Jéssica at Sinn und Bedeutung 22 in Prague

"Future and Free Choice" at Univerzita Karlova.

September 14-16, Jéssica Mendes is at Charles University in Prague for the 22nd Sinn und Bedeutung conference, giving a talk titled "Future and Free Choice." The talk develops the proposal in her 888, which aims to explain why "It must rain" cannot be used to report that future rain is certain, when "It might rain" can be used to say that future rain is possible, and "Bo must go", that Bo's future departure is required. According to Jéssica, the pattern indicates that the future interpretation comes from a morpheme with the distribution of a free choice indefinite over time intervals, roughly "at some future time or other", with the contrast between epistemic and deontic must coming from a systematic difference in the scopes of these modals. Joining her at SuB will be fellow Marylanders Fabrizio Cariani, Paolo Santorio, and alum Alexis Wellwood *14, with a paper on "Positive gradable adjective ascriptions with states, not degrees," plus a solo poster from Paolo on "The modal perfective and actuality entailments."