Talk by Alda Mari (Paris) – May 28, 4-6pm
We are happy to announce a talk by Alda Mari (Paris) next thursday at the Semantics Colloquium. Please find an abstract below.
Please note that you need to register beforehand. Please send a mail to koepping@em.uni-frankfurt.de before thursday 3pm. You will receive a reply with the access data (to zoom) on thursday at 4pm (= immediately before the colloquium starts).
Title: Subjunctive belief: the common-ground-as-default-rule and its pragmatic effects
Date: May 28th
Time: 4pm – 6pm
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Abstract:
In contrast to most other Romance languages, `believe‘ commonly and prescriptively takes subjunctive in Italian, though indicative is found as well, the choice of indicative or subjunctive has semantic effects. We show that the indicative with `believe‘ is used when the belief statement describes the personal mental state of the holder of the attitude, an interpretation that follows from the traditional Hintikkean semantics. In contrast, we show that subjunctive with `believe‘ is used to mark a relation between the content of belief and the discourse context. To...