34.2129, Books: Actuality Inferences: Nadathur

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-2129. Wed Jul 05 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.2129, Books: Actuality Inferences: Nadathur

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Date: 29-Jun-2023
From: Rachel Havard [rachel.havard at oup.com]
Subject: Actuality Inferences: Nadathur


Title: Actuality Inferences
Subtitle: Causality, Aspect, and Modality
Publication Year: 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press
                http://www.oup.com/us
Book URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/actuality-inferences
-9780192849885?utm_source=linguistlist&utm_medium=listserv&utm_campaig
n=linguistics

Author: Prerna Nadathur
Hardback: ISBN: 9780192849885 Pages: 320 Price: U.S. $ 110.00
Abstract:

This book investigates the phenomenon of actuality inferences, in
which claims of ability are-in certain temporal contexts-interpreted
as descriptions of actual events, instead of as descriptions of
potentialities or possibilities. Although actuality inferences
evidently arise in the interaction between modality and aspect, they
have long resisted compositional explication in standard treatments of
these semantic categories. Prerna Nadathur here pursues a new
approach, in which actuality inferences are linked to a novel
component in the semantics of ability: causal dependence relations.
The account is developed through a comparative, crosslinguistic
semantic analysis of three predicate classes that license similar
inferences: implicative verbs in Finnish and English, enough/too
predicates in French and English, and (modal) ability predicates in
French, Hindi, and English. Similarities in the inferential profiles
of these predicates are tied to their shared causal background
structure, while their differences-including in sensitivity to
grammatical aspect-derive from differences in asserted content and
associated aspectual class contrasts. The central argument is that a
complex causal structure for ability interacts with the compositional
requirements of aspect to derive the observed actuality-ability
ambiguity. The volume shows that causal structure and causal
relationships shape patterns of linguistic inference beyond the
overtly causal domain, and thus contributes to a new and growing body
of research in which formal, computational causal models are employed
as an analytic tool for lexical and compositional semantics.

Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language
                     Pragmatics
                     Semantics

Written In: English (eng)

See this book announcement on our website:
http://old.linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=172053



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