The Semantics of the Future / Edition 1

by Bridget Copley

Overview

This book builds a semantics for several kinds of future-referring expressions, including will sentences, be going to sentences, and futurates. While there exists previous work on future-referring expressions, this is the first treatment of such a variety of expressions in a formal semantic framework. Arguments presented herein explicate the meanings of these expressions, and account for similarities and differences among them. Shared is a future-oriented model with a systematic alternation between inertial and bouletic ordering sources that provide a new way of understanding the age-old future Law of the Excluded Middle, evident in all of the future-referring expressions. A difference found among these meanings is the presence or absence of progressive- or generic-like aspect in a position higher than the future modal. These very high aspectual operators affect the temporal argument of the modal's accessibility relation, with detectable effects that can be used to determine scope relations in future conditionals. Copley's analysis thus addresses a number of issues of great interest to formal semanticists, from modal and aspectual semantics, to the mapping of functional elements in the clause, to the logical form of conditionals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415971164
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/07/2009
Series:	Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics
Pages:	174
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Bridget Copley is a semanticist affiliated with the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique and Université Paris 8 as a Chargée de Recherche in the UMR 7023 "Structures Formelles du Langage."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter Two: Futurates

Chapter Three: Futures

Chapter Four: Conditionals

Chapter Five: Conclusion

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a must for scholars of future referring constructions in any language and any theoretical framework." —Ana Bravo, University of Granada

From the Publisher