The Semantics of Irreality

Practical endeavors frequently involve two kinds of reflection: reasoning about matters of fact, known or unknown, on one hand; and reasoning about situations which we know to be purely hypothetical, on the other. This modal distinction tends to be encoded in natural languages as a distinction in grammatical mood, what Elliott (2000) has referred to as ‘reality status’. The difference is illustrated by the following pair of conditionals, uttered in a context where we correctly assume that Professor R. is in her office, because we see someone's silhouette through the window.
(1) If Professor R. isn't in her office, someone else is.
(2) If Professor R. weren't in her office, someone else would be.

The first conditional is in the indicative mood, a subtype of realis mood. The second is in the subjunctive or counterfactual mood, a subtype of irrealis mood. This difference in reality status can have truth-conditional effects: (1) is clearly true, given that we know someone is in the office; but (2) is probably false, assuming that Professor R. doesn't have an office-mate. In this class, we focus on linguistic constructions which, like (2), involve irreality. Our goal is to achieve a better understanding of irreality in language: its logical significance, its realization across constructions and languages, and its compositional semantics.

In the first half of the class, we'll investigate semantic theories of counterfactual conditionals in English, with readings by Lewis, Stalnaker, Kratzer, von Fintel, Gillies, and others. Such conditionals are the best studied examples of irrealis constructions, and we'll use this scholarship to establish a baseline semantic framework. In the second half of the class, we'll explore how various languages use irrealis mood outside of conditionals, and the extent to which semantic theories of counterfactuals can inform their treatment (Palmer, Elliott, Farkas, Iatridou). We'll focus on irrealis mood markers as they occur embedded under attitude verbs, modals, and in certain kinds of speech act.