Juhani Yli-Vakkuri

Bielefeld University

Modals and Conditionals are Ambiguous

27 October 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Following Angelika Kratzer’s classic work on modals and conditionals, the consensus in natural language semantics is that modals and conditionals (which are often thought to be a kind of modal) are indexical – in the sense that their contents depend on context – but not ambiguous. I argue that the consensus is mistaken: modals and conditionals are both indexical and ambiguous. That the difference between objective (or circumstantial) and epistemic interpretations of these expressions is not a matter of indexicality can be seen by studying the ways in which they interact with other indexicals. I reconstruct the view that modals and conditionals are only indexical using standard two-dimensional semantics for indexicals, and I show that it cannot handle the modal/indexical interaction. I then give an alternative (three-dimensional) semantics that treats modals and indexicals on their objective and epistemic readings as pairs of (indexical) homonyms, and I show that it can handle the interaction.