Da Fan

This paper aims to unify two puzzles. One is the puzzle of Heim sequences: while many Sobel sequences can be felicitously uttered, their reverses, i.e. Heim sequences, often sound bad. The other puzzle is that true-true counterfactuals, i.e. counterfactuals with both true antecedents and true consequents, are invariably true on the standard Stalnaker-Lewis semantics, while some of them appear to be infelicitous to utter. True-true counterfactuals are first divided into two categories, which I call “unconnected” and “insufficient” true-trues. The two kinds, I argue, deserve distinct pragmatic accounts. Then, it is argued that the category of insufficient true-trues is a special case of Heim sequences, in the sense that whatever is responsible for the infelicity of Heim sequences should also account for the infelicity of insufficient true-trues. Evidence for this unification is that the (in)felicity of both insufficient true-trues and Heim sequences reacts in similar ways to a series of contextual variations. Given the unification, I review two existing pragmatic accounts of Heim sequences—Moss in Nouˆs 46:561–586, 2012 and Ippolito in Ling & Phil 43:633–671, 2020—and try to apply them to insufficient true-trues. As will be clear, both accounts solve the insufficient true-true puzzles to the same degree of success as they solve the puzzle of Heim sequences, and neither account is completely satisfactory. In comparison, Ippolito’s account is more promising, and I provide a modification of it, which is expected to be an improved solution to both puzzles.

Any counterfactual with a true antecedent and a true consequent is invariably predicted to be true by the standard Stalnaker–Lewis semantics. But many such true–true counterfactuals appear false to ordinary speakers, which is considered by many authors as evidence that the standard semantics should be revised. However, Walters and Williams prove that allowing true–true counterfactuals to be false would unacceptably invalidate some very plausible logical principles. The objective of this paper is to provide a pragmatic account of seemingly false true–true counterfactuals, which explains why such counterfactuals seem false to ordinary speakers while being true semantically. In particular, a pluralistic pragmatic account is pursued: I argue that some true–trues seem false because they conversationally implicate some falsehood, and some others seem false because the focus (intonation stress) involved in them invokes some pragmatic re‐interpretation that affects speakers' truth‐value judgments.

Contrastivism is the view that knowledge is a ternary relation between an agent, a content proposition, and a contrast, and it explains that a binary knowledge ascription sentence appears to be context-sensitive because different contexts can implicitly fill the contrast with different values. This view is purportedly supported by certain linguistic evidence. An objective of this paper is to argue that contrastivism is not empirically adequate, as there are examples that favor its contextualist cousin. Thereafter, I shall develop a contextualist account for the relevant linguistic data. The account consists of a contextualist semantics and some rules of pragmatics. The two parts combined show that contrastivism is neither sufficient nor necessary as a satisfactory theory of knowledge ascriptions.