Height-Relative Determination of (Non-Root) Modal Flavor: Evidence from Hindi

Abstract

In this paper it is proposed that modal flavor is determined by the attachment height of a modal. The various interpretations of the Hindi future marker -gaa, which is taken to be a modal, are discussed. The idea put forth is that modal flavor is indirectly constrained by the semantic type of the modal's prejacent instead of being solely determined via contextual assignment. Modal Bases are re-envisioned as being comprised of different types of alternatives (worlds, world-time pairs, etc.), rather than just sets of worlds determined by different accessibility relations. The correlation between height and attachment site falls out as a consequence of the different types of alternatives a Modal Bases make available for semantic computation.