Publications:
5. Vanilla Rules: the "No Ice Cream" Construction (2023) [localfile | DOI: 10.18148/sub/2023.v27.1065]
(joint work with Felix Frühauf, Hadil Karawani, Todor Koev, Natasha Korotkova, and Doris Penka)
In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB) 27
4. Ought and Agency (2022) [local file | DOI: 10.1007/s11229-022-03819-3]
In Synthese online first version
3. On Content Uniformity for Beliefs and Desires (2021) [local file | DOI: 10.1007/s13164-020-0052-9]
In the Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 12 (2): 279-309.
2. Future-Orientation on an Event-Relative Semantics for Modals (2020) [local file | abstract | published version]
In Maggie Baird and Jonathan Pesetsky (eds.), NELS 49: Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society: Volume Three, pp. 149–162. GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
1. Some Constraints on Contextualism About Modals (2020) [local file | DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-34485-6_16]
In Ciecierski T., Grabarczyk P. (eds) The Architecture of Context and Context-Sensitivity. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 103. Springer,
Other work:
Modals, Contextual Parameters, and the Modal Uniformity Hypothesis [draft]
(This paper is no longer in progress, and some of its arguments have been worked into other papers. Since I circulated this work with numerous interlocutors and benefited much from their input, I leave it here for archival purposes.)
5. Vanilla Rules: the "No Ice Cream" Construction (2023) [localfile | DOI: 10.18148/sub/2023.v27.1065]
(joint work with Felix Frühauf, Hadil Karawani, Todor Koev, Natasha Korotkova, and Doris Penka)
In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung (SuB) 27
- the gist: What's the nature of the meaning of deontically flavored nominal constructions (DNCs) like No parking! or Dogs on leash only! ? We argue that, superficial appearance aside, they are actually fully clausal declarative sentences with an elided modal allowed. Fundamentally, they assert the existence of a rule of some kind, but can be used performatively in the right context.
4. Ought and Agency (2022) [local file | DOI: 10.1007/s11229-022-03819-3]
In Synthese online first version
- the gist: Is there a difference in the logical form of “agentive” and “non-agentive” ought sentences (or "deliberative" and "evaluative" ought sentences, if you prefer)? I argue that there is, and propose a novel account with a few surprises.
3. On Content Uniformity for Beliefs and Desires (2021) [local file | DOI: 10.1007/s13164-020-0052-9]
In the Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 12 (2): 279-309.
- the gist: “Content Uniformity” is the view that beliefs and desires have the same kind of content. I argue that Content Uniformity is wrong.
2. Future-Orientation on an Event-Relative Semantics for Modals (2020) [local file | abstract | published version]
In Maggie Baird and Jonathan Pesetsky (eds.), NELS 49: Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society: Volume Three, pp. 149–162. GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
- the gist: A prominent revision of Kratzer's semantics for modals says that modals are event-relative as opposed to world-relative (a la Hacquard (2007/2010)). I argue that the common ways of carrying out an event-relative semantics for a class of modals runs into trouble with future orientation, and offer a fix.
1. Some Constraints on Contextualism About Modals (2020) [local file | DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-34485-6_16]
In Ciecierski T., Grabarczyk P. (eds) The Architecture of Context and Context-Sensitivity. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 103. Springer,
- the gist: I argue that the standard way of representing the context sensitivity of modals in philosophy results in massive and systematic overgeneration. Luckily, there's a way of avoiding this overgeneration. The context sensitivity of modals is thereby constrained, in an instructive way.
Other work:
Modals, Contextual Parameters, and the Modal Uniformity Hypothesis [draft]
(This paper is no longer in progress, and some of its arguments have been worked into other papers. Since I circulated this work with numerous interlocutors and benefited much from their input, I leave it here for archival purposes.)
- Abstract: There is a common assumption in the semantics of modal auxiliaries in natural language; in utterances of MOD φ , where MOD is a modal and φ is the prejacent, context determines the particular flavor of modality expressed by the modal. Such is the standard contextualist semantics of Kratzer and related proposals. This winds up being a problem, because there is a significant class of modals which have constraints on the admissible modal flavor that are not traceable to context. For example, in MUST φ , subsentential properties of φ, like the aspectual class of the predicate in the prejacent, can affect the flavor of MUST. By encoding the above assumption into the semantics, such contextualist accounts fail to be able to explain, much less to predict, this pattern. Worse yet, attempts to exploit the resources of the theory in service of an explanation run afoul of important commitments of the view, like the hypothesis that modals have a uniform semantics. Given these circumstances, these data might seem like a justification for dispensing with the uniformity hypothesis. The present paper lays out the above problem in detail. Against the pessimistic view, I argue that the the contextualist account can in fact explain and predict these patterns while preserving the uniformity hypothesis. This requires adopting an amendment to the semantics of modals based on the work of Valentine Hacquard. Aside from maintaining the contextualist paradigm and preserving uniformity, the proposal also clarifies the role of context in the interpretation of modals. As it will turn out, the role of context ought to be circumscribed in its flavor-determining role for modals.