Now there will be trouble

The paper considers sentences in which “now” occurs in initial position and shows that the meaning they convey differs from the meaning of sentences that are otherwise identical except for “now” occurring in final position. We argue that the occurrence of “now” in initial position triggers a particular kind of modal reading for the sentence to which the adverb is prefixed. A general notion of modal forcing is proposed to provide a uniform account of this kind of reading. Armed with this account, we offer a solution to two tense-modal puzzles, which have to do with fatalism and the possibility of a changing past

Building complex events: the case of Sicilian Doubly Inflected Construction

We examine the Doubly Inflected Construction of Sicilian (DIC; Cardinaletti and Giusti 2001, 2003, Cruschina 2013), in which a motion verb V1 from a restricted set is followed by an event verb V2 and both verbs are inflected for the same person and tense features. The interpretation of DIC involves a complex event which behaves as a single, integrated event by linguistic tests. Based on data drawn from different sources, we argue that DIC is an asymmetrical serial verb construction (Aikhenvald 2006). We propose an analysis of DIC in which V1 and V2 enter the semantic composition as lexical verbs, with V1 contributing a motion event and projecting a theme and a goal argument which are identified, respectively, with an agent and a location argument projected by V2. A morphosyntactic mechanism of feature-spread requires that the person and tense features be realized both on V1 and on V2, while, semantically, these features are interpreted only once, in a position from which they take scope over the complex predicate resulting from the combination of V1 and V2. The semantic analysis is based on an operation of event concatenation, defined over spatio-temporally contiguous events which share specific participants, and is implemented in a neo-Davidsonian framework (Parsons 1990)

Modality, presupposition and discourse

This paper provides a semantic analysis of the particles afinal (European Portuguese) and alla fine (Italian) in terms of the notion of truth unpersistence, which can be situated at the intersection of epistemic modality and discourse structure. In the analysis proposed, the particles are propositional operators and require that the truth of a proposition p* fail to persist through a temporal succession of epistemic states, this proposition being incompatible with the prejacent, and that the interlocutors share knowledge of a previous epistemic attitude toward p*. We analyze two main cases (plan-related and non plan-related propositions) and also show that these particles are indexical to one (or more) epistemic agent(s) and allow for shifts in perspective

Relativizing truth of future-tensed sentences

International audienceIn MacFarlane (2003, 2008) an argument is presented to the effect that a context of assessment should be recognized in its own right besides the context of utterance. His argument is based on certain intuitions we are said to have about the truth-status of future contingent statements such as (1), uttered in a context where physical symmetry of the coin is presupposed. (1) The coin will land heads up. MacFarlane's first claim is that we have an "indeterminacy" intuition, according to which our utterance of (1) is neither true nor false at the time that we make it. His further claim is that we have a "determinacy" intuition, according to which the same utterance of (1) is taken as determinately true (or determinately false) once the actual course of events has settled the issue. On this basis, MacFarlane argues that the standard Kaplanian notion of truth-in-context should be revised so as to allow for its relativization to a context of assessment, besides its original relativization to the context of utterance. Bonomi and Del Prete (2008) agree with MacFarlane on the two contrasting intuitions about the truth-status of future contingents, but they develop a framework in which both intuitions are accounted for without relativizing utterance-truth to contexts of assessment, as constructs theoretically distinct from Kaplanian contexts of utterance. In these notes, I take up one of their philosophical points against relativistic semantics in the style of MacFarlane, and elaborate it in further details. I also propose a hypothesis for a semantic analysis of the English future tense auxiliary 'will'

Imperfectivity and Habituality in Italian

International audienceThe chapter proposes a semantic analysis of Italian imperfective sentences which uniformly accounts for their habitual and progressive readings. Bare imperfectives with singular indefinites in object position are considered, and the observation is made that singular indefinites systematically give rise to "same object" (SO) effects in these contexts, sometimes making the containing sentence odd on a habitual interpretation. It is further noted that SO effects are absent if a Q-adverb occurs in the sentence, showing that singular indefinites can distribute over Q-adverbs, while there is no underlying generic quantifier over which singular indefinites can distribute. These observations are taken to motivate a non-quantificational account of imperfective habituals, based on a semantic analysis of verbs in terms of plural events (Kratzer 2008) and a modal/temporal analysis of imperfective aspect as a forward-expanding operator in a branching time model (Deo 2010). On the proposed account, the repetition involved in habituals does not depend on any underlying quantifier but uniquely comes from verbal plurality

Temporal location of events in language and (non) persistence of the past

The article reviews some analyses of temporal language in logical approaches to natural language semantics. It considers some asymmetries between past and future, manifested in language, which motivate the “standard view” of the non-reversibility of time and the persistence of the past. It concludes with a puzzle about the changing past which challenges the standard view

The interpretation of indefinites in future tensed sentences. A novel argument for the modality of will?

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

Introduction

Introduction to genericity in the nominal, verbal and sentential domain

A unified non monstrous semantics for third person pronouns

It is common practice in formal semantics to assume that the context specifies an assignment of values to variables and that the same variables that receive contextually salient values when they occur free may also be bound by quantifiers and λs. These assumptions are at work to provide a unified account of free and bound uses of third person pronouns, namely one by which the same lexical item is involved in both uses. One way to pursue this account is to treat quantifiers and λs as monsters in Kaplan’s sense. We argue that this move should be avoided and explore an alternative route based on the idea that there is a variable assignment coordinate in the context and a variable assignment coordinate in the circumstance of evaluation, with the definition of truth in context identifying them. One fundamental challenge that arises in pursuing a unified account is to explain the difference in the way the gender presuppositions of bound and free pronouns project. The proposal that emerges from the attempt to meet this challenge is a non-indexical account of free third person pronouns and a new conception of the role and structure of assignment function

Monsters begat by quantifiers?

It is common practice in formal semantics to assume that the context specifies an assignment of values to variables and that the same variables that receive contextually salient values when they occur free may also be bound by quantifiers and λs. These assumptions are at work to provide a unified account of indexical and bound uses of third person pronouns, namely an account by which the same lexical item is involved in both uses. One apparent consequence of this approach is that quantifiers and λs are monsters in Kaplan's sense. We argue that this consequence can, and should, be avoided. We explore an alternative unified account based on the idea that variable assignments occur both as coordinates of the context and as coordinates of the circumstance of evaluation. The outcome is a non indexical account of free third person pronouns and a new conception of the role and structure of assignment functions