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Linguistics
Department
Stanford
University |
Stanford
Humanities Center
Mellon
Foundation
Graduate
Research Workshop Program
Stanford
Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop:
THE
CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING
Friday, February 6, 3:30pm in 460-126:
Perfect Modals
Tim Stowell (UCLA)
ABSTRACT:
Condoravdi (2001) argues that the nonfinite periphrastic perfect (have + -en),
when it occurs as the morpho-syntactic complement of certain
modals, is sometimes interpreted as though it were a past tense scoping over
the modal, as in examples like (1):
(1) At that point, Jack might still have won the game.
'EUR~At that point, it was still possible that Jack would win the game'
Condoravdi posits an analysis that provides a syntactic basis for this
interpretation, involving two distinctive properties: first, the perfect is
analyzed in this case as (the equivalent of) a true past tense; and, second,
this past tense undergoes movement to a position above that of the modal.
She notes that the modal has a 'EUR~metaphysical' reading in this case, with
Jack's winning of the game treated as one possible (branching) future
relative to a past time at which the modal evaluation holds.
This interpretation can be contrasted with the "normal" reading that these
modal-perfect pairs have in contexts such as (2), where the modal has a
present-tense epistemic interpretation, and the perfect has a past-shifting
interpretation, locating Jack's (possible) winning of the game prior to the
time of modal evaluation:
(2) I still think that Jack might have won the game.
In my talk, I will begin by developing an amended version of Condoravdi's
syntactic proposal, integrating it with a syntactically based theory of tense
interpretation that I have proposed elsewhere. I will then use this framework
to probe the syntactic properties of these modal-perfect pairs in greater
detail, and to see what they tell us about the principles that these phenomena
interact with, including the theories of verbal head movement, morphological
paradigmatic gaps and suppletion, finite/nonfinite alternations, and tense
interpretation. In particular, I will address the following questions:
a) Is it necessary to treat the scoped-out perfect in (1) as a true past
tense
(as opposed to perfect aspect)? (A qualified Yes.)
b) Does the scoped-out past tense occur with other types of modal
interpretations (epistemic and root)? (A qualified Yes.)
c) Is the scoped-out past tense compatible with the full range of "inner
tense" interpretations relating the time of the modal's complement to the
modal evaluation time? (Probably not.)
d) Does the scoped-out past tense occur with other types of past tense
interpretations? In particular, can the scoped-out past have an analogue
of the "simultaneous" interpretation that arises in sequence of tense
contexts? (Yes.) Can it have an analogue of the counterfactual
present-tense interpretation that arises in conditional clauses?
(Yes.)
e) What factors (both syntactic and pragmatic) constrain the relative scope
relations of tenses and modals, and what factors constrain their relative
hierarchical relations in the morpho-syntax? (Not a yes/no question.)
Please contact one of the workshop organizers
if you have suggestions for presentations or the workshop in general.
Back to the workshop homepage.
This workshop is sponsored by
the Stanford Humanities Center, and funded by a grant from the Mellon
Foundation.
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