Рет қаралды 8,956
How do we capture the meaning of "may" or "can"? What kinds of linguistic math do we need to understand them? In this week's episode, we take a look at modality: where words like "must" fit in our meanings; how we consider many ways the world could be to account for their semantics; and how the same string of sounds can have a lot of flavours.
This is Topic #90!
This week's tag language: Cornish!
Related videos:
Logical Connections: How Logical Is Language? • How Logical is Languag...
Let's Talk About Sets: How Do We Build Meaning with Math? • How Do We Build Meanin...
Quantifying Sets and Toasters: What Does "Most" Even Mean? • What Does "Most" Even ...
Last episode:
Relatively Close: How Can Sentences Work Like Adjectives? • How Can Sentences Work...
Other of our semantics and pragmatics videos:
Topic of Focus: How Do We Signal What's Important When We Talk? • How Do We Signal What'...
Downward Spiral: Why Can't "Any" Go Just Anywhere? • Why Can't "Any" Go Jus...
Building Common Ground: How Do We Build Shared Worlds in Conversation? • How Do We Create a Sha...
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, on the syntax of modals, at: www.thelingspac...
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We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
A good portion of the presentation was based off of Kai von Fintel's Intensional Semantics notes (web.mit.edu/fin...)
We also consulted Angelika Kratzer's papers from 1977, 1981, and 1991, where all these ideas about modality originally come from:
The 1977 paper: semantics.uchic...
The 1981 paper: semantics.uchic...
The 1991 paper: udrive.oit.uma...
For background -- historical and otherwise -- we consulted Basic Concepts in Modal Logic (mally.stanford...) and William Starr's lecture notes: (williamstarr.ne....
Finally, we drew some inspiration from Seth Cable's recent (and wonderfully lucid) Formal Semantics notes: people.umass.ed...
Looking forward to next time!