This paper provides a formal pragmatic analysis of precision which accounts for its essential properties, but also for Lewis’s :339–359, 1979) observation of asymmetry in how standards of precision may shift due to normal discourse moves: Only up, not down. I propose that shifts of the kind observed and discussed by Lewis are in fact cases of underlying disagreement about the standard of precision, which is only revealed when one interlocutor uses an expression which signals their adherence to a higher (...) standard than the one adhered to by the other interlocutor. This paper shows that a modest formal pragmatic analysis along the lines of many prior optimality-theoretic and game-theoretic accounts can easily capture the natural asymmetry in standard-signaling that gives rise to Lewis’s observation, so long as such an account is dynamic and enriched with a notion of relevance. (shrink)

Next SectionThis short paper argues that predictive expressions (will, gonna) are modals. In section 1, I provide three empirical arguments for a treatment of predictive expressions as modals: (i) they behave like modals in that they can occur in overt and covert conditionals in a way that non-modal operators cannot; (ii) they have morphological variants which show displacement behaviors, i.e., nonveridicality; (iii) like modals, they obviate the personal experience requirement on predicates of personal taste. In section 2, I specifically rebut (...) arguments by Kissine (2008) that will is not a modal. In section 3 I conclude. (shrink)

This paper presents novel data concerning the optionality (or lack thereof) of implicit conditional readings in various contexts, and proposes to account for these by adopting a dynamic semantic theory of modal subordination which crucially involves lexically variable familiarity presuppositions. The central contrast, first partially observed and discussed by Binnick (1971).

This paper is about Sobel sequences, which are sequences of counterfactuals that supposedly display two interesting properties: first, they are consistent, as accounted for by the famous Lewis-Stalnaker analysis; but second, they are not consistent in the reverse order, which is not accounted for by Lewis-Stalnaker. I argue that there has been an empirical oversight in the literature on these sequences: there are consistent sequences, and there are irreversible sequences, but no sequence is both. The Lewis-Stalnaker theory neatly captures Sobel (...) sequences, and also captures the inconsistency of Lewis sequences. But there is still a dynamic asymmetry at work with Lewis sequences, which I account for by appeal to the pragmatic phenomenon of imprecision. Lewis sequences seem consistent because they do not belie factual disagreements, but rather metalinguistic disagreements about how precise to be. This also accounts for their irreversibility—such metalinguistic disagreements about the standard of precision are only possible in one direction, as famously observed by Lewis, who observed them in discourses not containing counterfactuals. (shrink)