A Dynamic Approach to Mood and Modality

Frank Veltman

Afdeling Wijsbegeerte
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 15
1012 CP Amsterdam

(veltman@hum.uva.nl)
phone: +31-20-525 4564
fax: +31-20-525 4503
http://turing.wins.uva.nl/~veltman/

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of propositional logic, predicate logic, and modal logic.

Summary:

Course Outline: Lecture 1: Introduction and overview.

Lectures 2 & 3: Epistemic modalities.
Under this heading I will discuss the dynamic ins and outs of modalities like `may', `must', `will', `might'. A proper treatment of these requires a framework in which we can distinguish between an agent's factual information and his or her expectations.
Topics to be discussed include:
(a) Modal subordination.
(b) Moore's paradox -- `It's raining but maybe it isn't.'
Both (a) and (b) illustrate the difference between the dynamic and static approach.

Lectures 4 & 5: The counterfactual mood.
Here I will discuss the counterfactual modalities which in English are exemplified by the sequences `might + have + past participle' and `would + have + past participle'.
Some problems we will encounter:
(a) Sentences of the form `It would/might have been the case that ...' typically occur in the context of a clause of the form `If it had been the case that ...'. So far, most semantic investigations have been restricted to their occurrence in that particular context. However, conditionals are not the only place where one can find the counterfactual mood and one of the questions I want to pursue is in exactly which contexts it can occur.
(b) Another problem we will encounter has to do with the interplay of tense and mood in the English would + have + past participle construction. For an indicative conditional to make sense it is not necessary that the event described in the antecedent precedes the event in the consequent. There is nothing wrong with sentences like `If John fell, Mary pushed him' and 'If John fell, Mary must have pushed him'. However, in the counterfactual mood this cannot be done. `If John had fallen, Mary would have pushed him' does not have a reading in which the event described by consequent would have preceded the event described by the antecedent.

Course Notes:
Lecture Notes (1-47)
Lecture Notes (48-72)
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