Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Free choice permission and the counterfactuals of pragmatics

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Linguistics and Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper addresses a little puzzle with a surprisingly long pedigree and a surprisingly large wake: the puzzle of Free Choice Permission. I begin by presenting a popular sketch of a pragmatic solution to the puzzle, due to Kratzer and Shimoyama (Proceedings of the third Tokyo conference on psycholinguistics, 2002), which has received a good deal of discussion, endorsement and elaboration in recent work (Aloni and van Rooij, Proccedings of the KNAW Academy Colloquium: Cognitive foundations of interpretation, 2004; Alonso-Ovalle, Ph.D. thesis, 2006; Chierchia, Linguist Inq 37(4):535–590, 2006; Fox, in: Sauerland and Stateva (eds.) Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics, 2007; Geurts, Mind Lang 24:51–79, 2009; von Fintel, Central APA session on Deontic Modals, 2012). I then explain why the general form of the Kratzer and Shimoyama explanation is not extensionally adequate. This leaves us with two possibilities with regard to the original solution-sketch; either the suggested pragmatic route fails, or it succeeds in a particularly strange way: Free Choice permission is rendered a kind pragmatic illusion on the part of both speakers and hearers. Finally, I discuss some ramifications.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Aloni, M. (2007a). Expressing ignorance or indifference. In Logic, language, and computation. Berlin: Springer.

  • Aloni M. (2007b) Free choice, modals, and imperatives. Natural Language Semantics 15: 65–94

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aloni, M., & van Rooij, R. (2004). Free choice items and alternatives. Proccedings of the KNAW Academy Colloquium: Cognitive foundations of interpretation (pp. 5–26).

  • Alonso-Ovalle, L. (2005). Distributing the disjuncts over the modal space. In L. Bateman & C. Ussery (Eds.), Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society 35.

  • Alonso-Ovalle, L. (2006). Disjunction in alternative semantics. Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

  • Barker C. (2010) Free choice permission as resource-sensitive reasoning. Semantics and Pragmatics 3: 1–38

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benz, A., Jäger, G., & van Rooij, R. (2006). Game theory and pragmatics. London: Palgrave MacMillan.

  • Cariani F. (2013) Ought’ and resolution semantics. Noûs 47(3): 534–558

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chemla E. (2009) Universal implicatures and free choice effects: Experimental data. Semantics and Pragmatics 2: 1–33

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chemla E., Bott L. (2014) Processing inferences at the semantics/pragmatics frontier: Disjunctions and free choice. Cognition 3: 380–396

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chierchia, G. (2004). Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena, and the syntax/pragmatics interface. In A. Belletti (Ed.), Structures and beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Chierchia, G. (2006). Broaden your views: Implicatures of domain widening and the ‘logicality’ of language. Linguistic Inquiry, 37(4), 535–590.

  • Fine K. (1975) Review of Lewis (1973). Mind 84: 451–458

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • von Fintel, K. (2012). The best we can (expect to) get? Challenges to the classic semantics for deontic modals. Central APA session on Deontic Modals.

  • Fox, D. (2007). Free choice disjunction and the theory of scalar implicatures. In U. Sauerland & P. Stateva (Eds.), Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Franke M. (2011) Quantity implicatures, exhaustive interpretation, and rational conversation. Semantics and Pragmatics 4: 1–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franke M. (2013) Game theoretic pragmatics. Philosophy Compass 8(3): 269–284

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gamut, L. T. F. (1991). Logic, language, and meaning (Vol. 1). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  • Geurts, B. (2009). Scalar implicature and local pragmatics. Mind and Language, 24, 51–79.

  • Geurts, B. (2010). Quantity implicatures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521769136.

  • Glick, E. (2012). A modal approach to intentional identity. Noûs, 46(3), 386–399.

  • Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 3). New York: Academic Press.

  • Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

  • Jäger, G. (2008). Applications of game theory in linguistics. Language and Linguistics Compass 2, 406–421.

  • Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Kamp H. (1973) Free choice permission. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series 74: 57–74

    Google Scholar 

  • Klinedinst, N. (2006). Plurality and possibility. Ph.D. thesis, UCLA.

  • Kratzer A. (1977) What must and can must and can mean. Linguistics and Philosophy 1(3): 337–355

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kratzer, A. (1981). The national category of modality. In H.-J. Eikmeyer & H. Rieser (Eds.), Words, worlds, and context (pp. 38–74). Berlin: de Gruyter.

  • Kratzer, A. (1991). Modality. In A. von Stechow & D. Wunderlich (Eds.), Semantics: An international handbook for contemporary research. Berlin: de Gruyter.

  • Kratzer, A., & Shimoyama, J. (2002). Indeterminate pronouns: The view from Japanese. Proceedings of the third Tokyo conference on psycholinguistics.

  • Lewis, D. (1969). Convention: A philosophical study. Harvard University Press.

  • Lewis, D. (1973). Counterfactuals. Oxford: Blackwell.

  • Lewis D. (1979a) Counterfactual dependence and time’s arrow. Noûs 13(4): 455–476

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis D. (1979b) Scorekeeping in a language game. Journal of Philosophical Logic 8(1): 339–359

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis D. (1981) Causal decision theory. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59: 5–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parikh, P. (1991). Communication and strategic inference. Linguistics and Philosophy, 14, 473–514.

  • Parikh, P. (1992). A game-theoretic account of implicature. TARK ’92: Proceedings of the 4th conference on theoretical aspects of reasoning about knowledge (pp. 85–94). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc.

  • Parikh, P. (2001). The use of language. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. ISBN 1575863545.

  • Roberts, C. (1996). Information structure: Towards an intergrated formal theory of pragmatics. In OSUWPL Volume 49: Papers in semantics. Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University.

  • Ross, A. (1941). Imperatives in logic. Theoria, 7, 53–71.

  • Rothschild, D. (2011). Game theory and scalar implicatures. Manuscript, Oxford University.

  • Sauerland, U. (2004). Scalar implicatures in complex sentences. Linguistics and Philosophy, 27, 367–391.

  • Simons M. (2005) Dividing things up: The semantics of or and the modal or interaction. Natural Language Semantics 13: 271–316

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stalnaker, R. (1999). On the representation of context. In Context and content. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Tichý P. (1976) A counterexample to the Stalnaker–Lewis analysis of counterfactuals. Philosophical Studies 29: 271–273

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • von Wright, G. H. (1969). An Essay on deontic logic and the general theory of action. Amsterdam: North Holland.

  • Zimmermann, T. E. (2000). Free choice disjunction and epistemic possibility. Natural Language Semantics, 8, 255–290

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, UC Berkeley, 314 Moses Hall #2390, Berkeley, CA, 94720-2390, USA

    Melissa Fusco

Authors
  1. Melissa Fusco
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Melissa Fusco.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Fusco, M. Free choice permission and the counterfactuals of pragmatics. Linguist and Philos 37, 275–290 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-014-9154-8

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-014-9154-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation