Must . . . stay . . . strong!

This is the fourth installment in our trilogy of papers on epistemic modality.

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: von Fintel, Kai, Gillies, Anthony S.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Springer Netherlands 2011
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/65909
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7912-4246
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author von Fintel, Kai
Gillies, Anthony S.
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
von Fintel, Kai
Gillies, Anthony S.
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spelling mit-1721.1/659092022-09-28T07:57:47Z Must . . . stay . . . strong! von Fintel, Kai Gillies, Anthony S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences von Fintel, Kai von Fintel, Kai This is the fourth installment in our trilogy of papers on epistemic modality. It is a recurring matra that epistemic must creates a statement that is weaker than the corresponding flat-footed assertion: It must be raining vs. It’s raining. Contrary to classic discussions of the phenomenon such as by Karttunen, Kratzer, and Veltman, we argue that instead of having a weak semantics, must presupposes the presence of an indirect inference or deduction rather than of a direct observation. This is independent of the strength of the claim being made. Epistemic must is therefore quite similar to evidential markers of indirect evidence known from languages with rich evidential systems. We work towards a formalization of the evidential component, relying on a structured model of information states (analogous to some models used in the belief dynamics literature). We explain why in many contexts, one can perceive a lack of confidence on the part of the speaker who uses must. 2011-09-21T17:48:56Z 2011-09-21T17:48:56Z 2010-05 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0925-854X 1572-865X http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/65909 von Fintel, Kai, and Anthony S. Gillies. “Must . . . Stay . . . Strong!” Natural Language Semantics 18.4 (2010) : 351-383. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7912-4246 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11050-010-9058-2 Natural Language Semantics Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Springer Netherlands Prof. von Fintel
spellingShingle von Fintel, Kai
Gillies, Anthony S.
Must . . . stay . . . strong!
title Must . . . stay . . . strong!
title_full Must . . . stay . . . strong!
title_fullStr Must . . . stay . . . strong!
title_full_unstemmed Must . . . stay . . . strong!
title_short Must . . . stay . . . strong!
title_sort must stay strong
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/65909
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7912-4246
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