It has proven difficult to provide a unified semantics for the French subjunctive (the difficulty applies more generally to Romance, but we concentrate on French). In this preliminary note, we suggest that this is because the French subjunctive is a semantic default, to be used just in case the indicative would have triggered a presupposition failure (a similar idea was explored for Italian by ...

Infallibilism is the claim that knowledge requires that one satisfies some infallibility condition. I spell out three distinct such conditions: epistemic, evidential and modal infallibility. Epistemic infallibility turns out to be simply a consequence of epistemic closure, and is not infallibilist in any relevant sense. Evidential infallibilism i s unwarranted but it is not an satisfactory char...

The meaning of conditional sentences bears an intrinsic relation to a number of central philosophical problems, like the nature of reasoning, the possibility of knowledge, and the status of laws of nature. This has incited philosophers to spend a lot of time working on conditionals and to fill countless bookshelves with inspiring and sophisticated theories on their meaning. However, the overall...

Extensive research has shown that second language (L2) learners find it difficult to apply grammatical knowledge during real-time processing, especially when differences exist between the first (L1) and L2. The current study examines extent which British English-speaking of French can their subjunctive whether this ability is modulated by properties L1 grammar, and/or proficiency. Data from an ...