Mood and gradability: an investigation of the subjunctive mood in Spanish

Villalta, Elisabeth

doi:10.1007/s10988-008-9046-x

Cited by 116 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(55 reference statements)

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“…The present account makes some headway in this. According to Villalta (2008), 'a proposition p that is the complement of the matrix predicate requires the subjunctive mood iff the matrix predicate introduces an ordering relation between propositions and compares p to its contextually available alternatives'. As is obvious, mood in relative clauses is not selected so an account of mood in complement clauses cannot be applied directly.…”

Section: Subtrigging and Non-partitive ∀-Fcimentioning

confidence: 99%

A Viability Constraint on Alternatives for Free Choice

Dayal

2013

Alternatives in Semantics

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This paper takes the universal force of Free Choice Items (henceforth FCI) to be an implicature that arises when an assertion with existential force interacts with a set of lexically triggered exhaustified alternatives, as proposed by Chierchia (to appear). It departs from him in capturing the distribution of FCI through a Viability Constraint on alternatives, adapting the notion of Fluctuation in Dayal 2009 to the view of FCI as existential. A substantive consequence of the proposed Viability Constraint is that FCI can only ever be licensed if they take wide scope over modals (of the appropriate sort). The paper establishes that apparent counterexamples involve non-trivial interactions between FCI and modality. When the FCI is complex it can participate in splitquantification, with one part taking scope over the modal and the other taking scope under it. Alternatively, if there are two modals, FCI can be scopally lower than one but still be licensed because it has scope over the other. A striking confirmation of this approach comes from imperatives. Though long thought to unconditionally admit FCI, it is shown here that this is not so. In addition to accounting for the more nuanced empirical generalization regarding imperatives, the Viability Constraint is argued to be generally a simpler way of predicting the distribution of FCI than the one proposed by Chierchia. SECTION 1: THE DISTRIBUTION OF FCI The Distribution of ∀ FCIThe distribution of FCI has been much discussed (Vendler 1967, LeGrand 1975, Carlson 1980, 1981, Kadmon and Landman 1993, Dayal 1995, Giannakidou 1998, 2001, Horn 2000a, 2000b, 2003, Jayez and Tovena 2005, Chierchia 2006, to appear, among others). I will nevertheless begin by laying out the core facts in order to make the discussion here self-contained. I adopt the standard distinction between FCI any and NPI any in English, a powerful argument for which comes from cross-linguistic considerations. Italian qualunque/qualsiasi, for example, is acceptable in modal but not negative contexts, suggesting that items appearing in those contexts, while related, must be distinct: 1 1a. * Bill read any book.b. Bill didn't read any book. c. Bill can read any book.2a. *Ieri Gianni ha letto qualsiasi libro/qualsiasi dei libri "Yesterday Gianni read any FCI book/any FCI of the books." b. *Gianni non ha letto qualsiasi libro "Gianni didn't read any FCI book." c. Puoi leggere qualunque libro "You can read any FCI book."

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Section: Subtrigging and Non-partitive ∀-Fcimentioning

confidence: 99%

A Viability Constraint on Alternatives for Free Choice

Dayal

2013

Alternatives in Semantics

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“…Second, it is unclear in what way having a propositional attitude towards a sentence counts as metalinguistic. As Giannakidou & Yoon in fact point out, their analysis parallels Villalta's (2008) semantics for want, which is also argued to involve a gradable propositional attitude. It seems clear, however, that we wouldn't want to say that sentences containing want are metalinguistic in the way that metalinguistic comparatives are.…”

Section: Metalinguistic Comparison As a Preferential Attitudementioning

confidence: 81%

A new metalinguistic degree morpheme

Bochnak

Csipak²

2015

SALT

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In this paper, we discuss and analyze . . . ish/-ish in three of its uses: as a modifier of gradable adjectives; as a clause-final particle that hedges on a speaker's degree of commitment to a proposition; and as a general precision-regulator. In each case, . . . ish/-ish makes reference to a degree that is slightly less than the standard for the constituent it applies to. We propose that proposition-modifying . . . ish belongs to the class of metalinguistic degree morphology alongside metalinguistic comparisons, which have received recent attention in the literature (e.g., Giannakidou & Yoon 2011; Morzycki 2011). We argue for a unified analysis of . . . ish/-ish as a degree modifier, where the relevant degree variable can be provided lexically, or through a type-shifting operation that makes available a degree of precision in the sense of Morzycki (2011). This study has implications for research on the semantics of metalinguistic degree morphology, imprecision, speaker-oriented phenomena, and the role of subjectification in semantic change.

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“…The theories of Kratzer (1991Kratzer ( , 2012, Villalta (2008), and Katz et al (2012) all make modal comparisons based on the relative positions of worlds within a given world-ordering. To concretize this idea a bit, I provide Kratzer's (1991) definition of better possibility in (9); the other theories mentioned above operate on roughly the same principle.…”

Section: Within-ordering Theories and Post Hoc Degree Assignmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kratzer (1991Kratzer ( , 2012, Villalta (2008), Katz, Portner & Rubinstein (2012), and Portner & Rubinstein (2014) adopt what I will call conservative theories of gradable modality, in which all modality-gradable or otherwise-involves premise-based world ordering and quantification along the lines of Kratzer 1981. In contrast, Lassiter (2011aLassiter ( , 2011b proposes what might be called a liberal theory: while he agrees that modal auxiliaries and GMAs have the same underlying semantics, he eschews Kratzer's approach in favor of probabilities for epistemic modals and the decision-theoretic notion of expected utility for root modals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A conservative theory of gradable modality

Pasternak

2016

SALT

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In the tradition of modal semantics stemming from the work of Kratzer (1981Kratzer ( , 1991, several attempts have been made to analyze adjectives like important, which are both modal and gradable. I show that existing theories of such gradable modal adjectives (GMAs) in this framework do not allow for comparisons across distinct sets or prioritizations of premises, as the basis for comparison in these theories is too closely wedded to the particular choice and ranking of priorities. To fix this, I include modal degrees in the ontology, with sets of premises being relativized to those degrees. What results is a theory that allows comparison across sets of priorities, while still retaining the premise-based world ordering and quantification that lies at the heart of Kratzer's approach. This theory is then extended to account for existentially-quantifying GMAs like permissible, as well as entailment relations between modal auxiliaries and GMAs.

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Mood and gradability: an investigation of the subjunctive mood in Spanish

Cited by 116 publications

References 43 publications

A Viability Constraint on Alternatives for Free Choice

A Viability Constraint on Alternatives for Free Choice

A new metalinguistic degree morpheme

A conservative theory of gradable modality

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