By now: Change of State, Epistemic Modality and Evidential
Inference
Daniel Altshuler
Hampshire College/UMass Amherst
daltshul@gmail.com
Laura A. Michaelis
University of Colorado Boulder
michaeli@colorado.edu
Abstract
We examine the constellation of factors—lexical, aspectual, temporal and conversational—that give rise to
evidential implications from assertions. We target intensional and inferential meanings associated with a
certain class of present-tense state sentences: those containing a temporal adverb headed by by, e.g., The
American traveling public is pretty mature by now. We ask why sentences containing by temporal adverbs
(BTAs) are improved by and sometimes appear to require an epistemic modal, e.g., They ??(must) live in a
mansion by now. Key to our analysis is the idea that BTA sentences require the onset of a resultant state to
overlap a time that precedes the time described by the adverb. Our proposed analysis allows us to identify
the pragmatic factors that lead interpreters to construe present-tense BTA reports as conjectures, guesses or
suppositions. Moreover, we build on an analysis of epistemic modals by von Fintel & Gillies (2010) and
Mandelkern (2016) to hypothesize the manner in which the BTA change schema is instantiated in intensional
contexts and discuss the relationship between intensional and evidential contexts. We see the merging of
aspectual and epistemic features in BTA sentences, and in particular present-tense sentences, as the result of
a semantic reconciliation procedure: the use of an epistemic modal in a BTA predication evokes an
observation or act of reasoning, prior to speech time, that permits the speaker to make her assertion, and this
inference trigger is identified with the ‘onset event’ in the BTA schema.
1 Introduction
In asserting j, a speaker may reveal how she came to know j. This observation is no more
than a truism for typologists: there are languages and language families with grammatical
markers that express the evidentiary basis on which the speaker is asserting j (Chafe &
Nichols 1986, Aikhenvald 2004, Boye 2012, Matthewson & Glougie 2018). But if
construed as a statement about evidential implicatures attached to exponents of temporal
expressions (e.g. tense, aspect, adverbs) on particular occasions of use, the observation
raises new questions: how do these implicatures arise, and are they calculable based on
conversational reasoning? Studies of evidential implications range from those that examine
the use of perfect forms to report situations known of through abductive reasoning and
hearsay (Slobin & Aksu 1982, Lau & Rooryck 2017) to those that relate the use of future
tense in inferential and mirative utterances to canonical functions of future tenses, as in
conjectures (Escandell-Vidal 2014). These treatments view evidential inferences as being
‘strengthened’ (in the sense of Traugott 1988, Brinton 1996); they are present where
original temporal significations are absent, as when the Turkish past-tense morpheme –mIş
is used in present-tense mirative utterances, or the Spanish inflected future is used to
express suppositions about current situations.1 In this paper, we instead examine evidential
1
Dahl (1985: 11) describes conventionalized of pragmatic inference in the following way: “if some condition
happens to be fulfilled frequently when a certain [grammatical] category is used, a stronger association may
1
inference on the fly, formed from a ‘perfect storm’ of interpretive constraints (lexical,
aspectual, temporal and conversational).
We base our study on an English temporal adjunct used in predications that describe
resultant states: the by-temporal adjunct (BTA), whose combinatoric potential—so far as
tense and illocutionary force are concerned—is no different from that of temporal
adverbials like on Friday. The BTA is a prepositional phrase (PP) headed by by, whose
complement is a nominal that describes a time t; the resulting combination means ‘no later
than t’ (Thomas & Michaelis 2009). Examples are given in (1)-(5):2
G.M. Says Its Driverless Car Could Be in Fleets by Next Year.
If he left the box here, by tomorrow it would be looted.
She recalled some mention of a romance being sealed on this porch…and this was
enough, in her present mood, to get her fastened in a light pique dress and linen jacket,
her valise packed and bulging, in record time. They left by late morning.
The doctor told me we can’t continue to give you the steroid and cortisone shots
because you’ll be dead by the time you’re 40.
Thanks, honey. You’re the best. Be home by five so you have time to get ready.
In line with Thomas & Michaelis (2009), we see the time described by the BTA
complement as a time at which a particular state holds, i.e. is in force (Copley 2018): the
state that is described by the verb and its arguments. We hypothesize that the state is
necessarily a resultant state of some event that has culminated: the BTA describes a time
that follows the state’s time of inception. Thus, for example, (1) describes a possible state
(use of G.M. driverless cars by ride-hailing services) with an onset prior to the end of next
year. This state is understood to result from some event (or a series of events) that can be
easily accommodated given our world knowledge, e.g. satisfactory testing of driverless
cars. Similarly, (2) describes a possible state (a rifled box) that results from an event (the
leaving of the box in a salient location).
Example (3), however, seems to pose a challenge for our hypothesis: the BTA by
late morning is paired with a patently perfective predicate (leave), thereby suggesting that
the BTA is not aspectually restricted in the way proposed. In line with Thomas & Michaelis
(ibid), we view such combinations as exemplifying pragmatic resolution. In particular, we
assume that a preterit predication in (3) expresses a state (of their absence from the house)
that began just after the culmination of the event (of departure) described by the verb
(Michaelis 2011). This interpretation is comparable to the ‘covert past-perfect’ reading that
attaches to when-clauses in contexts like (6):
When the troops left, people in the neighborhood learned that four young men were
dead. (sc. ‘when the troops had left…)
develop between the condition and the category in such a way that the condition comes to be understood as
an integral part of the meaning of the category”.
2
Except as otherwise noted, all numbered examples that are neither cited from another work nor used to
illustrate ungrammaticality were retrieved from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies
2008-) or from Google searches conducted at the time of drafting.
2
If the BTA expresses a (potential or actual) time of verification of a state qua
resultant state, then the semantic representation of the BTA obligatorily includes a change
component, as reflected in the pattern of variation observed in the constructed examples
(7)-(10):
They (had) arrived by Friday.
She (had) cleaned out her locker by Monday.
She (had) walked around at/?by noon.
She loved hot toddies in/?by November.
