that will quantifies over possible worlds are presented. Given the adoption of Lewis’s and Kratzer’s views on modality, the alleged ‘modal’ uses of will are accounted for by a pragmatic mechanism which restricts the domain of the (...) covert epistemic necessity operator scoping over the sentence. (shrink)

Modal Meinongianism provides the semantics of sentences involving intentional verbs Priest. To that end, Modal Meinongianism employs a pointed non-normal quantified modal logic model. Like earlier Meinongian views Modal Meinongianism has a characterisation principle, that claims that any condition whatsoever is satisfied by some object in some world. Recently, Everett has proposed an argument against QCP that, if successful, gives rise to problems identical to those Russell raised for Naïve Meinongianism, namely that it allows for (...) true contradictions, and allows us to define anything into existence. Everett claims that the ordinary meanings of “actual” license an inference pattern, such that if an object satisfies Actual A at some world, then that object satisfies A in the actual world. Given that actual world is the designated point of evaluation for truth simpliciter, QCP would fall prey to Russell’s criticisms. As opposed to Everett, I argue that, even if we grant Everett the assumption that “actual” is a modal indexical that rigidly refers to the actual world, it does not conform to the inference pattern above. This is because when an object satisfies Actual A at some world, this alters the assertoric force of “actual”, because “actual” is interpreted in the scope of some modal or intentional operator. I also explain that Everett’s proposed example carries existential commitment because the problematic noun-phrase occurs outside the scope of a modal or intentional operator. (shrink)

This paper argues for a largely unnoted distinction between relational and modal components in the lexical semantics of verbs. Wehypothesize that many verbs encode two kinds of semantic information:a relationship among participants in a situation and a subset ofcircumstances or time indices at which this relationship isevaluated. The latter we term sublexical modality.We show that linking regularities between semantic arguments andsyntactic functions provide corroborating evidence in favor of thissemantic distinction, noting cases in which the semantic groundingof linking (...) through participant-role properties apparently fails. Thissemantic grounding can be preserved, however, once we abstractaway from sublexical modality in lexical semantic representations.Semantically-based linking constraints are insensitive to the sublexicalmodality component of lexical entries and depend only on informationin a predicator's situational core. (shrink)

In English, discourse reference to time involves grammatical tenses interpreted as temporal anaphors. Recently, it has been argued that conditionals involve modal discourse anaphora expressed by a parallel grammatical system of anaphoric modals. Based on evidence from Kalaallisut, this paper argues that temporal and modal anaphora can be just as precise in a language that does not have either grammatical category. Instead, temporal anaphora directly targets eventualities of verbs, without mediating tenses, while modal anaphora involves anaphoric (...) moods and/or attitudinal verbs. (shrink)

Part of what makes working with modals such a tricky business is that apparent modal forms are deployed in all sorts of ways in language. In this paper I explore an interesting example of an apparent modal—the Blofeld case—which was introduced by Gilles and von Fintel as part of their argument against context of assessment accounts of epistemic modals. I argue that the example is subtle, and that the apparent modal may not be an epistemic modal (...) at all—it could be a scalar modifier that merges or “incorporates” with the matrix verb, weakening the meaning of the matrix verb. If apparent modals are used as scalar modifiers and are subject to movement and incorporation, then the surface language of modality may be throwing us some crafty head fakes. Caution is advised. (shrink)

This paper describes a semantics for modal terms such as can and may that is intended to model the mental representation of their meaning. The basic assumption of the theory is that the evaluation of a modal assertion involves an attempted mental construction of a specified alternative to a given situation rather than the separate evaluation of each member of a set of possible alternatives as would be required by a “possible worlds” semantics. The theory leads to the (...) conclusion that, contrary to what is often assumed, modal auxiliary verbs are unambiguous. (shrink)