Semantics Research Group Meeting, December 13, 2019

In this talk I address a new puzzle arising for modal comparison in the context of quotational expressions. First, I show that modal comparatives with mixed quotations allow an interesting reading where the comparison is rooted in a metalinguistic dimension and thus concerns possible uses of terms, rather than possible worlds. Next, I show that familiar accounts of better possibility fail, for both empirical and conceptual reasons. Then I propose a fragment of hybrid modality making use of operators shifting models of interpretation as well as measure functions delivering probabilities. The proposed machinery, I argue, not only solves various problems arising for comparatives with quotations, but also does not technically depart from existing modal systems. I conclude by pointing out the relevance of operations defined on higher level elements, e.g. models, for compositional semantics.