Gutzmann (2015): Sentence Mood as Use-Conditional Meaning #
@cite{gutzmann-2015}
Use-Conditional Meaning: Studies in Multidimensional Semantics. Oxford University Press.
Key Claims #
- Sentence mood operators (deontic, epistemic) are UCIs, not presuppositions
- The epistemic interpretation of [±wh] does NOT pass standard presupposition tests (negation, disjunction)
- V2-interrogatives carry a HKNOW condition absent from VL-interrogatives
- Modal particles are functional expletive UCIs whose mood restrictions derive from interaction with sentence mood operators
- wohl is a UC-modifier (not a UCI), with selectional restriction
Clause Type Predictions #
| Clause type | t-content | u-content |
|---|---|---|
| dass-VL | p | DEONT(p) |
| V2-declarative | p | DEONT(EPIS(p)) |
| VL-interrogative | p | DEONT(EPIS(p)) |
| V2-interrogative | p | DEONT(EPIS(p)) ⊙ HKNOW(p) |
| Imperative | p | DEONT(p) |
The Cuban cigar argument: V2- and VL-interrogatives differ ONLY in the hearer knowledge condition. This explains why VL-interrogatives are felicitous even when the hearer clearly does not know the answer (the Cuban cigar scenario), while V2-interrogatives are not.
Imperatives share dass-VL mood structure (deontic only): both lack [±wh] at LF, so neither triggers epistemic interpretation.
Every matrix clause has a deontic operator (the root rule).
dass-VL clauses have no epistemic component.
V2-declaratives have epistemic but not hearer knowledge.
Epistemic embedding preserves truth at the world level. The epistemic contribution is purely use-conditional, not truth-conditional.
V2-interrogatives differ from VL-interrogatives only in HKNOW. Derived from the theory of [±wh] feature visibility.
wohl's distribution is fully derived from EPIS presence: wohl is
licensed in a clause type iff that clause type has an epistemic mood
operator. This is the formal content of the selectional restriction
analysis — wohl has type ⟨⟨⟨s,t⟩,u⟩, ⟨⟨s,t⟩,u⟩⟩ and modifies EPIS,
so clause types lacking EPIS produce a type mismatch.
ja is restricted to declaratives, matching the clause type with deontic + epistemic mood but without the hearer knowledge condition.
denn is the interrogative counterpart of ja.
ja and denn partition clause types: they are never both licensed in the same clause type.
The restriction kind for all particles reflects the UCI/UC-modifier distinction: UCIs have conflict restrictions, UC-modifiers have selectional restrictions.