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Modals and Conditionals Modals and Conditionals Endorsements for Angelika Kratzer’s Modals and Conditionals ‘Angelika Kratzer’s classic work on modality and conditionals is one of the major achievements of contemporary formal semantics. This collection of six of her path-breaking papers on the topic is invaluable. But what is most gratifying is that Kratzer substantially revised the papers, updating them and providing a wealth of retrospective comments. An indispensible resource for anyone inter- ested in semantics or the philosophy of language.’ Franc¸ois Recanati, Institut Jean Nicod ‘This book collects and revises two decades of the work that has shaped the modern view of the language of modals and conditionals: an invariant, univocal vocabulary that is variously understood with shifts in the conversational back- ground, a syntax that identifies if-clauses as the relative clauses restricting modal operators, and a semantics that discerns in the conversational background what is given and what would be best, given what is given. Just for the argument on which this foundation rests, the book deserves frequent and close study. The chapters tell another compelling story in which rivals for the meaning of conditionals are reconciled in a wedding of situation and thought—facts, so- called. One rival pleads that an if-clause is premise to reasoning of which the conditional is report. The other, in a familiar metaphysical turn, has suppressed mention of reasoning in favour of an assertion about ordering relations among possible worlds. Although it has been said (Lewis 1981) that formally there is nothing to choose between them, Angelika Kratzer demonstrates that only a semantics that includes premises gains a purchase on how and why the words chosen to express a conditional affect judgments about its truth. So, in repre- senting the foundations for the modern view, the author also offers a radical program to reform it. This book is a treasure of the puzzles, illustrations and parables that have informed the subject. It defines the standard against which all theorizing on modals and conditionals is to be measured.’ Barry Schein, University of Southern California ‘Modals and conditionals lie at the center of philosophical inquiry. In work beginning in the 1970s, Kratzer proposes a vantage point from which it can be seen that modals and conditionals share a common logical structure, that of quantification generally. This work collects and dramatically expands upon Angelika Kratzer’s now classic papers. There is scarcely an area of philosophy that remains or will remain untouched by their influence.’ Jason Stanley, Rutgers University OXFORD STUDIES IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS general editors David Adger, Queen Mary University of London; Hagit Borer, University of Southern California advisory editors Stephen Anderson, Yale University; Daniel Bu¨ring, University of California, Los Angeles; Nomi Erteschik-Shir, Ben-Gurion University; Donka Farkas, University of California, Santa Cruz; Angelika Kratzer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Andrew Nevins, University College London; Christopher Potts, Stanford University, Amherst; Barry Schein, University of Southern California; Peter Svenonius, University of Tromsø; Moira Yip, University College London Recent titles 20 Adjectives and Adverbs Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse edited by Louise McNally and Christopher Kennedy 21 InterPhases Phase-Theoretic Investigations of Linguistic Interfaces edited by Kleanthes Grohmann 22 Negation in Gapping by Sophie Repp 23 A Derivational Syntax for Information Structure by Luis Lo´pez 24 Quantification, Definiteness, and Nominalization edited by Anastasia Giannakidou and Monika Rathert 25 The Syntax of Sentential Stress by Arsalan Kahnemuyipour 26 Tense, Aspect, and Indexicality by James Higginbotham 27 Lexical Semantics, Syntax, and Event Structure edited by Malka Rappaport Hovav, Edit Doron, and Ivy Sichel 28 About the Speaker Towards a Syntax of Indexicality by Alessandra Giorgi 29 The Sound Patterns of Syntax edited by Nomi Erteschik-Shir and Lisa Rochman 30 The Complementizer Phase edited by E. Phoevos Panagiotidis 31 Interfaces in Linguistics New Research Perspectives edited by Raffaella Folli and Christiane Ulbrich 32 Negative Indefinites by Doris