Abstract
There is a difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously use a ‘must’-claim like (1-a) and those in which one can use the corresponding claim without the ‘must’, as in (1-b): (1)a. It must be raining out.b. It is raining out.\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsmath}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{wasysym}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsfonts}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amssymb}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsbsy}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{mathrsfs}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{upgreek}\t\t\t\t\\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\t\t\t\t\\begin{document}$$\\begin{aligned}&\\hbox {(1)} \\,\\,\\quad \\hbox {a. It must be raining out}.\\\\&\\qquad \\,\\,\\, \\hbox {b. It is raining out}. \\end{aligned}$$\\end{document}It is difficult to pin down just what this difference amounts to. And it is difficult to account for this difference, since assertions of ulcorner Must purcorner and assertions of p alone seem to have the same basic goal: namely, communicating that p is true. In this paper I give a new account of the conversational role of ‘must’. I begin by arguing that a ‘must’-claim is felicitous only if there is a shared argument for the proposition it embeds. I then argue that this generalization, which I call Support, can explain the more familiar generalization that ‘must’-claims are felicitous only if the speaker’s evidence for them is in some sense indirect. Finally, I propose a pragmatic derivation of Support as a manner implicature.
Highlights
Consider the following sentences: von Fintel and Gillies (2010)Intuitively, an assertion of (1-a) and an assertion of (1-b) have the same basic communicative aim: namely, to communicate that it is raining out
I began by arguing that, in addition to Indirectness, we need Support to fully characterize the differences in felicity conditions between an assertion of Must p and an assertion of p alone
I argued that we can account for Indirectness by deriving it pragmatically from Support
Summary
Consider the following sentences: von Fintel and Gillies (2010)Intuitively, an assertion of (1-a) and an assertion of (1-b) have the same basic communicative aim: namely, to communicate that it is raining out. Suppose that Jane is in a windowless room, and sees her colleagues come in with wet umbrellas. She can assert either (1-a) or (1-b). Suppose that Jane is looking out a window at the rain She can still assert (1-b), but an assertion of (1-a)—‘It must be raining out’—would be decidedly odd. There is a systematic difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously assert a ‘must’-claim with complement p, versus the conditions in which one can felicitously assert p alone.. There is a systematic difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously assert a ‘must’-claim with complement p, versus the conditions in which one can felicitously assert p alone. Accounting for these differences is a challenge known as Karttunen’s Problem; the goal of this paper is to provide a solution to this problem
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