Speaker: Haoming Li (MIT)
Title: Conditional semantics for permission and weak necessity
Time: Thursday, May 7, 12:30pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: The classic analyses of permission and weak necessity view them as existential and universal quantification over a modal base with one or two ordering sources. In this talk, I will advance the alternative view that both permission and weak necessity involve an underlying conditional semantics. I will draw analogies between permission and weak necessity on the one hand and conditionals on the other hand across several phenomena, many of which are puzzling for the classic accounts, including free choice/simplification of disjunctive antecedents, Sobel and Reverse Sobel sequences, homogeneity, and performative uses. I will then deliver a concrete implementation based on von Fintel’s (2001) dynamic account of conditionals and Chung’s (2018) work on Korean deontic modals. I will show that the approach naturally captures the parallels mentioned above and derives a stipulation about the nature of the modal base for such modals. If times allows, I will also compare and contrast the present approach with other approaches in the literature to similar empirical puzzles and other work which motivates a conditional semantics for modals, like McHugh (2026), which was previously presented at LingLunch.