(achievement)
(accomplishment)
(activity)
(state)
The contrasts in (7)-(10) suggest that Aktionsart is relevant to BTA use conditions: a BTA
sentence felicitous only when a transition prior to reference time can be inferred. In this
respect, BTAs contrast with most (though not all 3 ) temporal adverbials. An activity
predicate like walk around, as in (9), is BTA-incompatible because it has no entailed
resultant state. On the other hand, (10) suggests that state descriptions that are not readily
construed as consequences, intended or unintended, of prior events are also incompatible
with BTAs.4 Recall that (1), which also contains a state description, is BTA-compatible
because one can easily accommodate an event (or a series of events) that result in the use
of G.M. driverless cars. Such cannot be said for the state of loving hot toddies; there is no
obvious candidate event that would result in such a state.5
There is another important respect in which BTAs differ from many temporal
adverbials: BTAs are downward compatible with respect to the evoked time scale, while
temporal adverbials are not. Thus (11) below is contradictory, but (12) is not:6
#I arrived home at midnight; in fact, I arrived home at 10pm.
I arrived home by midnight; in fact, I arrived home at 10pm. (constructed7)
3
See Altshuler 2014 for a discussion of currently, which is aspectually restricted, combining only with stative
predicates. See also Carter & Altshuler 2017 for a discussion of subordinate uses of now (“Now that I’m in
Northampton, I can see Mt. Tom.”), which they claim are aspectually restricted as well.
4
Further evidence that Aktionsart is relevant to BTA use conditions comes from the data below, from Sam
Carter (p.c.), which shows that BTAs are incompatible with still. This is expected, since still, as a marker of
temporal persistence, prohibits a transition between presupposed and asserted state phases.
(i)
He was (??still) proclaiming his innocence by Friday.
(ii)
Those sandals are (??still) on sale by now.
5
As observed by an anonymous reviewer, “it is always possible to ‘coerce’ meaning in such a way that a
transition can be inferred regardless of verb class”. We will reflect on this observation in subsequent
sections.
6
In this way, BTAs are analogous to before and after clauses (e.g., I arrived before/after midnight; in fact,
I arrived home at 10pm/2am).
7
Here is a naturally occurring example:
(iii)
One of the rules at Red Rocks is that all shows have to be finished by midnight. In fact, most
shows are finished around 11-11:30 PM so there is plenty of time for everyone to exit the venue.
(Retrieved on March 13, 2018 at: https://edmmaniac.com/global-dance-festival-announces2017-lineup).
3
Key to the analysis that we propose in this paper is the observation that BTA time
reference is indefinite. For example, the BTA predication I arrived home by midnight
effectively means ‘I arrived home at some point prior to midnight’. Clearly, a speaker may
choose non-specific time reference over specific time reference when the exact time of a
state’s inception is irrelevant, so long as it falls within a certain range of times. What is of
particular interest to us is the manner in which non-specificity contributes to a particular
evidential reading of present-tense reports. One of our major aims in this paper is to
describe the constellation of factors that give rise to this reading, illustrated in (14):
Shira is home now. (constructed)
Shira is home by now. (constructed)
Shira was home by now.8 (constructed)
While (13) could be spoken by someone at home, who thereby has firsthand knowledge of
Shira’s presence at home, (14) could not. The report in (14) is naturally seen as the product
of an inference: the speaker is not at home and is merely offering a conjecture about Shira’s
whereabouts.9 Contrasting (14) with (15), a past-tense report, shows that this inferential
reading depends on present-time reference. Sentence (15) conveys nothing about whether
or not the speaker directly witnessed Shira’s arrival.10
Interestingly, some present-tense BTA tokens are redeemed only by the presence
of an epistemic-stance indicator, e.g., a modal such as must or probably:11
They ??(must) prefer white wine by now.
They ??(probably) live in Mountain View by now.
Moreover, the infelicitous example noted in (10), repeated below, improves when we add
an epistemic-stance indicator, e.g., will, as in (18):
(10) ?She loved hot toddies by November.
8
While it is well known that now can be used with the past tense (Dry 1979), such a usage is typically
embedded within a past narrative. This is how we conceive (15). Below is a naturally occurring example.
That night in Kev’s apartment, we cleared away the coffee table and kicked the empty cans to the side.
Toolie was home by now, sitting on the couch, his knees splayed and a roach in his hand.
(https://erinflanagan.net/its-not-going-to-kill-you/excerpt)
9
An anonymous reviewer argues that (14) does not count as a supposition or conjecture, because while (i)
seems fine, (ii) does not:
(i) I suppose/conjecture that Shira is home, but I don’t know for sure
(ii) ??Shira is home by now, but I don’t know for sure.
We assume that there is a difference between a conjecture, as in the first clause of (ii), and a statement
about one’s conjectures, as in the first clause of (i). A statement about what one supposes can always be
used to convey uncertainty, but one can be certain about what one conjectures. In other words, a conjecture
is necessarily a conclusion based on inference, but not necessarily a tentative one.
10
If we assume that the narrative in (iv), footnote 8, is told by a third-person omniscient narrator, then this
narrator would (by definition) have knowledge of Toolie’s whereabouts (even if she doesn’t directly witness
the event, since omniscient narrators are not characters in the story world).
11
To fully appreciate the contrast, (16) and, to a lesser extent, (17), may require additional context. We come
back to this point in section 3.
4
She will love hot toddies by November. (constructed)
What is the nature of the relationship, if any, between the indirect-evidence implication of
present-tense BTA sentences like (14) and the implied epistemic stance of uncertainty or
supposition? And why do BTA sentences like (16-17) and (18) appear to require overt
indication of epistemic stance when others apparently do not?
In addressing these questions, we illustrate the close relationship between
evidentiality, understood as the indication of evidentiary source, or epistemic justification
(Boye 2012), to epistemic modality, understood as the indication of degree of certainty or
commitment (referred to by Boye 2012 as epistemic support). A BTA predication contrasts
two phases: that in which the expressed state holds and that in which it does not. The only
certitude in a BTA sentence is that there was a period in which the state at issue did not or
will not hold. Since a BTA sentence does not tell us exactly when that period ended or will
end, the denoted state may exist only as a supposition or inference about the evoked
reference time. For example, a language user who directs another to be home by 5, as in
(5), anticipates a period of indeterminate length in which the addressee is absent. Because
BTA sentences describe states that come to exist only at the outer margins of the intervals
they delimit, they are natural vehicles for the introduction of content for which there is only
indirect evidence.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we describe the
BTA change schema by appealing to a theory of contextual operators, which we make more
precise using a Neo-Davidsonian event semantics. After doing so, we offer a pragmatic
account of how the inferential construal of present-tense BTA reports arises. Subsequently,
in Section 3, we hypothesize the manner in which the BTA change schema is instantiated
with epistemic modals and discuss the relationship between intensional and evidential
contexts. Finally, in Section 4, we offer concluding remarks about the interplay of tense,
aspect, evidentiality and modality that we observe here.
