Online research in philosophy

In the past few decades, research in the psychology of emotion has benefited greatly from being located in a firm evolutionary framework. It is argued that research in the psychology of mood might attain equal rigour by taking a similar approach. An evolutionary framework for mood research would be based on evolutionary psychology, the main thesis of which is the Massive Modularity Hypothesis. Translating the folk-psychological language of moods into the scientific language of modules might clarify many theoretical questions and provide a sound basis for empirical research. It is argued that such an evolutionary approach would reveal mood to be a much more heterogeneous category than emotion. While the six basic emotions identified by Paul Ekman are probably each subserved by a single module, prototypical moods such as elation, depression, anxiety and irritability are likely to be subserved by a wide range of modules. An evolutionary approach to mood might therefore lead to the elimination of the concept of mood from scientific psychology altogether.

Of interest to any grammarian, the book discusses evidentiality, and the cognitive and sociolinguistic consequences of evidentiality in a language.

Typologically distant languages may conceptualize similar meanings in fundamentally different ways. The tenseless language Kalaallisut (Eskimo-Aleut: Greenland) builds on its conception of futurity as a real attitude to a prospect (Bittner 2005) to express counterfactuals as real attitudes to unrealized prospects. In this paper the resulting FACTUAL COUNTERFACTUALS are described and analyzed in a formally precise framework for directly compositional incremental update (building on Bittner 2007 and Dekker 1994). Their counterfactual meaning is shown to be an automatic consequence of independently motivated analyses of four key ingredients: fact-oriented mood (Stalnaker 1978, Bittner 2008), attitudes de se (Lewis 1979, Heim 1992, Bittner 2005, 2007), conditionals (Lewis 1973, 1981, Kratzer 1981), and remote modality (Stone 1997, Stone and Hardt 1999).

In English, reference to time in discourse involves a grammatical system of tense markers interpreted as temporal anaphors (Reichenbach 1947, Partee 1973, Webber 1988, a.o.). Recently, it has been argued that reference to hypothetical worlds in conditionals involves a parallel grammatical system of modal axiliaries interpreted as modal anaphors (Stone 1997, Stone and Hardt 1999, Brasoveanu 2007, a.o.). Based on evidence from Kalaallisut (Eskaleut: Greenland), this paper argues that temporal and modal discourse anaphora can be just as precise in a language that does not have either anaphoric tenses or anaphoric modals. Bittner (2005) shows that future uses of the English modals will and would have many translation equivalents in Kalaallisut. Most of these are derivational suffixes for prospectoriented attitudinal states, e.g., expectation (-ssa, -jumaar), desire (-ssa, -rusuk, -juma), intent (-niar, -jumaar), need (-tariaqar), anxiety (-qina), considering the prospect possible (-sinnaa), impossible (-navianngit), etc. Instead of grammatical tense, the language has a grammatical system of mood inflections that distinguish currently verifiable facts (in the declarative, interrogative, or factual mood) from current prospects (in the imperative, optative, or hypothetical mood). In this system futurity is a species of a fact. For example, the English future Ole will win translates into (1)2, which asserts (-pu ‘DECT’) that there is a real and current state of expectation (-ssa ‘exp>’) that Ann (topic, ) will win. The Kalaallisut attitudinal predicate -ssa ‘-exp>’ is impersonal, so the attitude holder is unspecified.

The meaning of a declarative sentence and that of an interrogative sentence differ in their aspect of mood. A semantics of mood has to account for the differences in meaning between these sentences, and it also has to explain that sentences in different moods may have a common core. The meaning of the declarative mood is to be explained not in terms of actual force (contra Dummett), but in terms of potential force. The meaning of the declarative sentence (including its mood) is called the assertion-candidate, which is explained by what one must know in order to be entitled to utter the declarative with assertive force. Both a cognitive notion (knowledge) and a pragmatic notion (assertive force) are thus part of the explanation of the assertion-candidate. Davidson's criticism that such a theory is in need of an account of the distinction between standard and non-standard uses of the declarative is answered: without counter-indications an utterance of a declarative sentence is understood as having assertive force. The meaning of an interrogative sentence, the question-candidate, and that of the other sentence types can ultimately be explained in terms of their specific relations to the assertion-candidate. Martin-Löf's constructive type theory is used to show the philosophical relevance of a semantics of mood. The constructivist notion of proposition needs to be embedded in a theory of the assertion-candidate, which fulfills the offices of being the meaning of the declarative sentence, the content of judgement and assertion and the bearer of epistemic truth.

