Abstract
Based on a crowdsourced truth value judgment experiment, we provide empirical evidence challenging two classical views in semantics, and we develop a novel account of counterfactuals that combines ideas from inquisitive semantics and causal reasoning. First, we show that two truth-conditionally equivalent clauses can make different semantic contributions when embedded in a counterfactual antecedent. Assuming compositionality, this means that the meaning of these clauses is not fully determined by their truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: truth-conditionally equivalent clauses may be associated with different propositional alternatives, each of which counts as a separate counterfactual assumption. Second, we show that our results contradict the common idea that the interpretation of a counterfactual involves minimizing change with respect to the actual state of affairs. We propose to replace the idea of minimal change by a distinction between foreground and background for a given counterfactual assumption: the background is held fixed in the counterfactual situation, while the foreground can be varied without any minimality constraint.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 577-621 |
Number of pages | 45 |
Journal | Linguistics and Philosophy |
Volume | 41 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 1 2018 |
Keywords
- Causal reasoning
- Counterfactuals
- Crowdsourcing survey
- Disjunctive antecedents
- Experimental semantics
- Inquisitive semantics
- Minimal change semantics
- Ordering semantics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Philosophy
- Linguistics and Language