2 Semantics of BTAs
2.1 Contextual operators and the transition component
Following Thomas & Michaelis (2009), we identify BTAs with the class of contextual
operators, described by Kay (1990, 1997) as “lexical items and grammatical constructions
whose semantic value consists, at least in part, of instructions to find in the context a certain
kind of information structure and place the information presented by the sentence within
that information structure” (Kay 1997:159). Other examples of contextual operators are:
(i) even, which suggests that the asserted proposition is to be construed as an extreme case
along a scale of eventualities (Kay 1990) 12 , (ii) already, which instructs the hearer to
interpret the denoted state as one that holds prior to the inception of a process or procedure
that typically effects that state (Michaelis 1996) 13 and (iii) let alone, which conjoins a
contextually given proposition, e.g., They were never convicted, to one judged to be more
12
13
See also Greenberg 2017 and references therein.
See also Krifka 2000 and references therein.
5
informative, as in, e.g., They were never charged, let alone convicted (Fillmore, Kay &
O’Connor 1988).
Along these same lines, Thomas & Michaelis postulate that “BTA-bearing
predications require interpreters to retrieve or construct frames containing time series” (p.
140), and that such time series may be understood either as schedules or developmental
sequences (p. 133). This analysis seems intuitively valid. For example, BTA sentences
commonly express deadlines, as in (19), and points of culmination, as in (20):
You must submit your application by midnight CST on December 1.
The prime minister’s investment had grown to nearly $8.7 million by then.
We assume that in (19), the hearer imagines a series of permissible submission times, just
as the hearer of (20) imagines an incremental increase in the monetary value of the
investment.
It happens, however, that a BTA sentence need not describe a state that is ordered with
respect to another:
It took a few hours to retrieve our guys from the valley, and by that time it had begun
to rain.
When I was in religious school, we looked at this parashah and said, “Leprosy! How
gross! And who cares anyway?” By then, we knew that leprosy, also called Hansen’s
Disease, was almost obsolete.
The doctor told me we can’t continue to give you the steroid and cortisone shots
because you’ll be dead by the time you’re 40. (= (4))
It seems implausible to assume that (21) imposes a construal in which the rain had been in
the offing throughout the retrieval operation. It is simply the case that a transition from dry
to wet conditions had begun sometime prior to the past reference time (the time at which
the retrieval operation had finished). By the same token, (22) could not be said to
presuppose a knowledge scale along which knowledge of leprosy was increasing prior to
the past reference time. Finally, we could not reasonably suppose that (23), repeated from
(4) above, implies that the speaker would be dying throughout his twenties and thirties.
In light of these considerations, we propose that the BTA simply selects for a state
that results from a transition at some time prior to the reference time of the predication. A
BTA sentence asks of the interpreter only that she adduce a transition adjoining the denoted
state that renders the state that holds at reference time (i.e. the time indicated by the
complement of the BTA) a resultant state. In the next subsection, we make our proposed
analysis of BTAs more precise.
2.2 A toy analysis
As noted at the outset, we assume that as far as tense and illocutionary force are concerned,
BTAs are no different from temporal adverbials like on Friday. A toy analysis of Ava left
on Friday is provided below to illustrate one way that we can model the compositional
contribution of on Friday. We then go on to show the contribution of BTAs.
6
[Ava leave] m
le.leave(e) Ù AGT(e) = ava
[On Friday] m
lP.lt'.$v,t[t' Í FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ v Ù P(v)]
[[On Friday][Ava leave]] m
lt.$e,t'[t' Í FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ e Ù leave(e) Ù AGT(e) = ava]
[PAST] m
lQ.$t[PAST(t) Ù Q(t)]
[PAST [[On Friday][Ava leave]]] m
$e,t,t'[PAST(t') Ù t Í FRIDAY(t') Ù t ¡ e Ù leave(e) Ù AGT(e) = ava]
In (24), we assume that that the extension of a tenseless VP like Ava leave is a set
of leaving events by Ava, who is the agent. In (25), we assume that on Friday is a function
from a set of eventualities to a set of times, requiring that there be an eventuality v in the
extension of the VP such that: v overlaps some time t' (i.e. t' ¡ v') and t' is temporally
included within a time t, which has the property of being a Friday. Finally, PAST in (27)
saturates the time argument in (26) via existential closure, ensuring that this time is in the
past. The resulting formula is provided in (28), which characterizes an event e of Ava’s
leaving at a time t' that is within a past time t, which has the property of being Friday. This
correctly characterizes the truth conditions of Ava left on Friday.
Below, we show how this toy analysis generalizes to stative descriptions like Ava
was happy on Friday. We distinguish events from states in our ontology (by means of e vs.
s variables ranging over events and states, respectively). Since on Friday don’t discriminate
between eventive and stative descriptions, we use the eventuality variable v in (25)/(30),
which ranges over events and states (Bach 1986). We also follow Parsons (1990) in
distinguishing the thematic role AGT, which stands for the agent of an event, from IN,
which stands for the state that an individual is in (e.g., in Ava was happy on Friday, Ava is
in the state of being happy).
[Ava be.happy] m
ls.be.happy(s) Ù IN(s) = ava
[On Friday] m
lP.lt'.$v,t[t' Í FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ v Ù P(v)]
[[On Friday][Ava be.happy]] m
lt.$s,t'[t' Í FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ s Ù be.happy(s) Ù IN(s) = ava]
[PAST] m
lQ.$t[PAST(t) Ù Q(t)]
[PAST [On Friday][ be.happy]] m
$e,t,t'[PAST(t') Ù t Í FRIDAY(t') Ù t ¡ s Ù be.happy(s) Ù IN(s) = ava]
As noted above, this is just one way in which we can model the compositional
contribution of on Friday. We will not provide independent motivation for the idea that
7
temporal adverbials existentially bind the eventuality variable.14 Moreover, we will not
specify the semantics of PAST15 and FRIDAY16. What is crucial for us is the idea that the
preposition on contributes temporal inclusion (‘Í’) and the observation that on Friday
contributes an indefinite statement of the following kind: there is a time at which the
eventuality described by the VP held/was instantiated.
