Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

LFRG 12/11 - Frank Staniszewski

Speaker: Frank Staniszewski
Title: A variable force analysis of positive polarity neg-raising modals

Time: Wednesday, December 11th, 1pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: I argue that data like (1) show that the modals should and supposed to can give rise to weak existential-like readings, which are not predicted under current approaches.

      (1)       Context: Walking through tunnels to a talk on campus, we find ourselves in a basement area among                                     potentially dangerous supplies (obviously not the best place to be).

                  a.  Should we be down here? / Are we supposed to be down here?
                  b. I ’m not sure that we should/are supposed to be down here.
                  c. I don’t know if we should/are supposed to be down here.


Intuitively, the speaker is not asking if this is the optimal place to be. Instead the modal statement can be paraphrased with ‘is it okay to be down here?’. In work in progress, I sketch an analysis that builds on earlier proposals in which modals interact with the polarity system (Iatridou & Zeijlstra 2013, Homer 2015). Motivated by the new data, I suggest a revised approach, adopting insights from work on variable force modals (Deal 2011), as well as free-choice (Fox 2007, Bassi & Bar-Lev 2016, a.o.) that assumes an underlying weak meaning that undergoes strengthening in upward-entailing environments, but stays weak in downward-entailing environments. I also show how this revised approach can explain interactions of these modals with negation that motivated the previous polarity-sensitive analyses.