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The Italian futuro as a non-biased epistemic necessity: a reply to Ippolito and Farkas

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Abstract

In a recent paper, Ippolito and Farkas (Linguist Philos, 45(4):943–984, 2022b) (I &F) question the premise that Italian future is epistemic necessity; in this brief response we want to show that there is no empirical motivation for abandoning it once we employ a more flexible framework of modality such as the one advanced in Giannakidou and Mari (Linguist Philos 41(6): 623–664, 2018) (G &M) which posits a ranking meta-evaluation in the modal structure that explains the empirical objections raised by I &F. We show that the core of the account in I &F shares the main ingredients with G &M and that, unlike what I &F propose, Italian future is not pure credence.

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Notes

  1. As in our previous work, we use capital letters for cross-linguistic expressions belonging to the grammatical class future (FUT), and use likewise upper case MUST and MIGHT for expressions of epistemic necessity and possibility respectively. We use italics to refer to specific expressions within a specific language, and English translations are in quotes.

  2. See more discussion in de Saussure and Morency (2011) and Mari (2016a).

  3. See earlier formulations in Giannakidou (1998, 1999) and Giannakidou (2013). The idea that epistemic modality contains a doxastic component is pretty standard also in Kratzer’s original analysis and in Portner (2009). A distinction between belief and knowledge is done only if it matters in a given context. Finally, lots of examples of MUST given in Lassiter (2016) are doxastic.

  4. See Giannakidou and Mari (2022) for specific discussion on the relation between (non)veridicality and (un)settledness.

  5. There are two exceptions both resulting in trivialization of modality: the actuality entailment of ability modals (although see Mari (2016b) for the claim that nonhomogeneity persists as a presupposition) and aleithic modality; Giannakidou and Mari (2016) distinguish empirically aleithic from epistemic must by noting that only the former can be focus.

  6. We are not claiming here that this tests holds for English will, which, as we have argued in Giannakidou and Mari (2018a) and Mari (2016a) is to be treated on a par with French future as featuring a ratificational component which is absent from futuro.

  7. Precursors of this idea are Baranzini and Mari (2019), Mari (2010, 2021).

  8. Source: https://www.comune.napoli.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/1425/UT/

  9. Notice I &F’s translation of FUT with would, we use here the future to remain faithful to the Italian version. The Italian correspondent of would is the conditional sarebbe, which is not used in (20-b).

  10. Their example in (7) is aleithic, thus irrelevant for epistemic MUST.

  11. Notice, incidentally, that guessing per se is not incompatible with MUST: I guess it must be narcolepsy is a fine sentence—though not something that you expect to hear from your doctor. Hence FUT and I guess MUST are equally odd in this context.

  12. The literature refers to these questions as conjectural, see discussion in Eckardt and Beltrama (2019).

  13. See also Kang and Yoon (2016) on reflective questions with the disjunctive particle INKA in Korean. As can be seen, reflection does not depend on the future.

  14. Instead, the subjunctive na must be used with isos; see Giannakidou (2012, 2016) for arguments that the Greek subjunctive in these contexts is a possibility modal.

  15. Yet as we noted FUT and possibility are not equivalent. Possibility modals do not have Ideal\(_\mathcal {S}\), and are in equilibrium, i.e., M(i) is partitioned between p and \(\lnot p\) worlds.

  16. If any, the only interpretation of (35-b) is temporal, and sounds a prediction from an omniscient being.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the two Linguistics and Philosophy reviewers as well as our editor Regine Eckardt for their careful reading of this paper and their constructive and most helpful comments. Alda Mari gratefully thanks ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog.

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  1. University of Chicago, Rosenwald 201A, Chicago, IL, USA

    Anastasia Giannakidou

  2. Institut Jean Nicod, ENS, 29 rue d’Ulm 75005, Paris, France

    Alda Mari

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  1. Anastasia Giannakidou
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Giannakidou, A., Mari, A. The Italian futuro as a non-biased epistemic necessity: a reply to Ippolito and Farkas. Linguist and Philos 46, 1269–1284 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-023-09383-4

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