Please join us this Friday as Michela Ippolito (Linguistics, University of Toronto) presents work on epistemic modality.

Date and time: Friday, May 27, 10:30 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.

Location: Rosenwald 208 (Linguistics seminar room)

Title: Constraints on the embeddability of epistemic modals

Abstract:

In this talk I investigate the restrictions on the embeddability of epistemic modals under attitude verbs. Anand and Hacquard (2013), building on previous work, look at different classes of verbs and observe that some verbs (e.g. believe) embed both possibility and necessity epistemic modals, other verbs (e.g. want) don’t embed either, and others only seem to want to embed possibility epistemic modals.  I discuss their proposal (based on Yalcin (2010)’s work) and point our some difficulties with their account. I also look at the properties of those predicates that do embed epistemic modals and draw a connection with an apparently unrelated phenomenon that has been often claimed to have a relation to illocutionary force (e.g. Gartner 2002, Krifka 2014): embedded V-to-C clauses in German.