The Ling Space | Can We Define "Must"? The Semantics of Modality @thelingspace | Uploaded 7 years ago | Updated 3 hours ago
How do we capture the meaning of "may" or "can"? What kinds of linguistic math do we need to understand them? In this week's episode, we take a look at modality: where words like "must" fit in our meanings; how we consider many ways the world could be to account for their semantics; and how the same string of sounds can have a lot of flavours.
This is Topic #90!
This week's tag language: Cornish!
Related videos:
Logical Connections: How Logical Is Language? youtu.be/lw4ykgRtv3Q
Let's Talk About Sets: How Do We Build Meaning with Math? youtu.be/M96aiDk2ePw
Quantifying Sets and Toasters: What Does "Most" Even Mean? youtu.be/U1l3C_hmjqM
Last episode:
Relatively Close: How Can Sentences Work Like Adjectives? youtu.be/Bra5gExyPbY
Other of our semantics and pragmatics videos:
Topic of Focus: How Do We Signal What's Important When We Talk? youtu.be/gZ6o8yFvJYI
Downward Spiral: Why Can't "Any" Go Just Anywhere? youtu.be/vd8cjyxHQdw
Building Common Ground: How Do We Build Shared Worlds in Conversation? youtu.be/gQqXmhqM13U
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, on the syntax of modals, at: http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-90
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace
And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com !
You can also find our store at the website, thelingspace.storenvy.com
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
A good portion of the presentation was based off of Kai von Fintel's Intensional Semantics notes (http://web.mit.edu/fintel/fintel-heim-intensional.pdf)
We also consulted Angelika Kratzer's papers from 1977, 1981, and 1991, where all these ideas about modality originally come from:
The 1977 paper: http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/s08/semantics2/kratzer77.pdf
The 1981 paper: http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/s08/semantics2/kratzer81.pdf
The 1991 paper: https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/kratzer/kratzer-modality.pdf
For background -- historical and otherwise -- we consulted Basic Concepts in Modal Logic (https://mally.stanford.edu/notes.pdf) and William Starr's lecture notes: (http://williamstarr.net/teaching.html).
Finally, we drew some inspiration from Seth Cable's recent (and wonderfully lucid) Formal Semantics notes: http://people.umass.edu/scable/LING620-SP17/Handouts/
Looking forward to next time!
How do we capture the meaning of "may" or "can"? What kinds of linguistic math do we need to understand them? In this week's episode, we take a look at modality: where words like "must" fit in our meanings; how we consider many ways the world could be to account for their semantics; and how the same string of sounds can have a lot of flavours.
This is Topic #90!
This week's tag language: Cornish!
Related videos:
Logical Connections: How Logical Is Language? youtu.be/lw4ykgRtv3Q
Let's Talk About Sets: How Do We Build Meaning with Math? youtu.be/M96aiDk2ePw
Quantifying Sets and Toasters: What Does "Most" Even Mean? youtu.be/U1l3C_hmjqM
Last episode:
Relatively Close: How Can Sentences Work Like Adjectives? youtu.be/Bra5gExyPbY
Other of our semantics and pragmatics videos:
Topic of Focus: How Do We Signal What's Important When We Talk? youtu.be/gZ6o8yFvJYI
Downward Spiral: Why Can't "Any" Go Just Anywhere? youtu.be/vd8cjyxHQdw
Building Common Ground: How Do We Build Shared Worlds in Conversation? youtu.be/gQqXmhqM13U
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, on the syntax of modals, at: http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-90
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace
And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com !
You can also find our store at the website, thelingspace.storenvy.com
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
A good portion of the presentation was based off of Kai von Fintel's Intensional Semantics notes (http://web.mit.edu/fintel/fintel-heim-intensional.pdf)
We also consulted Angelika Kratzer's papers from 1977, 1981, and 1991, where all these ideas about modality originally come from:
The 1977 paper: http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/s08/semantics2/kratzer77.pdf
The 1981 paper: http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes/s08/semantics2/kratzer81.pdf
The 1991 paper: https://udrive.oit.umass.edu/kratzer/kratzer-modality.pdf
For background -- historical and otherwise -- we consulted Basic Concepts in Modal Logic (https://mally.stanford.edu/notes.pdf) and William Starr's lecture notes: (http://williamstarr.net/teaching.html).
Finally, we drew some inspiration from Seth Cable's recent (and wonderfully lucid) Formal Semantics notes: http://people.umass.edu/scable/LING620-SP17/Handouts/
Looking forward to next time!
