On capacities and their epistemic extensions

Miró, Elena; Oltra-Massuet, Isabel

doi:10.1075/rllt.9.04cas

Cited by 3 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Both uses of SC share, though, a key meaning component, characterized as an unusual flavor in Castroviejo & Oltra-Massuet (2015b). As discussed in Castroviejo & Oltra-Massuet (2016: 33), in the abilitative, the prejacent cannot just describe a capacity, as in (9), but must express an unusual ability.…”

Section: (7)mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In previous literature, and especially in Castroviejo & Oltra-Massuet (2015b;2016), two readings have been identified for SC, one that is purely abilitative, (2a) and (3a), and another one which does not seem to refer to generic abilities, and which has been referred to as epistemic, (2b) and (3b).…”

Section: Readings Of Scmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(3) Spanish (Castroviejo & Oltra-Massuet 2015b) a. Hobbes fue capaz de traducir la obra completa de Homero a Hobbes was.pfv capable of translate the work complete of Homer to los 86 años. the 86 years 'Hobbes was capable of translating the complete works of Homer at 86.'…”

Section: Readings Of Scunclassified

“…In a first attempt to make these correlations explicit, Castroviejo & Oltra-Massuet (2015b) propose to treat SC as an ambiguous modal, just like English may. SC is a root modal when it appears right above VP, in which case it yields the purely abilitative reading.…”

Section: A Structural Account For the Two Readingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A third problematic issue concerns the empirical coverage of Castroviejo & Oltra-Massuet (2015b;2016). There is a piece of important data that this account is not able to explain, namely the interpretation of SC under the imperfective past, as shown in (12).…”

Section: A Structural Account For the Two Readingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Generic and action-dependent abilities in Spanish ‘Be capable’

Castroviejo

Oltra-Massuet

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper is concerned with the semantics of Spanish ser capaz 'be capable' (henceforth SC). Specifically, it aims to account for the distribution SC displays and the range of meanings it expresses in the realm of abilities, viewed as kinds of dispositions. We put forth the following generalization: Whenever imperfective aspect interacts with SC, two possible readings arise, one that is purely abilitative and another one that expresses an accidental or unpredictable state of affairs. Our claim is that both interpretations derive from a circumstantial modal base that includes the subject's inner circumstances, albeit with a different ordering source that is brought about via the interaction of imperfective aspect and the syntax-semantics of the modal. Thus, we propose that the purely abilitative SC contains an ordering source that ranks as better worlds those in which the subject appeals to her strength of the body, intellect or character; the accidental reading is the result of covert movement of the adjective capaz 'capable' over the imperfective-bearing copula ser 'be', which triggers a change of ordering source in the modal.

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Section: (7)mentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Readings Of Scmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Readings Of Scunclassified

Section: A Structural Account For the Two Readingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Structural Account For the Two Readingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Generic and action-dependent abilities in Spanish ‘Be capable’

Castroviejo

Oltra-Massuet

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Actuality Entailments: When the Modality is in the Presupposition

Mari

2016

Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics. Celebrating 20 Years of LACL (1996–2016)

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In natural language, modals are not implicative. However, when the modality is combined with the perfective, it shows an implicative (or factive) behavior. This phenomenon is called ‘actuality entailment’. We show that actuality entailments arise with goal-oriented modality only and endorse Belnap’s view of that goal-oriented modals use historical accessibility with a fixed past and an open future. This modal-theoretic assumption allows us to spell out the precise modal-temporal configuration in which the actuality entailment arises and our predictions are borne out by the data, cross-linguistically. We also show that, when any assumption about the identity of worlds at branching point is leveled - which appears to be the case with generic deontic and opportunity modals, the actuality entailments disappear. We also predict that the entailment disappears with prospectivity. Finally, we argue that modal sentences giving rise to actuality entailments are informative, insofar as the contribution of the modality survives as a presupposition that the modal base is non-homogeneous.

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The Role of Borrowing in the Derivation of Passive Potential Adjectives in Polish

Bloch-Trojnar¹

2020

The Interaction of Borrowing and Word Formation

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The chapter deals with the role of the [±native] marking in the formation of deverbal adjectives terminating in the suffix -alny in Polish and attributes the rise in the productivity of the suffix in the past fifty years to the linguistic influence of English. It is argued that the influx and subsequent adaptation of English verbs coupled with the speakers’ awareness that -able and -alny discharge similar roles in their respective systems of word formation has a role to play in raising the productivity of the suffix. A frequency analysis supported by diachronic information conducted on the National Corpus of the Polish Language reveals that the rule produces twice as many hapax legomena in the foreign subdomain. However, the formation of -alny derivatives on borrowed or adapted stems seems to have given a new impulse to the formation of passive potential adjectives based on native bases. This is due to the fact that, counter to what previous analyses concluded, the rule is operative on transitive eventive verbs forming aspectual pairs irrespective of whether they are [±native].

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On capacities and their epistemic extensions

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

Generic and action-dependent abilities in Spanish ‘Be capable’

Generic and action-dependent abilities in Spanish ‘Be capable’

Actuality Entailments: When the Modality is in the Presupposition

The Role of Borrowing in the Derivation of Passive Potential Adjectives in Polish

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