With these assumptions in mind, let us now consider how BTAs can be
incorporated into the toy analysis outlined above. Below, we provide a semantics for the
sentence Ava left by Friday, where the only difference between (24)-(28), on the one hand,
and (34)-(38), on the other, is the contribution of on Friday in (25) as against by Friday in
(35). The key difference is that by ensures that the time interval that has the property of
being a Friday precedes or is equal to the time that overlaps the time of the eventuality in
the extension of the VP that the by phrase attaches to.17
[Ava leave] m
le.leave(e) Ù AGT(e) = ava
[By Fridayi] m lR.lt.$e,t'[t' ≤ FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ ONS(si) Ù RES(e) = si Ù R(e)]
[[By Friday][Ava leave]] m
lt.$e,t'[t' ≤ FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ e Ù leave(e) Ù AGT(e) = ava]
[PAST] m
lQ.$t[PAST(t) Ù Q(t)]
[PAST [By Friday][Ava leave]] m
$e,t,t'[PAST(t) Ù t' ≤ FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ ONS(si) Ù RES(e) = si Ù leave(e)
Ù AGT(e) = ava]
Like on Friday, by Friday is a function from a set of eventualities to a set of times. When
the input to the function is a set of events, as above, then the onset (ONS) of a prominent
14
While this assumption will do for the purposes here, see section 3 of this paper, which challenges this
assumption, suggesting that epistemic modals operate on this eventuality variable.
15
There are two leading ideas about the semantics of tense. The first is to say that tense is a temporal pronoun
(Partee 1973, Kratzer 1998) or a quantifier with a domain restriction variable over reference times (Roberts
1995, Musan 1995, 1997, von Stechow 2009). For a recent overview of various approaches to the semantics
of tense, see Grønn & von Stechow 2016.
16
The semantics of on Friday is complicated by the fact that it has both a deictic and an anaphoric usage.
Altshuler (2014) provides the following discourse to illustrate this point with on Sunday:
(iv)
a. Three weeks ago on a Friday, Sue gave Fido a bath and cleaned our house.
b. On Sunday, my wife hired her and gave her a check for one month in advance.
Here we understand that the hiring event took place either on the closest Sunday after the house cleaning or
on the closest Sunday prior to the speech time. For a proposal for how to capture these two readings, see
Chapter 5 of Kamp & Reyle 1993.
17
As noted by an anonymous reviewer, if I tell you the paper is due by Friday and you hand it in on Friday,
we would normally accept the paper as being on time. Intuitions do seem to diverge in some other cases. For
example, if I bet you that Ava will leave by Friday, and we find on Friday afternoon that she has not yet left,
have I lost my bet? If it proves to be the case that by phrases require precedence, the extension in (35) could
be changed accordingly.
8
state si that is the resultant state (RES) of an event e must overlap a time t', which is prior
or equal to a time t that has the property of being a Friday. As shown in (38), this amounts
to the following. The onset of the resultant state of Ava’s past leaving (i.e. the onset of Ava
having left) must precede Friday. That is, Ava left by Friday is true iff Ava had left at some
point before Friday. As noted in the introduction, we assume that there is a prominent
resultant stated associated with an achievement like left. We further assume that this
resultant state comes from the discourse context (as suggested by the formula above),
although we do not rule out the possibility that it is entailed by the verb’s Aktionsart
representation, as in the case of achievement and accomplishment VPs (e.g., She had fixed
the situation by Friday). What is crucial is that we rule out an activity description like
??Ava walked around by Friday, because resultant states are typically not associated with
such descriptions.18
Now, if the input to the extension of by Friday a set of states, as in (39)19, then the
requirement is that the onset of a state s in the set results from some prominent event ei.
Moreover, as before, s must overlap a time t' that is prior to a time t that has the property
of being the Friday under discussion (see (40)20).
[Ava be home] m
ls.be.home(s) Ù IN(s) = Ava
[By Fridayi] m lS.lt.$s,t'[t' ≤ FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ ONS(s) Ù RES(ei) = s Ù S(s)]
[[By Friday][Ava be home]] m
lt.$e,t'[t' ≤ FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ ONS(s) Ù RES(ei) = s Ù be.home(s) Ù IN(s) = Ava]
[PAST] m
lQ.$t[PAST(t) Ù Q(t)]
[PAST [By Friday][Ava be home]] m
$e,t,t'[PAST(t) Ù t' ≤ FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ ONS(s) Ù RES(ei) = s Ù be.home(s) Ù IN(s)
= Ava]
For a sentence like Ava was home by Friday, we assume that there is a prominent event
that can be accommodated from the discourse context—Ava’s arriving—that results in the
state of Ava being at home. The onset of this state would, then, be correctly predicted to
18
We do, however, predict that this sentence would be improved when embedded within a discourse which
makes a resultant state prominent. For example, if we are tracking stages in Ava’s recovery from surgery, we
might say: She had the surgery on Wednesday, on Thursday she sat up in bed and by Friday she walked
around.
19
Here IN is borrowed from Parsons (1990) as a thematic role whose extension is a function from states to
individuals in those states. See Altshuler et al 2019 for more discussion.
20
One may be concerned that there appear to be two different extensions (in (35) and (40) for by Friday.
However, one could easily generalize the two entries as below ( (35) and (40) are separated for convenience).
(i) [By Fridayi] m lV.lt.$v,t'[t' < FRIDAY(t) Ù t' ¡ ONS(s) Ù RES(e) = s Ù V(v)], where (a) or (b) holds:
a. if v is in the set of states, then v results from some prominent event ei.
b. if v is in the set of events, then there is a prominent state si that results from v.
9
overlap a time that precedes Friday. By contrast, Ava loved hot toddies by Friday (a variant
of (10)) is odd simply because its successful interpretation requires the addressee to
construct a peculiar, or at least highly particularized, scenario in which Ava’s love of hot
toddies is the result of some earlier event. Like an indexical expression, the BTA has
minimal semantic constraints, requiring the interpreter to search the conversational
common ground for the appropriate specifications (Kay 1997), including abductive
reasoning to whatever causal event could yield the denoted state. In what follows, we will
further consider the hearer’s contribution, which includes inferences about speakers’
evidentiary bases for assertions conveyed by present-tense BTA sentences. This is
especially clear with BTA sentences containing the temporal adverb, now, already
mentioned in previous sections.
There is a rich literature on now, going back to influential work by Kamp (1971).
More recently, Altshuler & Stojnic 2015, Altshuler 2016, and Stojnic & Altshuler 2019
have argued that now can be treated as a prominence-sensitive indexical, which (among
other things) selects for a state in the discourse that results from a prominent event. They
show that this is an essential component of now’s meaning by analyzing a wide range of
uses, including deictic, bound and discourse-bound uses. While exploring the meaning of
now would take us too far afield, we end this section by noting that it should not be
surprising that now has an affinity with by: their semantics both require prominent events
and their resultant states.
2.3 Evidential implications of BTA predications
In the introduction we considered the minimal triple (13)-(15), repeated here as (44)-(46):
Shira is home now. (constructed)
Shira is home by now. (constructed)
Shira was home by now. (constructed)
Recall that while (44) could be spoken by someone at home, who thereby has firsthand
knowledge of Shira’s presence at home, (45) could not. The report in (46) is a supposition:
the speaker is not at home and is merely reporting what she believes ought to be the case.
Like (44), and unlike (45), the past-tense report in (46) conveys nothing about whether or
not the speaker directly witnessed Shira’s arrival.21
To see that this contrast is not particular to the data above consider the pair of
sentences in (47) and (48). While (47) implicates that the speaker never tried the soup, (48)
lacks this implicature.
The soup is cool by now. (constructed)
The soup was cool by now. (constructed)
21
As noted in footnote 6, now is often used with the past tense in narrative discourse. This is how we conceive
(41) – see footnote 6 for a naturally occurring example.
10
Why should this be the case and what is the nature of the relationship, if any, between the
indirect-evidence implication of present-tense BTA sentences like (44) and (46), and the
implied epistemic stance of uncertainty or supposition?
To answer this question, recall that according to our proposed analysis, (45) would
be analyzed as follows:
[PRESENT [By now][Shira be.home]] m
$e,t,t'[PRESENT(t) Ù t' ≤ NOW(t) Ù t' ¡ ONS(s) Ù RES(ei) = s Ù be.home(s)]
Ù IN(s) = shira]
According to (49), there was a prominent event that culminated in Shira being home at
some time t' prior to the speech time. Interpreting this assertion involves a cascade of
conversational inferences. One can reasonably infer that if the speaker had directly
witnessed Shira’s coming home at t' (e.g., by being in Shira’s home), then the speaker
would know when Shira had gotten home. But if this were the case, the speaker would
presumably have used the present-tense report (44) above, or an event report like Shira got
home a little while ago. The speaker’s failure to employ either of these two more
straightforward options triggers two distinct but combinable conversational implicatures.
Their combination is an interpretive compromise, inasmuch as it simultaneously satisfies
the lower bound of informational sufficiency, on the one hand, and the upper bound of
informational necessity, on the other-—a dialectic described by Horn (1984). The first of
these implicatures is R(elevance)-based, arising from the informational upper bound—the
hearer’s belief that the speaker is being maximally succinct. The second is Q(uantity)based, arising from the hearer’s assumption that the speaker is respecting informational
sufficiency in making her report as precise as possible. From the speaker’s assumed
adherence to the R-principle, the interpreter of (45) infers that the state described (Shira’s
presence at home) is a resultant state. If it were not, the interpreter’s reasoning goes, the
present-tense report in (44) would be the preferred report form. When reasoning according
to the Q-principle, the interpreter of (45) infers that the speaker lacks knowledge of Shira’s
exact arrival time; otherwise, a past-tense event report like Shira came home at 5 would be
the most appropriate (i.e. most cooperative) choice. The simplest explanation for the
speaker’s knowledge gap is that she was at a different location from Shira’s location at t'.
What is remarkable about sentences like (45) is that they carry an evidential-source
implication that cannot be traced to evidential ‘marking’ of any kind, but is rather the
product of an interpretive optimization procedure based on conversational reasoning.
An analogous analysis applies to (47), which has the representation below.
[PRESENT [By now][the soup be.cool]] m
$e,t,t'[PRESENT(t) Ù t' ≤ NOW(t) Ù t' ¡ ONS(s) Ù RES(ei) = s Ù be.cool(s)
Ù IN(s) = the soup]
If the speaker had tried the soup at t', she would, we presume, have been able to say
something about the circumstances that obtain at encoding time, e.g., The soup is cool now
or at a time immediately prior, e.g., The soup was cool (just now). The fact that she did not
say either of these things leads to the inference that she has not directly experienced the
temperature of the soup. The natural explanation is that the speaker has not (yet) tried the
11
soup. The lesson here yet again appears to be that evidential-source information is
calculable as well as conventional (in those cases where it is encoded by a marker of
evidential source).
Let us now reconsider the past-tense examples above, in (46) and (48). The former
lacks the implicature that the speaker was absent from Shira’s home at the time of her
arrival, while the latter lacks the implicature that the speaker has not yet tried the soup.
Note, however, that (45) and (47) nonetheless carry a negative implication traceable to the
BTA ‘onset’ schema—that the speaker was not at home/did not try the soup at any time
prior to the time t described by the adverb now. Of course, the present-tense reports (45)
and (47) share this negative implication with their past-tense counterparts, but unlike their
past-tense counterparts, these present-tense reports have no time depth23, and therefore no
time later than encoding time. These present-tense sentences therefore impart that the
speaker was never at home and never tried the soup. By contrast, the past-tense sentences
(45) and (47) evoke an interval whose right boundary is earlier than encoding time. As a
result, such sentences leave open the possibility that the speaker was at home/did try the
soup after the time described by the adverb, but before encoding time. It is for this reason
that the indirect-evidence implication is unique to present-tense BTA sentences.
We already know, of course, that the reference time of a state report does not restrict
the state itself but only the interval for which the speaker is prepared to vouch for that state
(Dowty 1986, Altshuler and Schwarzschild 2012): a sentence like She was in London
yesterday, if interpreted as an alibi statement, is perfectly compatible with her being in
London thereafter. Thus, a tensed state sentence always has what might be called epistemic
import: it describes the known (or relevant) segment of a state. What is special about
sentences like (45) and (47) is that they feature combinations of tense, adverbial meaning
and (stative) aspect that reveal not merely what state segment is known to the speaker but
also how the speaker knows of it. Indirect evidence is relatively weak evidence. As
Karttunen (1972) observes, “indirect knowledge—that is, knowledge based on logical
inference—is valued less highly than ‘direct’ knowledge that involves no reasoning” (p.
13). Sentences like (45) and (47) invite paraphrases like Shira must be home by now and
The soup is probably cool by now. In the next section, we offer an account of why such
inferential paraphrases are apt and in some cases preferable to their terser counterparts.
3 BTAs in intensional contexts
In section 1, we noted that some present-tense BTA tokens are apparently redeemed only
by the presence of an epistemic-stance indicator. The relevant examples are repeated
below:
They ??(must) prefer white wine by now.
They ??(probably) live in Mountain View by now.
23
Using Augustine’s reasoning we can demonstrate that the ‘now’ of speech time is a point not merely as a
matter of linguistic convention but also as a matter of logic:
“The real or objective present must be durationless for, as Augustine argued, in an interval of any
duration, there are earlier and later parts. So if any part of that interval is present, there will be
another part that is past or future” (Le Poidevin 2015).
12
Given the toy analysis of BTAs proposed in the last section, we are now in a position to
make sense of the data above. Recall the key idea of the analysis of BTAs presented in
section 2.2: BTAs require the onset of a resultant state to overlap a time that precedes the
time described by the adverb. On this analysis, the reason that (51)-(52) are odd in the
absence of epistemic-stance indicators is that the described states are not naturally
interpreted as resultant states of an event—no such event can be deduced in the absence of
elaborate context. We are left asking: what caused them to (now) prefer white wine? What
caused them to (now) live in Mountain View?
But why should inferences like those required by such contexts be facilitated by the
presence of epistemic markers? We are left with two plausible hypotheses about why
epistemic-stance indicators alleviate the infelicity above:
•
Hypothesis 1: epistemic-stance indicators help facilitate the process of
accommodating a prominent event that results in the state described.
•
Hypothesis 2: epistemic-stance indicators alleviate the need to accommodate a
prominent event that results in the state described.
In what follows, we will provide some reasons to believe that, depending on the epistemicstance indicator, either Hypothesis 1 or Hypothesis 2 is valid, leading to outstanding
questions about how the toy analysis in section 2.2 should be extended.
According to Kratzer’s (1981, 1991) seminal analysis of modals, must in (51)
requires the described eventuality to hold in all of the most ideal worlds of the modal base.
Hence, for (51) to be true, the described wine preference holds in all of the normal worlds
(e.g., that in which red wine has become prohibitively expensive). But what about the
actual world? What does (51) say about the described wine preference in the world of the
speaker? Here, things are more complicated. There are (at least) two well-known answers
to this question.
The first comes from von Fintel & Gillies (2010), henceforth F&G, who argue that
must f is felicitous only if the evidence for f (the prejacent) is indirect. They consider the
minimal pairs below24, noting that must is felicitous only in the case where the speaker had
indirect evidence for the assertion that it is raining.25
a. Context: Billy is looking out of the window at the pouring rain.
#It must be raining.
b. Context: Billy sees someone enter the building holding a wet umbrella, but she
cannot see outside herself.
It must be raining.
F&G further claim that the putative indirect-evidence inference is cross-linguistically
robust, and while they ultimately conclude that it should be derived as a quantity
24
These data are cited in Goodhue 2017:4, although they go back to Karttunen 1972.
This hypothesis has been further explored by Ninan 2014, Ozturk & Papafragou 2015, Matthewson 2015,
Lassiter 2016 and Mandelkern 2016.
25
13
implicature (Grice 1989, Geurts 2010, Franke 2011, Frank & Goodman 2012), they settle
for a lexical stipulation, owing to various challenges faced by a quantity-based-analysis.26
Another proposal, recently defended by Goodhue 2017, comes from Giannakidou
& Mari (2016), henceforth G&M, who argue that epistemic modals require the speaker to
be ignorant of the prejacent; there is no requirement that the evidence for the prejacent be
indirect. The ignorance requirement is formally modeled as a presupposition on top of
Kratzer’s semantics for epistemic modals, noted above. On this analysis, (53a) does not
satisfy the presupposition; it is correctly predicted to be infelicitous because the speaker
(Billy) knows that it is raining. By contrast, (53b) does satisfy the presupposition, because
the speaker (Billy) is not certain of the ambient conditions—she can only speculate. Hence,
(53b) is true if it is raining in all of the most ideal worlds of the modal base.
In what follows, we will consider how and whether these two analyses could be
used to support Hypothesis 1 and/or Hypothesis 2 above. We start with an application of
G&M’s analysis to (51) with the modal must. As noted above, for (51) to be true, the
described wine preference holds in all of the most ideal worlds of the modal base. Now, let
us assume, following G&M, that (51) also presupposes that the speaker does not know
whether the described wine preference holds in the actual world. Could the conjunction of
the asserted and presupposed content support either Hypothesis 1 or Hypothesis 2?
For the conjunction to support either Hypothesis 1 or Hypothesis 2, we would have
to derive a possible change of state by juxtaposing the state in which they do not prefer
white wine (in the actual world) to that in which they prefer white wine (in all of the most
ideal worlds). Only after deriving this possible change of state can we entertain the question
of whether the modal (a) facilitated the accommodation of a prominent event whose
resultant state is the state described or (b) merely alleviated the need for this form of
accommodation. Unfortunately, such a derivation is not possible.27 To see this, suppose
that the modal base f(w) consists of the following set of worlds: {w,v}. Let σ be the state
of them preferring white wine. Now suppose that for all times t, 〈w,t〉 ∉ σ and 〈v,t〉 ∈ σ. In
other words, suppose that they never prefer white wine in w, and that they have always
preferred white wine in v. Finally, suppose that {v} is the set of ideal worlds in f(w). Then,
for any time in the actual world, t@:
•
The presuppositional content of must is satisfied, since σ does not hold across all
ideal worlds in f(w) at t@.28
•
The assertive content of must is satisfied, since σ holds across all ideal worlds
in f(w) at t@.
