Venue
- Class taught at The 4nd Crete Summer School of Linguistics
- University of Crete, Gallos, Rethymnon, Greece
- July 16 to July 29, 2022
Instructor
- Kai von Fintel
Course description
X-marking is a term proposed by von Fintel & Iatridou 2022 for morphological markers that have a characteristic set of uses crosslinguistically, at least the following three: (i) they are used to distinguish conditionals that are often called “counterfactual” or “subjunctive” from those that are not called that (but crucially, the marking does not actually always signal counterfactuality, nor is it consistently “subjunctive”), (ii) they are used in the expression of unattainable desires, and (iii) they are used in the construction of weak necessity modality. Some exponents of X-marking across languages include “fake past tense”, “fake imperfective aspect”, subjunctive/irrealis mood, and dedicated markers (Hungarian -nA, Russian by). In this course, we will explore the semantic side of X-marking and assess the prospects for a unified compositional analysis.
Prerequisites
Just kidding, there are no prerequisites other than being interested in the class. However, since the audience will be quite diverse, I encourage you to read an article of mine on “prerequisites”.
Refresher on intensional semantics
If you need to refresh some background on intensional semantics, it might be useful to review the first three chapters of the von Fintel & Heim textbook:
- Kai von Fintel & Irene Heim. 2022. Intensional semantics. Chs.1-3.
Early readings on X-marking
These readings should get you started thinking about these topics. Do not expect to necessarily fully understand everything. I’ll try to help you get into the material when I teach the class.
- Kai von Fintel. 1998. The presupposition of subjunctive conditionals. In Uli Sauerland & Orin Percus (eds.), The interpretive tract, 29–44. (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 25). Cambridge, MA: MITWPL.
- Sabine Iatridou. 2000. The grammatical ingredients of counterfactuality. Linguistic Inquiry 31(2). 231–270. doi:10.1162/002438900554352.
- Kai von Fintel & Sabine Iatridou. 2008. How to say ought in Foreign: The composition of weak necessity modals. In Jacqueline Guéron & Jacqueline Lecarme (eds.), Time and modality, 115–141. (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 75). Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-8354-9.
- Kai von Fintel & Sabine Iatridou. 2022. Prolegomena to a theory of X-marking. ms, under review.
Further readings
Two very recent papers on X-marking that go beyond what is in our paper are these:
- Kjell Johan Sæbø. 2021. Non-actualistic mood in Czech, Russian, German, and Norwegian. ms, University of Oslo, December 31, 2021.
- Marcelo Ferreira. 2022. A square of necessities: x-marking weak and strong necessity modals. ms, Universidade de São Paulo, June 10, 2022.
Both authors kindly agreed to let me share their manuscripts with the CreteLing audience.
Readings on X = past
Highly recommended:
- Justin Khoo. 2015. On indicative and subjunctive conditionals. Philosophers’ Imprint 15(32).
- Maribel Romero. 2014. ‘Fake tense’ in counterfactuals: A temporal remoteness approach. In Luka Crnič & Uli Sauerland (eds.), The art and craft of semantics: A festschrift for Irene Heim, vol. 2, 47–63. Cambride, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.
Reading on X = modal widening
Highly recommended:
- John Mackay. 2019. Modal interpretation of tense in subjunctive conditionals. Semantics and Pragmatics 12(2). 1–29.
Class materials
Slides will be posted on each class day shortly before we meet.