Chasing Hook: Quantified Indicative Conditionals

This chapter was written in 2013 and was posted in the Semantics Archive in January 2014. The preprint of the published version has been in the Semantics Archive since 2016. The Semantics Archive is an electronic preprint archive hosted by the Linguistics Society of America. https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/WU3ODIwZ/kratzer-chasing-hook.pdfThe chapter looks at indicative conditionals embedded under quantifiers, with a special emphasis on ‘one-case’, episodic, conditionals as in No query was answered if it came from a doubtful address. It agrees with earlier assessments that a complete conditional (with antecedent and consequent) is embedded under a quantifier in those constructions, but then proceeds to create a dilemma by showing that we can’t always find the right interpretation for that conditional. Contrary to earlier assessments, Stalnaker’s conditional won’t always do. The paper concludes that the embedded conditional in the sentence above is a material implication, but the if-clause also plays a pragmatic role in restricting the domain of the embedding quantifier. That an appeal to pragmatics should be necessary at all goes with Edgington’s verdict that “we do not have a satisfactory general account of sentences with conditional constituents.” One of the conclusions drawn at the end of the chapter is that the English modal will should be given a Stalnaker selection function analysis. The idea is implemented by attaching to will an accessibility function variable that receives its value from the context of use and can be dynamically updated by preceding if-clauses, as proposed in von Fintel (1994). The argument for a Stalnaker selection function analysis of will provided by the paper is that, together with the restrictor analysis of if -clauses, it yields the correct truth-conditions for will -conditionals (as opposed to episodic, \u27one case\u27, conditionals) embedded under quantifiers. The proposal that the English modal will should be given a Stalnaker selection function analysis has since been taken up and elaborated considerably in Cariani & Santorio\u27s (2018) paper on will in Mind, and is a central idea in Cariani\u27s (2021) book The Modal Future. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198712732.003.000