Prolegomena to a theory of X-marking

Abstract

The morphological marking that distinguishes conditionals that are called “counterfactual” from those that are not, can also be found in other modal constructions, such as in the expression of wishes and oughts. We propose to call it “X-marking”. In this article, we lay out desiderata for a successful theory of X-marking and make some initial informal observations. Much remains to be done.

A square of necessities: X-marking weak and strong necessity modals

“…A square of necessities marking on their strong necessity modals. This was one of the core findings in von Fintel & Iatridou's (2008) seminal paper on the crosslinguistic encoding of weak necessity, followed up more recently by von Fintel & Iatridou (2023). It can be nicely illustrated by comparing languages as different from each other as Hungarian, Greek, and Spanish:…”

“…Although the nature of this morphological marking may differ from language to language, another major point made by von Fintel and Iatridou is that the same marking often appears on the consequent of so-called counterfactual conditionals, as in ( 9)-( 11), and also on bouletic verbs expressing unattainable desires, as in ( 12)-( 14 be.pres 'I wish s/he was taller than s/he is.' [Spanish, von Fintel & Iatridou 2023: ex.42] This extra marking, which can show up on strong necessity modals, conditionals and desire verbs, was dubbed X-marking by von Fintel & Iatridou (2023). The authors have set a new research agenda aimed at understanding the semantics of X-marking and envisaging a possible common core underlying the combination of X and the roots to which they attach.…”

Mapudungun frustrative -fu-: a modal analysis

“…As shown elsewhere (Fuentes 2020(Fuentes , 2023 and illustrated below, the interactions match the behaviour of what has been called 'transparent OUGHT/WISH languages' Iatridou 2008, 2023). An OUGHT transparent language expresses weak necessity (as in (11a)) by marking strong necessity (HAVE TO,as in (10a)) with what has been recently referred to as 'X-morphology' (that is, the morphology that appears in what is traditionally known as 'subjunctive' conditionals; see von Fintel and Iatridou (2023)). As the authors have shown, a related pattern can be traced in the bouletic domain (see also Iatridou 2000 for a first approach).…”

“…The 'X' terminology was only introduced in the authors' most recent work(von Fintel and Iatridou 2023).…”

“…As von Fintel and Iatridou (2023) point out, this potential analysis is not free of difficulties, but I will skirt the details here. At least as a preliminary sketch, the frustrative morphology in (32) seems to effect the type of operation described in the away-from-default view.543 FUENTES…”