The ‘Prospective Subjunctive.’

The Subjunctive in That Complements

In this section we consider the distribution of the subjunctive and the indicative moods in English complement clauses and argue that the observed patterns can mostly be explained on semantic grounds. Traditional grammarians have long noticed that the opposition between the indicative and the subjunctive mood is semantic, each grammatical form being suitable in a coherent class of contexts. For...

Subjunctive credences and semantic humility

In light of the chance that the plate will be saved by a sudden gust of hot air, what should we say about the truth conditions of the ordinary conditional (1b)? Some theories predict that (1b) is true. For instance, Lewis 1973b says that the plate being saved by friendly air currents is a remarkable low-probability event, and that worlds where such events happen are farther away than worlds whe...

Evaluative subjunctive and nonveridicality

The study of grammatical mood has a long tradition in philology and linguistic semantics. Typologically, we find morphological distinctions such as indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative. Focussing on the subjunctive versus indicative contrast, traditional grammars typically identify the indicative with realis and the subjunctive with irrealis, and describe the contrast in terms of selec...

On the Semantic Composition of Subjunctive Conditionals

In this paper, I offer a unified semantic analysis of subjunctive conditionals that purports to account for their truth and felicity-conditions. The proposal is centered on the claim that the temporal morphology that occurs in subjunctive conditionals in several genetically unrelated languages plays an essential role in the composition of their meaning. I will argue for a time-dependent notion ...

On Subjunctive Classes of Groups