27.169, Qs: Epistemic

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-169. Fri Jan 08 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.169, Qs: Epistemic

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Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2016 13:06:21
From: Seiichi MYOGA [st_myoga at i.gmobb.jp]
Subject: Epistemic

 
Dear all,

Let me ask three questions to help us better understand the relation that
holds between epistemic possibility and retraction.

#1 Do you think the dialogue below sounds natural (with special attention to
''may'')?
Speaker A: Joe may be in Boston.
Speaker B: No, he can't be in Boston. I just met him an hour ago in Berkeley.
Speaker A: Okay, then, scratch that. I was wrong.

#2 Do you think the dialogue below sounds natural (with careful attention to
''perhaps'')?
Speaker A: Perhaps Joe is in Boston.
Speaker B: No, he can't be in Boston. I just met him an hour ago in Berkeley.
Speaker A: Okay, then, scratch that. I was wrong.
My assumption is that 'yes' to #1 but 'no' to #2.

#3 I'd like you to correct my mistakes, if any. The intended target of Speaker
A's retraction is the embedded proposition – that Joe is in Boston.
Speaker A: Joe may be in Boston [=Perhaps Joe is in Boston].
Speaker B: No, he's not in Boston. 
Speaker A: How can you be so sure?
Speaker B: Because I just met him an hour ago in Berkeley.
Speaker A: Okay, then, Joe has not already left Berkeley.

The purpose here is to see if the target of retraction depends on the nature
of epistemic possibility, or whether the epistemic possibility in question is
subjective or objective.

Thank you in advance.
Seiichi MYOGA

The dialogue in #1 is adapted from MacFarlane (2011:148). There are two
changes made. One is a change from ''might'' to ''may.'' I think it is better
to choose ''may'' to see if the target of retraction has to do with epistemic
possibility. For instance, (ia) is trickier to deal with than (ib) when you
explore the problem of epistemic possibility.
(i) a. The winner might have been the loser. (Kripke 1972:271)
b. The winner may have been the loser. 

There is also a change from ''saw'' to ''met.'' ''Saw'' is weaker in that it
allows for the possibility that the person that Speaker A claimed to have seen
in Berkeley might not have been Joe; she could have mistaken somebody for Joe.
(ii) Speaker X: It may rain tomorrow [=It may be that it will rain tomorrow].
Speaker Y: That's not true.

According to Papafragou (2006:1691-1692), the demonstrative ''that'' may
either refer to the embedded proposition that it will rain tomorrow or to the
assertion that it may rain tomorrow. In the former interpretation, ''may'' is
understood as subjective while in the latter interpretation, the same modal is
treated as objective. 

As for the dialogue #3, I'd like you to interpret ''may'' as subjective:
Speaker A doesn't know whether Joe is in Boston, thus perhaps Joe is in Boston
AND perhaps Joe is not in Boston. To put it simply, Speaker A is using ''may''
as a hedge. In this case, even if it turns out later that Joe was not in
Boston at the time of utterance, you won't be able to falsify the statement
that Joe may be in Boston. After all, Speaker A has covered herself for either
outcome by not taking sides (cf. Lakoff 1972:230).

The best is that the dialogue develops in such a way that Speaker B's
information helps remove Speaker A's uncertainty (''Okay, now we know where
Joe is.''). The only thing I could think of, however, is to falsify the
assumption based on which Speaker A made an epistemic-possibility statement:
Now I know that Joe is not in Boston. But this doesn't mean that I was wrong
when I said, ''Joe may be in Boston.'' John could have been there at the time
of utterance if circumstances had been otherwise, for example, if Joe had left
Berkeley at the time he said he would. In other words, there was a chance that
he was there when I said that. So I need not to take back my
epistemic-possibility statement, though I admit that he's not in Boston now.
 

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics
                     Semantics
                     Syntax

Subject Language(s): English (eng)



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