The meaning of a declarative sentence and that of an interrogative sentence differ in their aspect of mood. A semantics of mood has to account for the differences in meaning between these sentences, and it also has to explain that sentences in different moods may have a common core. The meaning of the declarative mood is to be explained not in terms of actual force (contra Dummett), but in terms of potential force. The meaning of the declarative sentence (including its mood) is called the assertion-candidate, which is explained by what one must know in order to be entitled to utter the declarative with assertive force. Both a cognitive notion (knowledge) and a pragmatic notion (assertive force) are thus part of the explanation of the assertion-candidate. Davidson’s criticism that such a theory is in need of an account of the distinction between standard and non-standard uses of the declarative is answered: without counter-indications an utterance of a declarative sentence is understood as having assertive force. The meaning of an interrogative sentence, the question-candidate, and that of the other sentence types can ultimately be explained in terms of their specific relations to the assertion-candidate. Martin-Löf’s constructive type theory is used to show the philosophical relevance of a semantics of mood. The constructivist notion of proposition needs to be embedded in a theory of the assertion-candidate, which fulfils the offices of being the meaning of the declarative sentence, the content of judgement and assertion and the bearer of epistemic truth.

How are non-declarative sentences understood? How do they differ semantically from their declarative counterparts? Answers to these questions once made direct appeal to the notion of illocutionary force. When they proved unsatisfactory, the fault was diagnosed as a failure to distinguish properly between mood and force. For some years now, efforts have been under way to develop a satisfactory account of the semantics of mood. In this paper, we consider the current achievements and future prospects of the mood-based semantic programme.

Natural languages exhibit a great variety of grammatical paradigms. For instance, in English verbs are grammatically marked for tense, whereas in the tenseless Eskimo-Aleut language Kalaallisut they are marked for illocutionary mood. Although time is a universal dimension of the human experience and speaking is part of that experience, some languages encode reference to time without any grammatical tense morphology, or reference to speech acts without any illocutionary mood morphology. Nevertheless, different grammatical systems are semantically parallel in certain respects. Specifically, I propose that English tenses form a temporal centering system, which monitors and updates topic times, whereas Kalaallisut moods form a modal centering system, which monitors and updates modal discourse referents. To formalize these centering parallels I define a dynamic logic that represents not only changing information but also changing focus of attention in discourse (Update with Centering, formalizing Grosz et al 1995). Different languages can be translated into this typed logic by directly compositional universal rules of Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) The resulting centering theory of tense and illocutionary mood draws semantic parallels across different grammatical systems. The centering generalizations span the extremes of the typological spectrum, so they are likely to be universal. In addition, the theory accounts for the translation equivalence of tense and illocutionary mood in a given utterance context. Following Stalnaker (1978) I assume that the very act of speaking up has a ‘commonplace effect’ on the context. It focuses attention on the speech act and thereby introduces default modal and temporal topics. These universal defaults complement language-specific grammars, e.g. English tenses and Kalaallisut moods. In a given utterance context the universal discourse-initial defaults plus language-specific grammatical marking may add up to the same truth conditions..

Natural languages exhibit a great variety of verbal paradigms. For instance, in English main verbs are grammatically marked for tense, whereas in the tenseless Eskimo-Aleut language Kalaallisut they are marked for illocutionary mood. Although time is a universal dimension of the human experience and speaking is part of that experience, some languages encode discourse reference to time without any grammatical tense morphology (see e.g. Bittner 2005), or reference to speech acts without any illocutionary mood morphology.