•
There is no change of state in any world in f(w).
26
As noted by F&G, deriving this inference as a quantity implicature is challenging because there doesn’t
appear to be an expression that both requires indirect evidence and, when used in a sentence, asymmetrically
entails its counterpart sentence with must.
27
Thanks to Sam Carter for discussing this option with us.
28
As noted by an anonymous reviewer, what G&M actually require is slightly different: not that f(w) is
diverse with respect to the prejacent, but rather that the speaker doesn’t know the prejacent. While these two
views could come apart, depending on what f(w) represents, our challenge for G&M is independent of this
point.
14
Despite our inability to derive the change of state in this manner, one may still be
tempted to conjoin the presupposed and asserted content of must and derive the change of
state by other (pragmatic) means. As we shall see below, we think this is plausible in the
case of F&G’s analysis. For G&M’s analysis, however, this seems more challenging (at
least for us). How, under G&M’s analysis would we derive the conclusion that f does not
hold at some prior time in w?
With this question in mind, let us now apply F&G’s analysis to (51) above.29 Instead
of presupposing that the speaker does not know whether the described wine preference
holds in the actual world, F&G would say that there is some mechanism that led the speaker
to know that the described wine preference holds in the actual world, at her time of
utterance. In other words, the speaker came to know that there is a white wine preference
in the actual world, prior to encoding time, by some indirect means. And this indirect
evidence warranted the use of must in (51).
Note that this analysis involves the following change of state: the speaker lacks
knowledge of the wine preference at some point prior to speech time and has knowledge
of the wine preference at speech time. Note further that this change of state does not
guarantee that there was a change of state in the wine preference itself; the speaker may
have come to know something that always held. However, the speaker came to such
knowledge, it was not through witnessing the subjects choosing white wine over other
options, or through hearing them declare their preference. This, of course, would be direct
evidence. Instead the means by which the speaker gained the knowledge must be some
event that enabled the speaker to deduce their preference for white wine, just as Billy’s
seeing someone enter the building holding a wet umbrella in (53b) led her to deduce that it
is raining.
Given this line of reasoning, we hypothesize that (51) implicates that whatever event
provided the indirect evidence for the speaker’s claim, it is an event that led the speaker to
log a new wine preference at speech time, whether or not that wine preference is, in
actuality, a new state. Notice in this connection that the speaker can append the following
statement to (51) without contradiction: And perhaps they always did. Put differently, we
hypothesize that the BTA onset schema is satisfied by must in (51) because any conjecture
about a state of the world can be construed as a new state: if I am now prepared to make a
guess about a state of the world, whether based on reasoning or observation, I was not
previously prepared to do so.
With this in mind, we can come back to the two hypotheses noted at the outset of this
section and ask whether must provides information that would facilitate the
accommodation of the onset event (Hypothesis 1), or whether must alleviates the need to
accommodate this event (Hypothesis 2) by identifying the onset event as the evidentiary
basis on which the speaker makes her assertion. Everything we have said thus far would
suggest the latter hypothesis. However, Mandelkern (2016) provides intriguing data
suggesting that must differs from other epistemic distancers like probably in the following
respect: when a speaker uses must f, she has to share her evidence for f.30 To see this,
consider the following data:
29
Thanks to Matt Mandelkern for discussing this option with us.
This proposal builds on work by Stone (1994). In addition to must, strong epistemic necessity modals like
have to and can’t have this anaphoric feature.
30
15
How are you doing in your classes?
a. I’m doing ok.
b. I hope I’m doing ok.
c. {Mrs. Crabtree said/I keep telling myself} that I’m doing ok.
d. I’m probably doing ok.
e. I must be doing ok; my professors all gave me positive midterm reports.
f. ??I must be doing ok.
While (54a)-(54e) are all felicitous responses to the question in (54), (54f) is odd, and
crucially odder than (54e), where the speaker shares her evidence for the claim that she is
doing ok. Assuming such data are robust, it would suggest that (51), which has must, is not
as felicitous as (52), which has probably, and that (51) is improved when the modal is
replaced by probably, since no prior context is provided. We share this intuition, which in
turn suggests that, on the extended F&G analysis just proposed, must supports Hypothesis
1, while other epistemic-stance indicators, like probably in (52), support Hypothesis 2.31
In other words, the use of must f requires the speaker to describe what caused her to know
that f, and we claim that this evocation of a prior act of inference facilitates the construction
of the BTA state as a resultant state. Probably in (52), by contrast, alleviates the need to
accommodate the event required by BTA (Hypothesis 2) by identifying that event with the
observation or act of reasoning that provided the basis for the speaker’s claim.
On this analysis, the use of an epistemic modal like must in (51) or probably in (52)
will always result in a felicitous BTA construction as long as (i) the aspectual restrictions
imposed by BTA are respected and (ii) it is plausible that the speaker could gain indirect
evidence for her assertion (whether this evidence is shared, as in the case of must, or not,
as in the case of probably). Moreover, on this analysis, if a BTA predication is felicitous
in the absence of an epistemic modal (e.g. They had arrived by Friday), then adding an
epistemic modal (e.g. They must have arrived by Friday) leads to the implication that the
speaker’s assertion is warranted by indirect evidence. If the modal-free BTA predication
already has this implication, as in the case of Shira is home by now (discussed in section
2.3), then adding the modal will simply strengthen the implication (e.g., Shira must be
home by now).
Let us now reconsider the contrast below. As noted in the introduction, the use of
will in (55b) alleviates the oddity seen in (55a):
a. ??She loved hot toddies by November.
b. She will love hot toddies by November. (= (18))
Unlike the examples previously discussed in this section, (55b) implicates that the speaker
believes that the described eventuality does not hold at the speech time, i.e. that she does
not currently love hot toddies. Altshuler & Schwarzschild (2012, 2013) call this inference
cessation, characterized as follows:
31
We discuss other epistemic-stance indicators like hope/say/think at the end of this section.
