X- vs. O-marked want

Abstract

Abstract X-marked want is identified by von Fintel & Iatridou (2023) (vF&I) as one of the crosslinguistic challenges for what they call X-marking, the kind of morphology traditionally referred to as ‘subjunctive’ or ‘counterfactual’. This paper’s main goal is to spell out vF&I’s idea that X-marking on want reflects a widening of want’s quantificational domain, thereby doing the same job as it does in conditionals under an influential view originating with Stalnaker (1975). With Sode (2021), but also Grano & Phillips-Brown (2022), the proposition $\phi $ denoted by want’s complement is treated as the antecedent of a “hidden conditional” that Heim (1992) sees in want and desire-ascriptions more generally, a treatment in whose favor vF&I’s Conditional/Desire Pattern provides morphosyntactic evidence. In line with the Stalnakerian view, but also more recent ones under which X-marking is semantically vacuous (Crowley 2022; Leahy 2011, 2018), X-marking on want is treated as reflecting the absence of a presuppositional constraint that the O-marked counterpart comes with: a limitation of closest antecedent-worlds to the attitude holder’s belief set.