Object of this study is the analysis of the Indicative and Subjunctive morphological mood marking, with special reference to Italian. I claim that the occurrence of these moods triggers a presupposition of assertibility and non-assertibility of the clauses that contain them: a clause counts as assertible just in case it leads to an effective elimination of possible worlds from the input context it gets added to. I show how these considerations can correctly account for the interpretation of hypothetical statements (indicative and counterfactual conditionals), and for the phenomenon of mood alternation in the domain of subordinated clauses
Panzeri, F. (2013). Mood and assertion. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing.
Mood and assertion
PANZERI, FRANCESCA
2013
Abstract
Object of this study is the analysis of the Indicative and Subjunctive morphological mood marking, with special reference to Italian. I claim that the occurrence of these moods triggers a presupposition of assertibility and non-assertibility of the clauses that contain them: a clause counts as assertible just in case it leads to an effective elimination of possible worlds from the input context it gets added to. I show how these considerations can correctly account for the interpretation of hypothetical statements (indicative and counterfactual conditionals), and for the phenomenon of mood alternation in the domain of subordinated clausesI documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.