Modality

Natural language provides us the means to convey information about situations that do not have to be real. For example, when I say  'I want to live in Boston.' I talk about my desires but it is probably not true that I live in Boston. Similarly, when we say 'John might have come.', we express uncertainty as to whether John came or not. In this course, we will explore modal expressions, like attitude verbs and modal auxiliaries, which allow us to talk about situations which need not be true in our actual world. We will introduce the notion of possible words semantics in order to explain the meaning of these expressions. We will also discuss the role of syntax and prosody in the interpretation of modal expressions.