What if? : an enquiry into the semantics of natural language conditionals
This thesis is essentially a portfolio of four disjoint yet thematically related articles that deal with some semantic aspect or another of natural language conditionals. The thesis opens with a brief introductory chapter that offers a short yet opinionated historical overview and a theoretical background of several important semantic issues of conditionals. The second chapter then deals with the issue of truth values and conditions of indicative conditionals. So-called Gibbard Phenomenon cases have been used to argue that indicative conditionals construed in terms of the Ramsey Test cannot have truth values. Since that conclusion is somewhat incredible, several alternative options are explored. Finally, a contextualised revision of the Ramsey Test is offered which successfully avoids the threats of the Gibbard Phenomenon. The third chapter deals with the question of where to draw the so-called indicative/ subjunctive line. Natural language conditionals are commonly believed to be of two semantically distinct types: indicative and subjunctive. Although this distinction is central to many semantic analyses of natural conditionals, there seems to be no consensus on the details of its nature. While trying to
HjaÌlmarsson, GuĂ°mundur Andri
Conditionals ; Semantics ; Natural language conditionals ; Indicative conditionals ; Subjunctive conditionals ; Modus ponens ; Ramsey test ; Information networks ; Modal and amodal conditionals ; Generative grammar ; Compositional semantics ; Syntax of English conditionals ; P292.5H5 ; Grammar ; Comparative and general--Conditionals ; Conditionals (Logic) ; Semantics
What if? : an enquiry into the semantics of natural language conditionals. This thesis is essentially a portfolio of four disjoint yet thematically related articles that deal with some semantic aspect or another of natural language conditionals. The thesis opens with a brief introductory chapter that offers a short yet opinionated historical overview and a theoretical background of several important semantic issues of conditionals. The second chapter then deals with the issue of truth values and conditions of indicative conditionals. So-called Gibbard Phenomenon cases have been used to argue that indicative conditionals construed in terms of the Ramsey Test cannot have truth values. Since that conclusion is somewhat incredible, several alternative options are explored. Finally, a contextualised revision of the Ramsey Test is offered which successfully avoids the threats of the Gibbard Phenomenon. The third chapter deals with the question of where to draw the so-called indicative/ subjunctive line. Natural language conditionals are commonly believed to be of two semantically distinct types: indicative and subjunctive. Although this distinction is central to many semantic analyses of natural conditionals, there seems to be no consensus on the details of its nature. While trying to
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