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- Epistemic Future and Epistemic Modal Verbs in PortuguesePublication . Marques, RuiThis paper discusses the semantics of two epistemic operators in Portuguese: the epistemic Future and modal verbs. The idea sustained in the literature for other languages that the epistemic Future has the same semantics as the modal verb (equivalent to) MUST does not account for the Portuguese data. The proposal is made that, though epistemic Future and epistemic modal verbs are devices to convey uncertainty, they operate on different grounds. Epistemic modal verbs are quantifiers over possible worlds, expressing a degree of epistemic commitment towards a proposition, while the epistemic Future is argued to be a mark signaling lack of evidence at the context of utterance. The other modal verbs of Portuguese, in their epistemic reading, are also considered, the proposal being made that Portuguese has also a modal verb that existentially quantifies over the set of Best worlds. This shows a very symmetric picture of Portuguese modal verbs: two of them select an ordered modal base and two others an unordered modal base; for each domain of quantification – the entire modal base or the set of Best Worlds (a subset of the modal base) – there will be an existential and a universal quantifier.
- Mínimo e máximo em estruturas nominais – uma análise semânticaPublication . Marques, RuiThis paper is concerned with the semantics of the portuguese phrases with the form o mínimo/máximo N (‘the minimum N’) and o mínimo/máximo de N (‘the minimum/maximum of N’). Some nouns may occur in both of these constructions, while others might occur in only one of them, and still other nouns might occur only if accompanied by a modal operator. The proposal is made that these facts can be straightforwardly explained by the hypothesis that the first and the second of these syntactic constructions have, respectively, an exten-sional and an intensional meaning, together with the fact that some nouns have the same denotation in any possible world, while others denote different sets of entities in different possible worlds.
- Subjunctive and Subject Obviation in PortuguesePublication . Marques, RuiSubject obviation refers to the impossibility of the subject of an embedded clause to be co-referent with the main clause’s subject. This is verified in complementation structures of some predicates that select the subjunctive, but not in those of other predicates. A semantic explanation is proposed, based on Giannakidou’s concept of veridicality, for why only some of the predicates that select the subjunctive mood trigger obviation.
- Sobre a semântica dos tempos do conjuntivoPublication . Marques, Rui
- Sobre alguns modalizadores de frase epistémicos e evidenciaisPublication . Marques, Rui
- On the meaning of some epistemic adverbs in PortuguesePublication . Marques, RuiThis chapter discusses the meaning of a group of Portuguese adverbs. Epistemic adverbs such as possibly or certainly seem to express some degree of belief that relates the speaker and the truth of the proposition under their scope. However, an analysis along these lines proves to be too simplistic. On one side, a classification of the adverbs on the basis of this parameter does not capture the differences and similarities between epistemic adverbs such as certamente (‘certainly’) and reportative adverbs such as alegadamente (‘allegedly’). On the other side, real data leads to question the intuitive assumption that these adverbs signal the degree of belief. An alternative hypothesis is discussed, according to which the function of these adverbs is to point to the amount and kind of evidence that the speaker relies on to state the proposition.