Evidence and Bias: The Case of the Evidential Future in Italian

Evidential markers encode the source of information that an individual (the evidential Origo) has for a proposition. In root declaratives, the Origo is always the speaker (see Korotkova 2016 and references therein). Instead, questions often display interrogative flip: the Origo shifts to the hearer (Garrett 2001; Speas & Tenny 2003, a.o.). While interrogative flip is widely attested across languages, some evidentials have been reported not to flip in questions (see, e.g., San Roque, Floyd & Norcliffe 2017; Bhadra 2017). What determines whether evidentials flip or not? Recent work (Korotkova 2016; Bhadra 2017) has proposed that there is a correlation between lack of flip and bias in questions. This paper contributes to our understanding of the interaction of evidentials and bias by investigating the behaviour of questions with the Italian non-predictive future. We characterize the non-predictive future as an inferential evidential marker (see also Mari 2009; Eckardt & Beltrama forthcoming), and show that lack of flip for the future correlates only with a particular type of bias: a reversal of the default bias associated with negative polar questions (Frana & Rawlins forthcoming). We trace back this pattern to an interaction between the evidential component of the future and the operator that triggers bias reversal

Making Worlds Accessible. Essays in Honor of Angelika Kratzer

Every linguist knows how colossal Angelika’s impact on our field is. Hearing aboutthis would not be informative for anybody who might (virtually) pick up this volume, including Angelika herself. So, instead of writing about, say, Angelika’s crucial role in the development of our understanding of modality, we will write about what Angelika means to us, as a teacher, advisor, mentor, colleague, and friend. We know that these words will resonate with many of you (Angelika has meant so much to so many people). We just get to be the lucky ones to tell Angelika publicly.https://scholarworks.umass.edu/ak_festsite_schrift/1000/thumbnail.jp

The construction of viewpoint aspect: the imperfective revisited

This paper argues for a constructionist approach to viewpoint Aspect by exploring the idea that it does not exert any altering force on the situation-aspect properties of predicates. The proposal is developed by analyzing the syntax and semantics of the imperfective, which has been attributed a coercer role in the literature as a de-telicizer and de-stativizer in the progressive, and as a de-eventivizer in the so-called ability (or attitudinal) and habitual readings. This paper proposes a unified semantics for the imperfective, preserving the properties of eventualities throughout the derivation. The paper argues that the semantics of viewpoint aspect is encoded in a series of functional heads containing interval-ordering predicates and quantifiers. This richer structure allows us to account for a greater amount of phenomena, such as the perfective nature of the individual instantiations of the event within a habitual construction or the nonculminating reading of perfective accomplishments in Spanish. This paper hypothesizes that nonculminating accomplishments have an underlying structure corresponding to the perfective progressive. As a consequence, the progressive becomes disentangled from imperfectivity and is given a novel analysis. The proposed syntax is argued to have a corresponding explicit morphology in languages such as Spanish and a nondifferentiating one in languages such as English; however, the syntax-semantics underlying both of these languages is argued to be the same

Modal selectivity in the nominal domain: Spanish uno cualquiera

Modal indefinites are existential determiners that trigger modal inferences. Some of them, which we can call ‘random choice indefinites’, indicate that an agent made an indiscriminate choice (Choi 2007, Choi & Romero 2008, Rivero 2011a,b, Alonso-Ovalle & Menéndez- Benito 2011, 2013, a.o.). Spanish “uno cualquiera” belongs to this class. The sentence “Juan cogió una carta cualquiera” (‘Juan picked a random card’) conveys that Juan picked a card and that he chose it indiscriminately — he could have picked any other card. The random choice interpretation can be embedded under modals: the sentence “Juan tiene que haber ido a ver una película cualquiera” (‘Juan must have gone to see a random movie’) can convey that Juan must have gone to see a movie that he picked randomly. Under some modals, another possibility arises: a harmonic reading, on which “uno cualquiera” introduces a distribution effect with respect to the worlds that the modal ranges over. For instance, “¡Coge una carta cualquiera!” (‘take any random card!’) can be interpreted as conveying that any card is a permitted option. However, this harmonic interpretation is not available with all kinds of modals (modal selectivity). This paper aims to derive the modal interaction pattern displayed by “uno cualquiera”. Recent research on verbal modality (e.g., Hacquard 2006, Kratzer 2009) argues that modal domains are anchored to parts of the evaluation world (situations, events, individuals), rather than to whole worlds. Following Alonso-Ovalle & Menéndez-Benito 2013, we assume that the random choice component of “uno cualquiera” projects a modal domain from the decision taken by the agent. This interpretation is derived by positing that “uno cualquiera” is a nominal quantifier anchored to an event argument. On this proposal, we expect different interpretations (random choice vs. harmonic) depending on what event “uno cualquiera” takes as anchor. When the anchor is the event argument of the verb, we will get the random choice interpretation. When “uno cualquiera” shares its anchor with that of a higher modal, we will get the harmonic interpretation. This hypothesis gives us a way to address modal selectivity: we contend that “uno cualquiera” requires anchors of a particular type, and harmonic interpretations are only possible when the anchor of the modal satisfies this requirement.This research was supported by the following grants: a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship (Modal Determiners, PIEF-GA-2013-622311) within the 7th European Community Framework Program (Paula Menéndez-Benito); a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant (Modality in the Nominal Domain,435-2013-0103, PI: Luis Alonso-Ovalle); and a Fonds de Recherche Sociéeté et Culture Québec grant (Variations entre langues dans la sémantique des groupes nominaux indéfinis: l’expression de l’ignorance et de l’indifference, 2013-NP-164823, PI: Luis Alonso-Ovalle). The financial support to GLiF (Formal Linguistics Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra) by the Government of Catalonia (AGAUR, 2014 SGR 698) is also gratefully acknowledged