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Internal past, external past, and counterfactuality: evidence from Japanese

“…Further Condoravdi (2002) and Ippolito (2003Ippolito ( , 2006 allow us to observe the examples in (22a) and (22b) with temporal adverbs. The data suggests that External Past is evaluated in the past, in contrast to Internal Past.…”

“…Thus the past tense morpheme conveys counterfactuality. Condoravdi (2002) and Ippolito (2003Ippolito ( , 2006 provide a different view on the semantic contribution of the past tense morpheme. 8 Referring to Thomason (1984), they argue that the past tense morpheme is employed to go back to a past when the proposition could still be true.…”

“…One possibility raised in Iatridou (2000: 246) is that "future" is modal and tense is only past or present. 8 To be more precise, Ippolito (2006) proposes different semantics from Ippolito (2003) for counterfactual conditionals. Ippolito (2006) also suggests an additional different view on the semantic contribution of the past in two-past counterfactual conditionals such as (i).…”

“…In another pattern where the past arises outside the modal, the past is employed to go back to a past when the proposition could still be true. I appeal to the ideas provided in Condoravdi 2002and Ippolito 2003, 2006. The counterfactuality is obtained by the conversational implicature in the latter type: the relevant past possibility is no longer available at the utterance time.…”

“…In another pattern where the past takes scope over the modal, the counterfactuality can be canceled. Appealing to the ideas provided in Condoravdi 2002and Ippolito 2003, 2006 suggest that the past is temporal and it expresses that there was a past time when the proposition could still be true. The accessibility relation is defined in the past.…”