Some Constraints on Contextualism About Modals

Abstract

The following paradigm, most closely associated with the work of Angelika Kratzer, dominates the literature on the semantics of modals: MUST is a universal quantifier over a contextually determined set of worlds, where ⌜MUST φ⌝ is true just in case ϕ holds in each of these worlds. The quantifier is restricted via the setting of values for various contextual parameters relative to which the modal is interpreted. Notwithstanding its important virtues, I aim to show that the standard way of carrying out the paradigm overgenerates in a pretty severe way with prejacents with eventive predicates. The argument of this chapter concerns this overgeneration problem and can be broken down into two sub-claims: CLAIM 1: If context is responsible for setting the values of the parameters relative to which modals are semantically evaluated, then we can’t account for this common pattern in the interpretation of modal auxiliaries. CLAIM 2: These data provide independent support for recent revisionist approaches in linguistics, and places constraints on the way we think of context as influencing the interpretation of natural language modals.