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The Semantics of the Future
Modifié par
Bridget Copley
le - 7 novembre 2007
Natural languages use a number of different methods to refer to future
eventualities : among them are futurates, as in (1), and futures, as in
(2) and (3).
(1) The Red Sox (are) play(ing) the Yankees tomorrow.
(2) We’ll change your oil in Madera.
(3) We’re going to change your oil in Madera.
This dissertation uses evidence primarily from English, with additional
data from Turkish and Indonesian, to argue that these methods all involve
universal quantification over subsets of metaphysically accessible futures.
One factor in determining which worlds a modal quantifies over is the
temporal argument of the modal’s accessibility relation. It is
well-known that a higher tense affects the accessibility relation of
modals. What is less well-known is that there are aspectual operators
high enough to affect the accessibility relation of modals. New data
presented in this dissertation reveal the presence of aspectual
operators located between TP and the future modal projection. The
effects of these operators on truth and assertability conditions provide
substantial information about the correct characterization of future
modality, and indeed of modality in general. Furthermore, the very
existence of such aspectual operators raises questions about how aspect
is represented in the semantics, if (as is generally assumed) aspectual
operators take event arguments, which do not occur outside of the verb
phrase.
In addition, the ordering source in futures is found to be determined in some
cases by animate entities’ desires and intentions, and in other cases by
more general properties of the world in question. Other modals in other
languages are shown to share this dichotomy. A unification of the two
kinds of ordering sources is proposed.
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