Williamson, Gregor; (2021) Worlds of the Future: Modality & Future Licensing at the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The objective of this dissertation is to accurately describe and derive the distribution of future reference in English. In particular, the dissertation covers the following constructions in depth: (i) prejacents to modal auxiliaries (Chapter 2), (ii) (non)-finite complements to attribute predicates (Chapter 3), (iii) adverbial clauses including conditionals, causal/concessive clauses, and temporal clauses (Chapter 5). We propose that future reference in English is introduced by a covert temporal operator FUT (Matthewson, 2012; Giannakidou and Mari, 2018). This operator is an existential quantifier over times following the local evaluation time. We propose that the distribution of this operator is constrained by a contingency presupposition which is modeled as a condition, not on a world, but on a set of worlds, the modal context (Portner, 1997; Yalcin, 2007; Anand and Hacquard, 2013). We attempt to derive this distribution by appealing to the grammatical principle of Analyticity (Gajewski, 2002, 2009; Abrusán, 2014; Del Pinal, 2019). Throughout the dissertation, we supply arguments for this particular approach. We provide evidence from of scope interactions that future reference is introduced by an independent operator as opposed to modal elements. In addition, we provide evidence that FUT is locally licensed, as opposed to globally (e.g., Kaufmann, 2005; Kaufmann et al., 2006; Bohnemeyer, 2009). In Chapter 6, we discuss a number of additional constructions which are able to license future reference in a way which is compatible with the theory developed. These are: (i) sentential adverbials, (ii) disjunctions, and (iii) restrictor arguments of universal quantifier phrases. Chapter 4 is dedicated to past-in-future readings of the perfect marker have under deontic modals and commitment predicates. There, a novel observation is made regarding an asymmetry between the acceptability of past-in-future readings of obligation modals on the one hand, and the unacceptability of past-in-future readings of permission modals on the other. We attribute this to an interaction between the presuppositions of performative modals and a grammatical principle of Redundancy (Meyer, 2015; Marty, 2017; Moracchini, 2018).

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