Aspect as an indicator of a clausal size in Involuntary State Constructions in BCS

Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) has a productive ‘involuntary state construction (ISC) with a modal interpretation. There is an ongoing debate concerning the syntactic complexity of this construction. According to one account – the “mono-clausal analysis”, ISCs have only one (overt) lexical verb, and the modal interpretation stems from the imperfective operator (Rivero and Milojević-Sheppard 2003,Rivero 2009, Tsedryk 2016). There is also a “bi-clausal account” which argues in favor of a covert matrix verb of involuntary disposition feel-like, which takes a clausal ModP complement, giving the modal interpretation (Marušič & Žaucer 2005 [henceforth M&Ž]). In this paper, I provide additional evidence in favor of the bi-clausal approach and in so doing, account for a previously unresolved aspectual restriction on the construction, namely that it is ungrammatical with a perfective lexical verb. The main claim is that the unavailability of perfective in the ISC is due to selectional properties of covert feel-like, which results in the violation of requirements on perfective.

Realism, reliability, and epistemic possibility: on modally interpreting the Benacerraf–Field challenge

A Benacerraf–Field challenge is an argument intended to show that common realist theories of a given domain are untenable: such theories make it impossible to explain how we’ve arrived at the truth in that domain, and insofar as a theory makes our reliability in a domain inexplicable, we must either reject that theory or give up the relevant beliefs. But there’s no consensus about what would count here as a satisfactory explanation of our reliability. It’s sometimes suggested that giving such an explanation would involve showing that our beliefs meet some modal condition, but realists have claimed that this sort of modal interpretation of the challenge deprives it of any force: since the facts in question are metaphysically necessary and so obtain in all possible worlds, it’s trivially easy, even given realism, to show that our beliefs have the relevant modal features. Here I show that this claim is mistaken—what motivates a modal interpretation of the challenge in the first place also motivates an understanding of the relevant features in terms of epistemic possibilities rather than metaphysical possibilities, and there are indeed epistemically possible worlds where the facts in question don’t obtain.

A Logic of Creating

I describe a “logic of creating” inspired by the “existential” argument of the existence of God in St. Thomas Aquinas’s De Ente et Essentia. suggest a modal reading of his reasoning based upon states-of-affairs said to be actual, contingent, necessary and the like. I take “creating” as teasing actuality out of possibility. After explaining the modal logic that I am assuming and relating it to Christian understandings of meaning and being, I present my modal interpretation, contrasting it with the views of three modern philosophers. In an appendix I will analyze the text of St. Thomas’s existential proof.

The relevance of future vs. non-future languages for the understanding of the role of tense in counterfactuals sentences / A relevância de línguas do sistema futuro vs. não-futuro para se entender o papel do tempo gramatical em sentenças contrafactuais

