Talk by Frank Sode (University of Frankfurt)
We are happy to announce a talk by Frank Sode (University of Frankfurt) in the Semantics Colloquium.
The talk will take place online. If you want to participate, please register via email to s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de.
Title: Desire reports and conditionals
Date: November 18
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct
Abstract:
Heim (1992) proposes a semantics for desire reports which “sees a hidden conditional in every desire report.” Since Heim’s proposal doesn’t share many of the short-comings of a Hintikka-semantics for desire reports, it has subsequently been adopted by many authors. Interestingly, the idea of hidden conditionals – “[a]n important feature of this analysis” (Heim, 1992) – has been marginalized, e.g., Portner & Rubinstein (2020); Giannakidou & Mari (2021), or explicitly rejected, e.g., Levinson (2003); Villalta (2008); Lassiter (2011, 2017), in subsequent work.
The connection between desire reports and conditionals has recently received new attention: von Fintel & Iatridou (2017, 2020) observe that in many languages the morphology that is used to mark a conditional as counterfactual features prominently in reports of “unattainable wishes” (von Fintel & Iatridou, 2020). What is...