Penka 33 Events, Phrases, and Questions by Robert Truswell 34 Dissolving Binding Theory by Johan Rooryck and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd 35 The Logic of Pronominal Resumption by Ash Asudeh 36 Modals and Conditionals by Angelika Kratzer 37 The Theta System Argument Structure at the Interface edited by Martin Everaert, Marijana Marelj, and Tal Siloni 38 Sluicing in Cross-Linguistic Perspective edited by Jason Merchant and Andrew Simpson 39 Telicity, Change, and State A Cross-Categorial View of Event Structure edited by Violeta Demonte and Louise McNally 40 Ways of Structure Building edited by Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria and Vidal Valmala For a complete list of titles published and in preparation for the series, see pp 204–5. Modals and Conditionals ANGELIKA KRATZER 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York q Angelika Kratzer 2012 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by the MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–923468–4 (Hbk.) 978–0–19–923469–1 (Pbk.) 13579108642 Contents Detailed contents vii General preface ix Preface and acknowledgments x Introducing Chapter 1 1 Chapter 1 What Must and Can Must and Can Mean 4 Introducing Chapter 2 21 Chapter 2 The Notional Category of Modality 27 Introducing Chapter 3 70 Chapter 3 Partition and Revision: The Semantics of Counterfactuals 72 Introducing Chapter 4 85 Chapter 4 Conditionals 86 Introducing Chapter 5 109 Chapter 5 An Investigation of the Lumps of Thought 111 Introducing Chapter 6 160 Chapter 6 Facts: Particulars or Information Units? 161 References 184 Index 197 This page intentionally left blank Detailed Contents General Preface ix Preface and acknowledgments x Introducing Chapter 1 1 1 What Must and Can Must and Can Mean 4 1.1 Must and can are relational 4 1.2 Must and can in a premise semantics 9 1.3 Inconsistent premise sets 12 1.4 Structuring premise sets 16 Introducing Chapter 2 21 2 The Notional Category of Modality 27 2.1 Introduction 27 2.2 Expressing modality in German 28 2.3 Basic notions 30 2.4 Grades of possibility 38 2.5 Modals without duals 43 2.6 Root versus epistemic modals 49 2.7 Approaching norms and ideals with root modals 55 2.8 Practical reasoning 62 2.9 Conditionals 64 2.10 Conclusion 68 Introducing Chapter 3 70 3 Partition and Revision: The Semantics of Counterfactuals 72 3.1 A straightforward analysis seems to fail 72 3.2 Escaping through atomism 74 3.3 Counterexamples and amendments 76 3.4 Back to the original analysis 80 3.5 Conclusion 84 Introducing Chapter 4 85 4 Conditionals 86 4.1 Grice 86 4.2 Gibbard’s proof 87 4.3 The decline of material implication 88 viii Detailed Contents 4.4 Probability conditionals 91 4.5 Epistemic conditionals 97 4.6 Gibbard’s proof reconsidered: silent operators 105 4.7 Conditional propositions after all? 107 Introducing Chapter 5 109 5 An Investigation of the Lumps of Thought 111 5.1 What lumps of thought are 111 5.2 How lumps of thought can be characterized in terms of situations 114 5.3 A semantics based on situations 115 5.3.1 A metaphysics for situations 115 5.3.2 Ingredients for a situation semantics 117 5.3.3 The logical properties and relations 117 5.3.4 Persistence 118 5.3.5 Sentence denotations 120 5.4 Counterfactual reasoning 125 5.4.1 Some facts about counterfactuals 125 5.4.2 Truth-conditions for counterfactuals 127 5.4.3 We forgot about lumps 129 5.4.4 The formal deWnitions 131 5.5 Representing non-accidental generalizations 135 5.5.1 Non-accidental generalizations: a Wrst proposal 135 5.5.2 Hempel’s Paradox and Goodman’s Puzzle 138 5.6 Negation 152 5.6.1 In search of an accidental interpretation 152 5.6.2 Negation and restrictive clauses 154 5.6.3 Negation and counterfactual reasoning 156 5.7 Conclusion 159 Introducing Chapter 6 160 6 Facts: Particulars or Information Units? 161 6.1 Worldly facts 161 6.2 Facts and the semantics of the verb to know 162 6.3 Facts that exemplify propositions 165 6.4 Reliability in knowledge ascriptions 173 6.5 Facts and counterfactuals 179 6.6 Propositional facts and natural propositions 181 References 184 Index 197 General preface The theoretical focus of this series is on the interfaces between subcompo- nents of the human grammatical system and the closely related area of the interfaces between the diVerent subdisciplines of linguistics.
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