16
Cessation Implicature: the utterance of a past/future tensed sentence implicates that
no state of the kind described currently holds.32
Combined with the semantic contribution of will (there is a time after the speech time when
the described eventuality holds), (56) allows us to derive a change of state inference in
(55b): the hearer deduces that the individual under discussion does not currently love hot
toddies, and that this individual will be in such a state in the future (namely at some point
prior to November).33 As in (52), the event that would lead to this change of state need not
be specified in (55b). If we assume that will is an epistemic modal on a par with probably,
then we can apply the leading insight of our F&G-inspired analysis: the use of the modal
in a BTA predication evokes an antecedent observation or act of reasoning that permits the
speaker to make her assertion, and this inference trigger is identified with the ‘onset event’
in the BTA schema.
In sum, this section has attempted to explain why infelicity in certain types of BTA
predications is alleviated by the presence of an epistemic modal. One outstanding issue
concerns the means by which we might extend the toy analysis in section 2.2 to incorporate
the contribution of intensional operators. Doing so would likely involve revising the idea
(which was sufficient for our purposes in section 2.2) that temporal adverbs existentially
bind eventuality variables. Given the analysis in this section, it would be worthwhile to
explore the hypothesis that it is the epistemic modal/attitude verb that has this task,
identifying the event that leads to the change of state with the source of indirect evidence
that the speaker relies on in making her assertion. We refer the reader to Hacquard (2009,
2010) for some pioneering ideas about how modals interact with tense and aspect, leaving
for future research the question of whether the ideas presented there can be neatly
implemented in the compositional semantics proposed in section 2.2.
The other outstanding issue concerns the use of BTAs with other epistemic-stance
indicators, such as attitude verbs. The data in (54b,c) may lead one to expect that attitudes
can alleviate infelicitous instances of BTAs on a par with the epistemic modal probably.
Interestingly, while hope appears to confirm this expectation,
Susanna hopes that they prefer white wine by now. (constructed)
say/tell/think do not:
??Susanna said that they prefer white wine by now.
??Susanna told me that they prefer white wine by now.
??Susanna thinks that they prefer white wine by now.
Why should this be? One relevant observation comes from Simons (2008), who observes
that on a parenthetical use of an attitude report, the complement clause carries the main
point of the utterance while the matrix clause plays an evidential function, indicating the
32
Altshuler & Schwarzschild argue that this is a scalar implicature: Present j asymmetrically entails Past j
and Future j given the semantics of stative predication. See Chapter 4 of Altshuler 2016 for discussion.
33
As noted by an anonymous reviewer, for those who are hesitant to adopt a future orientation analysis of
will can choose to assimilate will to must and the analysis for must presented above could be extended
straightforwardly.
17
source of evidence for the proffered content.34 On a parenthetical reading of (58)-(60), this
evidence is indirect: Susanna is the source of evidence. Of course, the matrix clause of
attitude reports does not always convey hearsay evidence. This is especially clear with firstperson reports like (61):
I hope they prefer white wine by now. (constructed)
Despite not specifying the source of the evidence that warrants the assertion, (61) still
implies that the speaker used some indirect means to reach the conclusion that they have a
white wine preference: when someone hopes that a given state is in force at speech time,
there is typically a reason for that hope, although (61) tells us more about what the speaker
expects or desires than it tells us about the speaker’s reasoning. Hence, attitude reports like
(58)-(60) more closely resemble (51) [They ??(must) prefer white wine by now.] than they
do (52) [They ??(probably) live in Mountain View by now.], while attitude reports like (61)
more closely resemble (52) than they do (51).
Given these observations, we can rephrase the puzzle as follows: what allows us to
analyze (57) and (61) on a par with epistemic modals, but not (58)-(60)? In particular, why
would hope (but not say/tell/think) allow for an analysis in which the speaker came to know
about the wine preference by indirect means, leading the hearer to deduce that there was a
change of state (the wine preference) prior to the point at which the attitude report was
uttered? We leave this question open for further research, noting some recent work that
may help to solve the puzzle: Anand & Hacquard 2014, which posits various discourse
constraints imposed by attitude verbs and Klecha 2016, which motivates a modal semantics
for attitudes in which verbs like hope are distinguished from say/think.
5 Conclusion
We have motivated a change-of-state schema for BTA sentences by appealing to a theory
of contextual operators, which we made formally precise, using a Neo-Davidsonian event
semantics. Key to the analysis was the idea that BTA sentences require the onset of a
resultant state to overlap a time that precedes the time described by the adverb. This
analysis allowed us to identify the pragmatic factors that yield the inferential construal of
present-tense BTA reports. Subsequently, we built on an analysis of epistemic modals by
von Fintel & Gillies (2010) and Mandelkern (2016) to hypothesize the manner in which
the BTA change schema is instantiated in intensional contexts and discussed the
relationship between intensional and evidential contexts. We assumed that an assertion
must j requires information that supports the speaker’s evidence for j and proposed that
the speaker’s receipt of this evidence is understood as an event, thereby facilitating the
accommodation of the event required by BTA schema. Other epistemic-stance indicators,
such as probably, differ from must in that their interpretive contributions alleviate the need
to accommodate an event required by the BTA. They do so by identifying this event with
the source of indirect evidence from which the speaker draws her assertion.
34
This observation builds on work by Urmson (1952) and Hooper (1975). See Altshuler et al. (2014) and
Chapter 4 of Altshuler (2016) for more discussion.
18
The analysis offered here differs from prior analyses that view the connection
between evidential and modal implications of aspectual constructions through a diachronic
lens, as primarily a grammaticalization problem. We treat it as an inferencing problem and
a semantic-constraint-satisfaction problem. We see the fusing of aspectual and epistemic
implications in BTA sentences, and in particular present-tense sentences, as the product of
a reconciliation procedure in which a knowledge state correlates with a resultant state. By
highlighting the role of state assertions in triggering acts of pragmatic reasoning, this case
study also illustrates the need for an aspectual ontology that includes events, states and
times, echoing the view of Parsons 1990, Altshuler 2016 and Altshuler et al. 2019. We
found that the BTA could not be analyzed purely in terms of times, and in this respect, the
aspectual analysis offered here goes beyond time.
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