Shifting modal domains: An imprecision-based account | Zendy

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Shifting modal domains: An imprecision-based account

Author(s) -

Peter Klecha

Publication year - 2012

Publication title -

lsa annual meeting extended abstracts

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

ISSN - 2377-3367

DOI - 10.3765/exabs.v0i0.604

Subject(s) - modal , alice (programming language) , interpretation (philosophy) , modal verb , domain (mathematical analysis) , computer science , semantics (computer science) , subject (documents) , demon , possible world , linguistics , epistemology , artificial intelligence , mathematics , philosophy , programming language , mathematical analysis , chemistry , library science , polymer chemistry , verb

This paper proposes that the interpretation of modals is subject to (im)precision (a la Lasersohn 1999), explaining certain contextual domain shifting effects observed by Lewis (1979). (1) Bryan: This must be a pen – I'm looking right at it. Alice: Not so; you could be the victim of a deceiving demon. I argue that Alice raises the standard of precision in (1), thereby widening the domain of have to to include otherwise ignorable worlds. This explains a number of similarities between domain shifting of the type in (1) and canonical cases of imprecision, and simplifies the modal semantics.

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