Free factive subjunctives in German

Csipak, Eva

Ich hätte da eine Analyse

dc.contributor.advisor	Eckardt, Regine Prof. Dr.
dc.contributor.author	Csipak, Eva
dc.date.accessioned	2015-07-24T08:46:12Z
dc.date.available	2015-07-24T08:46:12Z
dc.date.issued	2015-07-24
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-1735-0000-0022-605E-4
dc.identifier.uri	http://dx.doi.org/10.53846/goediss-5196
dc.language.iso	eng	de
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subject.ddc	400	de
dc.subject.ddc	800	de
dc.title	Free factive subjunctives in German	de
dc.title.alternative	Ich hätte da eine Analyse	de
dc.type	doctoralThesis	de
dc.contributor.referee	Eckardt, Regine Prof. Dr.
dc.date.examination	2015-03-06
dc.description.abstracteng	This dissertation discusses a special use of the German subjunctive that I dub the "free factive" subjunctive (FFS). It is exemplified in (1). (1) Ich hätte Pizza im Kühlschrank. I have.SUBJ pizza in the fridge `I have pizza in the fridge.' There is an opportunity for you involving the fact that I have pizza in the fridge. Unlike the more familiar uses of the subjunctive, the speaker can use (1) to make a "tentative offer"; that is, (1) not only conveys that the believes that there is in fact pizza in the fridge, but it conveys an additional meaning component paraphrased here as "there is an opportunity ... " I show that this use of the subjunctive is distinct from two other uses of the German subjunctive: an irrealis use that is found cross-linguistically to express lowered epistemic commitment (cf. a.o. Farkas 1992, Villalta 2008, Matthewson 2010) and an evidential use that marks the utterance as part of a report (cf. a.o. Fabricius-Hansen and Saeboe 2004, Potts 2005, Sode 2014). FFSs can only be used under two conditions: a) there needs to be a salient decision problem in the context, and b) the proposition co-occurring with the FFS needs to "boost" one of the decision problem's action alternatives. Then the FFS conveys that there is a world where choosing the "boosted" action alternative is optimal. (Formally, I propose a multi-dimensional analysis using the framework argued for in McCready 2010 and Gutzmann 2012 and translating basic notions of decision theory into intensional semantics.) I then discuss two types of relevance conditionals, only one of which is compatible with past tense. (2) a. If you are hungry, there is pizza in the fridge. b. If you were hungry (yesterday), there was pizza in the fridge. (3) a. If I am being honest, you look awful. b. *If I was being honest (yesterday), you looked awful. I argue that we can maintain a unified analysis of relevance conditionals if we assume a pragmatic analysis based on conditional independence (along the lines of Franke 2009) and additionally assume that conditionals like (3a) are self-referential in the sense of Eckardt 2012: "you look awful" is an instantiation of "being honest"; therefore (3a) becomes true by uttering it. Uttering "you looked awful", on the other hand, cannot serve as an instantiation of "I was honest yesterday", causing (3b) to be odd.	de
dc.contributor.coReferee	Fintel, Kai von Prof. Dr.
dc.subject.eng	subjunctive	de
dc.subject.eng	decision theory	de
dc.subject.eng	modality	de
dc.subject.eng	biscuit conditionals	de
dc.subject.eng	multi-dimensional semantics	de
dc.subject.eng	formal semantics	de
dc.subject.eng	formal pragmatics	de
dc.identifier.urn	urn:nbn:de:gbv:7-11858/00-1735-0000-0022-605E-4-4
dc.affiliation.institute	Philosophische Fakultät	de
dc.subject.gokfull	Philologien (PPN621711713)	de
dc.identifier.ppn	832021407

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