The metalinguistic use of vague predicates in conditionals
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v20i0.2578Keywords:
vagueness, conditionals, metalinguistic readings, cleftsAbstract
This paper deals with an at first sight surprising reading that indicative conditionals whose antecedents contain vague predicates receive under certain conditions. I argue that the existence of this reading can be explained if indicative conditionals are allowed to receive a special kind of metalinguistic interpretation. According to this reading, the worlds quantified over do not (possibly) differ from the world of evaluation with respect to some extralinguistic state of affairs, but only with respect to the standards according to which the vague predicates in the antecedents are interpreted. I show that the availability of the metalinguistic reading can be accounted for if both the epistemic modal bases and the selection function relative to which the worlds quantified over are determined are allowed to operate in a more flexible way than is standardly assumed.Downloads
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2010-08-14
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Articles appearing in SALT are published under an author agreement with the Linguistic Society of America and are made available to readers under a Creative Commons Attribution License.