Abstract
Sentences involving disjunction under epistemic modal adjectives — such as possible , likely , and certain — give rise to the inference that the disjuncts are epistemically possible. Inferences of this sort are often classified and treated differently, depending on the force of the embedding modal. Those triggered by possibility modals are singled out as ‘free choice inferences’ (Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002, Klinedinst 2007, Fox 2007, Chierchia 2013, a.o.), while those triggered by stronger modals are called and accounted for in a different way (Sauerland 2004, Fox 2007, Crnic et al. 2015 a.o.). In this paper, we pursue two goals. First, we develop and defend a degree semantics for epistemic modal adjectives, building on much recent work on the topic (Yalcin 2010, Lassiter 2011, 2014, Moss 2015, Swanson 2015, a.o.). Second, we show that this semantics, in combination with the assumption that scalar implicatures can arise in embedded position (Fox 2007, Chierchia et al. 2012 a.o.), can predict all the inferences triggered by disjunction under modals, including free choice ones, via a uniform mechanism. We conclude by outlining how the proposal can be extended to epistemic modal items in other syntactic categories, and to modals of different flavor. BibTeX Info
Highlights
1.1 The inferences of disjunction under epistemic modals An overviewDisjunctions in the scope of epistemic modal expressions give rise to scalar inferences to the effect that each disjunct is epistemically possible
There is broad agreement that a Boolean analysis of disjunction and classical modal semantics are essentially correct, and that the scalar effects we described should be captured as implicatures that arise on top of literal meaning (Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002, Simons 2005, Fox 2007, Klinedinst 2007, Chemla 2008, van Rooij 2010, Franke 2011, Alonso Ovalle 2005, Chierchia 2013, Crnic, Chemla & Fox 2015)
We show that, by adopting a degree semantics for epistemic modal expressions, we can derive all the effects covered by Possibility Implicatures of Modals (PIM), in a uniform way, via the simple schematic process outlined above
Summary
Disjunctions in the scope of epistemic modal expressions give rise to scalar inferences to the effect that each disjunct is epistemically possible. #It’s possible/likely/certain that we will hire Mary or Sue These observations generalize to epistemic modal expressions in different syntactic categories, including adverbs like possibly, probably, certainly and auxiliaries like might, should and must. It’s allowed to drink in this room (7) John has to take Syntax or Logic this year. All these effects are unexpected from the viewpoint of classical modal semantics, which descends from modal logic and treats natural language modals as quantifiers over worlds. This analysis, in combination with the hypothesis that or corresponds to Boolean disjunction, predicts that the following inference patterns are invalid:.
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