Prolegomena to a theory of X-marking
Kai von Fintel, Sabine Iatridou
March 2023
 

The morphological marking that distinguishes conditionals that are called “counterfactual” from those that are not can also be found in other modal constructions, such as in the expression of wishes and oughts. We propose to call it “X-marking”. In this article, we lay out desiderata for a successful theory of X-marking and make some initial informal observations. Much remains to be done.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/005290
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: final version, to appear in Linguistics & Philosophy
keywords: conditionals, desires, modality, subjunctive, fake tense, semantics
previous versions: v3 [January 2023]
v2 [June 2022]
v1 [June 2020]
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