December 19, 2018: Robert Beddor

Time:: 6:00pm, December 19, 2018
Place:: Keio University, Mita Campus,
South Annex, 7th floor
Speaker:: Robert Beddor (National University of Singapore)
Title:: Modals and Question-Sensitivity
Abstract:: The truth-values of sentences containing modal expressions (e.g., “might”, “ought”, “must”) often depend on some body of information. But whose information counts? In recent years this question has sparked considerably controversy. Contextualists maintain that the relevant information is always determined by the context of utterance; relativists insist that it is often determined by the context of assessment. Recent empirical work on speakers’ truth-value judgments concerning modals seems to lend support to the contextualist camp (Knobe & Yalcin 2014; Khoo 2015). In this talk, I add a wrinkle to this debate. I report new research indicating speakers’ truth-value judgments are sensitive to the question under discussion in the context in which the modal utterance is being appraised. I start by reporting empirical work on the question-sensitivity of epistemic modals (conducted with Andy Egan); I go on to outline extensions of this work to deontic modals. I’ll argue that this research creates a new source of difficulty for standard contextualist accounts and breathes new life into relativism.

Semantics Research Group Meeting, December 19, 2018