Linguistics and Philosophy (6) (2018)
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Abstract |
Based on a crowdsourced truth value judgment experiment, we provide empirical evidence challenging two classical views in semantics, and we develop a novel account of counterfactuals that combines ideas from inquisitive semantics and causal reasoning. First, we show that two truth-conditionally equivalent clauses can make different semantic contributions when embedded in a counterfactual antecedent. Assuming compositionality, this means that the meaning of these clauses is not fully determined by their truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: truth-conditionally equivalent clauses may be associated with different propositional alternatives, each of which counts as a separate counterfactual assumption. Second, we show that our results contradict the common idea that the interpretation of a counterfactual involves minimizing change with respect to the actual state of affairs. We propose to replace the idea of minimal change by a distinction between foreground and background for a given counterfactual assumption: the background is held fixed in the counterfactual situation, while the foreground can be varied without any minimality constraint.
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Keywords | Counterfactuals Experimental semantics Crowdsourcing survey Disjunctive antecedents Inquisitive semantics Minimal change semantics Ordering semantics Causal reasoning |
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Reprint years | 2018 |
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DOI | 10.1007/s10988-018-9232-4 |
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References found in this work BETA
The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases.Irene Heim - 1982 - Dissertation, UMass Amherst
A Theory of Conditionals.Robert C. Stalnaker - 1968 - In Nicholas Rescher (ed.), Studies in Logical Theory (American Philosophical Quarterly Monographs 2). Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 98-112.
View all 68 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Conditional Heresies.Fabrizio Cariani & Simon Goldstein - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2):251-282.
Free choice, simplification, and Innocent Inclusion.Moshe E. Bar-Lev & Danny Fox - 2020 - Natural Language Semantics 28 (3):175-223.
Presupposed free choice and the theory of scalar implicatures.Paul Marty & Jacopo Romoli - 2022 - Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (1):91-152.
Counterfactuals, Hyperintensionality and Hurford Disjunctions.Hüseyin Güngör - forthcoming - Linguistics and Philosophy:1-27.
View all 15 citations / Add more citations
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