31.3769, Review: Psycholinguistics; Semantics: Hegarty (2019)

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Subject: 31.3769, Review: Psycholinguistics; Semantics: Hegarty (2019)

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Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2020 00:02:08
From: Ryan Nefdt [ryan.nefdt at uct.ac.za]
Subject: Modality and Propositional Attitudes

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-3044.html

AUTHOR: Michael  Hegarty
TITLE: Modality and Propositional Attitudes
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Ryan Mark Nefdt, University of Cape Town

SUMMARY

The formal semantics of natural language is an extremely complex and
interdisciplinary endeavour in which linguists and philosophers equally
contribute to the field. Very often, however, they focus on different aspects
of natural language semantics and this can create a subtle distinction in
terms of focus and emphasis. Hegarty’s book is a rare offering that will
satisfy both camps by providing detailed insights into linguistic phenomena
(and applied linguistics) while frequently addressing important philosophical
issues which come up along the way. 

It is essential to note that despite often starting at the beginning of a
semantic inquiry into a particular set of phenomena such as epistemic modals,
Hegarty’s book is not an introductory text on modality but an advanced defense
of a particular kind of account. 

In Chapter 1, Kratzer’s (1981) quantificational account for epistemic modality
is set up. Epistemic modals are modal statements generally about epistemic
claims involving “what must, might, should, or cannot be the case, based on
available evidence, or what is known” (pg 16).  This chapter details and
rejects Lassiter’s (2011) scalar model for modality but also promotes
pluralism, which advocates multiple models for epistemic modality. The chapter
starts with a section on the basics of semantics of epistemic modality with a
focus on standard modal semantics based on classical modal logic and its
limitations such as gradable modals, or modal auxiliaries. The author
discusses Kratzer’s development of the standard framework which involves a
modal base or conversational background. Specifically, in the case of
epistemic modals, the modal base is the speaker’s knowledge.

Importantly, the notion of an ordering source, which produces a ranking of
possibilities in order to limit interpretations to propositions relevant to
the given context (unlike wild ones involving alien abductions or alternative
histories), is introduced. Most of this section is standard thoroughfare and
Hegarty suggests “skimming” it for the familiar reader. Nevertheless, it is
written clearly and presented well even for someone who might have charted the
terrain before (although some terms such as “LF phrase-markers”, “prejacents”
etc. are assumed in the exposition). 

Hegarty takes the avenue of making no consistency requirement on the ordering
source or the so-called “Limit Assumption”. He also provides the truth
conditions for “must”, “might” (its dual), “good possibility” and “should”.
The section is closed off with a useful discussion of comparative possibility
and some novel thoughts on von Fintel and Iatridou’s (2008) objection
concerning the collapse of strong and weak necessity on the Kratzer model. The
chapter ends with a description of Lassiter’s scalar account of comparative
modality and a call for semantic pluralism in the face of competing theories. 

Chapter 2 takes on the topic of “root modals” or modals that do not depend on
speaker or community knowledge but rather on some objective state of affairs. 
The author defends Krazter’s view of root modals against Lassiter’s charges
such as the challenge of upward monotocity which gives incorrect results with
deontic modals that fail to be monotonic in this sense.  In essence, the
property of upward monotonicity is inherited by the existential and universal
quantifiers, he shows.

Further, an expansion of strategies employed by von Fintel (2010) to account
for the data by means of Gricean implicature is explored. The second objection
pertains to the need for relative probabilities in specific cases based on
Lassiter’s use of Goble (1996). The counter is that this claim conflates
deontic and bouletic modal statements.

The author makes the case that probability accounts suffer from a particular
philosophical problem. Namely, that if semantics of modal operators are
fine-grained enough to include them, then when a better theory of probability
arises, the semantics of modals would have to be changed.  

Before concluding, he discusses deontic conflicts as an objection to
quantificational theories, but he questions whether or not semantic theory
needs to do more than “reveal the presence of the conflict” (pg 88). Again,
pluralism is touted as a viable metasemantic alternative. 

