Skip Navigation



Journal of Semantics Advance Access published online on May 3, 2005
Journal of Semantics, doi:10.1093/jos/ffh025
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (Rapid PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
22/3/231    most recent
ffh025v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Kaufmann, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Received August 12, 2004

Special Issue Article

Conditional Truth and Future Reference

Stefan Kaufmann 1*

1 Northwestern University

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Stefan Kaufmann, E-mail: kaufmann{at}northwestern.edu


  Abstract

This paper proposes a compositional model-theoretic account of the way the interpretation of indicative conditionals is determined and constrained by the temporal and modal expressions in their constituents. The main claim is that the tenses in both the antecedent and the consequent of an indicative conditional are interpreted in the same way as in isolation. This is controversial for the antecedents of predictive conditionals like ‘If he arrives tomorrow, she will leave’, whose Present tense is often claimed to differ semantically from that in their stand-alone counterparts, such as ‘He arrives tomorrow’. Under the unified analysis developed in this paper, the differences observed in pairs like these are explained by interactions between the temporal and modal dimensions of interpretation. This perspective also sheds new light on the relationship between ‘non-predictive’ and ‘epistemic’ readings of indicative conditionals.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 J SemanticsHome page
T. Gunji, S. Kaufmann, and Y. Takubo
Modality and Evidentiality
J Semantics, August 1, 2008; 25(3): 221 - 227.
[Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 J SemanticsHome page
N. Asher and E. McCready
Were, Would, Might and a Compositional Account of Counterfactuals
J Semantics, May 1, 2007; 24(2): 93 - 129.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.