Counterfactuality and past

Linguistics and Philosophy 42 (6):577-615 (2019)
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Abstract

Many languages have past-and-counterfactuality markers such as English simple past. There have been various attempts to find a common definition for both uses, but I will argue in this paper that they all have problems with ruling out unacceptable interpretations, or accounting for the contrary-to-fact implicature of counterfactual conditionals, or predicting the observed cross-linguistic variation, or a combination thereof. By combining insights from two basic lines of reasoning, I will propose a simple and transparent approach that solves all the observed problems and offers a new understanding of the concept of counterfactuality.

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Prolegomena to a theory of X-marking.Kai von Fintel & Sabine Iatridou - 2023 - Linguistics and Philosophy 46 (6):1467-1510.

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References found in this work

Semantics in generative grammar.Irene Heim & Angelika Kratzer - 1998 - Malden, MA: Blackwell. Edited by Angelika Kratzer.
Elements of symbolic logic.Hans Reichenbach - 1947 - London: Dover Publications.
Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 36 (3):602-605.

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