In Chapter 3, which is a relatively short chapter, the author investigates the
problem of bare attitude ascriptions based on Hintikka’s (1969) classical
treatment and Heim’s (1992) modification thereof. Again modifications of the
quantificational approach are suggested in line with earlier chapters in terms
of modal base and the ordering source similar to the case of epistemic modals.
For some stronger attitude ascriptions, a specific doxastic base is defined in
terms of a doxastic ordering source. One interesting aspect of the analysis
conceives of “believes” as the dual of “imagine” or “suspect” along a gradable
doxastic scale of strength starting with “sure” or “certain” (pg 101). The
chapter ends with a literature review of recent semantic reduction accounts of
attitude ascriptions.

Chapter 4 analyses coordinations of doxastic and bouletic ascriptions with
recourse to update or dynamic semantics. Hegarty concedes the need for context
update in the modal conversational background to be extended to the doxastic
ordering source. A device he claims is “implicit In Kratzer’s analysis”.
Importantly, although the approach is dynamic, it remains within the
truth-conditional framework.

Chapter 5 introduces Part 2 of the book. This part moves the focus to
questions of the identification of events or eventuality in semantics or the
issue of world-grounding or modal determination. More broadly it applies and
extends the analysis to other domains while maintaining a level of
philosophical reflection throughout. 

The theoretical basis of event semantics presupposes that events are like
individuals with multidimensional part-whole structure. This view countenanced
with possible world semantics immediately allows for a counterpart relation
between events for the sake of identity. 

Hegarty outlines a specific neo-Davidsonian version of event theory with
shares features with Lewis, Moltmann, and Carlson (pg 137). He, however, adds
granularity constraints to model more reified event structures and to mirror
the benefits of Situation Semantics which can deal better with some tricky
entailments.

The view is defended against general worries about Davidsonian event semantics
such as stative attitude ascriptions (Katz 2008). Overall, this chapter has
more of a metaphysics feel than the previous chapters. This is perhaps an
inevitability given the subject matter, although some problematic issues in
event mereology such as event boundaries are skirted over as analogous to the
case of physical objects. However, dealing with them thoroughly would take the
semantic issues too far afield so to a certain extent the methodology is
warranted.

Chapter 6 returns to an earlier issue related to belief ascription and the
possibility of such ascriptions being interpreted in terms of varying
strengths. Using the technology on the previous chapter on event semantics, a
new distinction is introduced and addressed, i.e. that of “minimal attitude
ascriptions” versus “full attitude ascriptions”. In the former, ascriptions
only express a condition on possibilities relative to the experiencer’s
doxastic base, while in the latter the condition is part of the content
condition on mental states or events. The account also addresses reports of
attitudes of emotion, attitude assertion, and multidimensional attitudes such
as those involving both reports of doxastic conditions and bouletic ones. 

Chapters 7 and 8 are rather technical and mark a departure from the more
philosophical content of previous chapters of Part 2. Hegarty reviews the
literature on Neg-raising (initially conceived of as a syntactic phenomenon)
here reinterpreted more neutrally as LIN or the phenomenon in which negation
is interpreted with the complement of the matrix predicate. The author starts
by examining Horn’s (1978, 1989) classical treatments of the phenomenon as a
product of scalar Gricean implicatures (linking contradictory negation to
contrary). He then challenges this account by reference to three more
contemporary views on Neg-Raising Predicates (termed “excluded middle
accounts”) involving question semantics and presupposition among other things
before concluding that LIN is best accounted for by Neg-Importation under
Dualization or NID (in which a negation is imported via classical negation and
quantifier interactions resulting in a negation ascription on the complement
clause and a replacement of a dual in the main predicate). Importantly, a link
is established between the previous chapters on full attitude ascriptions and
the present case of LIN adding explanatory continuity. 