A sentence is counterfactual when it implicates that the proposition it denotes is false (Iatridou, 2000). It has been noted that the past tense behaves non-canonically in counterfactual constructions in several unrelated languages, since it does not seem to convey pastness. A similar behavior is found in Karitiana, a Tupian language that belongs to the future vs. non-future system. It is the non-future that is used non-canonically in counterfactuals in Karitiana. Some authors posit that the past tense has a modal interpretation in counterfactual environments (JAMES, 1982; FLEISCHMAN, 1989; IATRIDOU, 2000; PALMER, 2001; van LINDEN; VERSTRAETE; 2008). Others posit that tense is just tense in these environments (IPPOLITO, 2002, 2003; ARREGUI, 2005). The goal of this paper is to describe the semantics of counterfactual sentences in Karitiana, and show that the language supports the Tense as Tense approach to counterfactuals. Thus, bringing data from Karitiana becomes relevant because, besides giving a description of counterfactuality in the language, it brings data from a typologically distinct language to bear on the choice between two important theoretical approaches.Keywords: counterfactuality; tense; past; indigenous languages.Resumo: Uma sentença é contrafactual quando implica que a proposição que ela denota é falsa (Iatridou, 2000). Tem sido observado, em diversas línguas de famílias não relacionadas, que a morfologia de passado usada em sentenças contrafactuais possui um comportamento inesperado. Ela parece não expressar a noção de tempo passado. Observamos um comportamento semelhante em uma língua que não têm morfologia de passado, mas cujo sistema temporal expressa a distinção futuro vs. não-futuro – v o Karitiana, língua Tupi. Nessa língua, a morfologia de não-futuro, quando usada em sentenças contrafactuais, não expressa ausência de futuridade. Alguns autores consideram que em contrafactuais o tempo gramatical tem uma interpretação modal (JAMES, 1982; FLEISCHMAN, 1989; IATRIDOU, 2000; PALMER, 2001; van LINDEN; VERSTRAETE; 2008). Outros consideram que o tempo mantém sua interpretação temporal (IPPOLITO, 2002, 2003; ARREGUI, 2005). O objetivo deste artigo é avaliar essas duas teorias frente ao comportamento das construções contrafactuais em Karitiana. O artigo mostra que os dados de uma língua do sistema temporal futuro vs. não-futuro contribuem para a avaliação de qual das duas abordagens mencionadas acima oferece a proposta mais plausível para o papel da flexão temporal em sentenças contrafactuais. A primeira abordagem funciona exclusivamente para línguas que possuem a morfologia de passado. Por outro lado, a segunda abordagem é capaz de fornecer uma explicação para o comportamento distinto da flexão temporal tanto em línguas do sistema futuro vs. não-futuro, como em línguas do sistema passado vs. presente vs. futuro. Assim, a discussão da língua Karitiana é relevante porque, além de aprofundar a descrição das sentenças contrafactuais nessa língua, traz dados de uma língua tipologicamente distinta das línguas mais discutidas pela literatura para dentro da discussão teórica sobre a contrafactualidade. Esses dados desafiam o poder explanatório das principais abordagens teóricas e apoiam uma delas.Palavras-chave: contrafactualidade; tempo; passado; línguas indígenas.

Grounding in Mathematical Structuralism

The grounding relation is thought to have certain structural properties: irreflexivity, asymmetry, transitivity, and well-foundedness. This paper examines a putative case of grounding that serves as a counterexample to almost all of these properties. The example comes from non-eliminative mathematical structuralism, some versions of which argue that mathematical objects depend in some sense on the structure to which they belong, and on the other objects in that structure. Such claims generate prima facie cases of symmetric, reflexive, and non-well-founded dependence. The paper argues that this dependence constitutes a grounding relation in the structuralist case. It then argues that these dependence claims can be given a modal interpretation, and that under this interpretation the dependence claims, and therefore the associated grounding claims, are true. It follows that these cases from mathematical structuralism constitute genuine counterexamples to many of the structural properties traditionally thought to hold of the grounding relation.

Logics with Impossibility as the Negation and Regular Extensions of the Deontic Logic D2

In [1] J.-Y. Bèziau formulated a logic called Z. Bèziau’s idea was generalized independently in [6] and [7]. A family of logics to which Z belongs is denoted in [7] by K. In particular; it has been shown in [6] and [7] that there is a correspondence between normal modal logics and logics from the class K. Similar; but only partial results has been obtained also for regular logics (see [8] and [9]). In (Došen; [2]) a logic N has been investigated in the language with negation; implication; conjunction and disjunction by axioms of positive intuitionistic logic; the right-to-left part of the second de Morgan law; and the rules of modus ponens and contraposition. From the semantical point of view the negation used by Došen is the modal operator of impossibility. It is known this operator is a characteristic of the modal interpretation of intuitionistic negation (see [3; p. 300]). In the present paper we consider an extension of N denoted by N+. We will prove that every extension of N+ that is closed under the same rules as N+; corresponds to a regular logic being an extension of the regular deontic logic D21 (see [4] and [13]). The proved correspondence allows to obtain from soundnesscompleteness result for any given regular logic containing D2, similar adequacy theorem for the respective extension of the logic N+.