Offer `can'
Résumé
This paper studies the commissive use can in conditionals such as I can do the
dishes, if you like. Its main goal is to spell out the semantic building blocks of
what we call offer-can, arguing that the seemingly speech act interpretation is a
feature of the conditional statement as a whole rather than the modal itself. To
achieve this, we disentangle authority, ability at the semantic level (in agreement
with Copley (2009)), and single out the notion of ‘issue to be solved’ and ‘preferred
solution worlds’ as epistemic basis and bouletic ordering respectively for the modal
quantification. We propose a comparison between the conditional offer and other
non-conditional conditionals, and offer some thoughts regarding permission-can and
can-you-pass-me-the-salt questions, arguing for authority shift in questions, in a way
akin to the interrogative flip in questions with evidentials and epistemic modals.
Key-words: can, offer, ability, authority, commissives, conditionals, permission,
questions
Domaines
LinguistiqueOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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