Chapter 8 picks up a strand from Chapter 5 and offers a conciliatory account
of epistemic modals as not requiring that stative attitude ascriptions be
dependent on some sort of event variable (a la Davidson) but leaving that
possibility open for other related phenomena. Instead the ordering source and
modal base of epistemic modals are argued to be retrieved from a “cloud of
contexts” similar to that of pronoun resolution. 

Finally, in Chapter 9 the formal semantic analysis of attitude ascriptions, in
particular the distinction between minimal and full such ascriptions, is
grounded in cognitive scientific and language acquisition data. In order to
evaluate whether child-language acquisition supports the distinction drawn in
Chapter 6, Hegarty determines a baseline for adult attitude ascription use in
terms of five criteria. He claims that full attitude ascriptions in children
amounts to having a “Theory of Mind” by means of a survey of literature and
studies on false belief research and other cognitive scientific experiments.
Finally, the discussion moves to aphasia (both Broca’s and Wernicke’s) toward
the conclusion that the two types of ascriptions mark a boundary (assumed in
generative linguistics) between language internal structures and reference
which brings those internal systems into contact with external mechanisms. 

EVALUATION

Hegarty’s text is unique in a number of ways. Not only is it uncommon to see
an account of the semantics of a particular linguistic phenomenon developed to
this detailed extent but it is rare to have such an analysis placed under
empirical scrutiny and verification in contemporary cognitive scientific
light. These are no doubt strengths of the book. If it fails in any way, it is
in sustaining a continuous narrative across a variety of complex examples,
mathematical formalisations, accounts, responses to accounts, and reviews of
classical and contemporary literature, all conducted at a very high level of
technicality. For those who can maintain the thread, the book is well worth
the journey. Furthermore, for those who question the empirical scientific
import of formal semantics, this book also serves as a powerful testimony to
the viability of the field and its formalisms. 

REFERENCES

Goble, Lou. 1996. Utilitarian deontic logic. Philosophical Studies 82, 3:
317-357. 

Heim, Irene. 1992. Presupposition projection and the semantics of attitude
verbs. Journal of Semantics 9: 183-221. 

Hintikka, Jaakko. 1969. Semantics of propositional attitudes. In J.W. Davis et
al. (eds.), Philosophical Logic, pp 21-45. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

Horn, Lawrence. 1978. Remarks on Neg-Raising. In P. Cole (ed.) Pragmatics,
Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9, pp 129-220. New York: Academic Press. 

Horn, Lawrence. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. University of Chicago
Press. 

Katz, Jerrold. 2008. Manner modification of state verbs. In L. McNally and C.
Kennedy (eds.), Adjective and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics, and Discourse, pp.
220-248. Oxford University Press. 

Kratzer, Angelika. 1981. The notion category of modality. In H. J. Eikmeyer
and H. Reiser (eds.), Words, Worlds, and Contexts: New Approaches in Word
Semantics, pp 38-74. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 

Lassiter, Peter. 2011. Measurement and Modality: The Scalar Basic of Modal
Semantics. PhD thesis, New York University. 

von Fintel, Kai. 2010. The subjectivity of conditionals in a new light. Talk
presented at DGfS Workshop on Subjective Meaning, Humboldt University, Berlin.

von Fintel, Kai and Iatridou, Sabine. 2008. How to say ought in foreign: The
composition of weak necessity modals. In J. Gueron and J. Lecarmer (eds.),
Time and Modality, pp 115-148. Berlin: Springer Science + Business Media B.V.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Ryan M. Nefdt is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Cape Town. He
completed his PhD at the University of St Andrews as a member of the Arché
Research Centre in Logic, Language and Epistemology. He holds an MSc in
mathematical logic and formal linguistics from the Institute for Logic,
Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam and an MA in
philosophy from the University of Cape Town.<br /><br />He has published on
various topics in the philosophy of linguistics and the philosophy of language
which have appeared in Linguistics and Philosophy, The Review of Philosophy
and Psychology, Synthese and other journals and books. He is also a co-author
for the upcoming revised version of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
entry on the philosophy of linguistics (with Geoffrey Pullum and Jeffry
Pelletier).





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