'Fake Tense' in Counterfactuals : A Temporal Remoteness Approach

Abstract

Cross-linguistically, counterfactual conditionals are often built by inserting an additional layer of tense morphology, known as ‘fake’ tense. The present paper combines and further develops two intuitive ideas from the literature in the analysis of these conditionals: ‘fake’ tense signals a temporal back shift scoping over the entire conditional (Dudman 1983, 1984) and the remaining tense morphology locates the hypothetical event with respect to the speech index i0. Implementing these ideas gives rise to two challenges: a mismatch between the surface location and the interpretation site of ‘fake tense’ and the lack of linearization between the index i’ quantified by the conditional and the speech index i0. We propose to solve these problems by applying interpretive mechanisms independently motivated in sequence of tense and double access readings. Finally, the new proposal is compared with previous accounts within the temporal remoteness line.