There are many kinds of computer system that are intended to support users in performing an exploration among a range of possible results. However, such tools often allow only narrow progress through the result space, forcing users to trade off the breadth of search they would like to pursue against the time and effort required. The aim of the ‘subjunctive interface’ concept is to make broader ...

Juan Comesana considers some recent proposals regarding the relation between knowledge and subjunctive conditionals, including those by Dretske and Nozick recommending a " sensitivity " condition on knowledge, and by Sosa recommending a " safety " condition. Comesana raises problems for each of the positions he considers, and at the end of the paper he expresses pessimism about the prospects fo...

Abstract Indicative and subjunctive conditionals are in non-complimentary distribution: there conversational contexts at which both licensed (Stalnaker 1975; Karttunen Peters 1979; von Fintel 1998). This means we can ask an important, but under-explored, question: license both, what relations hold between the two? In this paper, I’ll argue for initially surprising conclusion: when attention is ...

On the conception of metaphysical possibility that I prefer, a metaphysical possibility is simply a coherent way for the world to be. That is a substantial view. There are conceptions of metaphysical possibility on which not every coherent way for the world to be counts as a metaphysical possibility. To illustrate this point, consider a conception of metaphysical possibility based on a simplifi...

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 ...

Article Lilo Moessner: The history of the present English subjunctive: a corpus-based study mood and modality was published on November 1, 2022 in journal Folia Linguistica (volume 56, issue s43-s1).