Epistemic modality and temporal anchoring

Brenda Laca (1)

1 SFL - Structures Formelles du Langage

In this paper, we explore temporal configurations in epistemic readings. The semantics of these temporal configurations seems to be quite straightforward and constrained: epistemic readings are associated with a simultaneous (deictic or anaphoric) TPERSP and a past or simultaneous TORIENT. However, particularly in languages in which modals can be fully inflected for temporal-aspectual categories, there are various syntax-semantic mismatches involving the site of realization and the site of interpretation of tense-aspect morphology, which give rise to far- reaching compositionality issues. After presenting the main solutions that have been proposed for such syntax-semantic mismatches, we show that there are important differences between the case of perfect morphology on epistemic modals (OVERT PERFECT RAISING) and the case of simple past tenses on epistemic modals.

Mots clés: Epistemic readings; Modal verb; Perfect tenses

Domaines: Linguistique

Brenda Laca. Epistemic modality and temporal anchoring. Revista Virtual de Estudos da Linguagem - ReVEL, 2014, Special Issue on Modality, 8, pp.76-105. ⟨hal-01372975⟩