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Part of
Romance Linguistics 2013: Selected papers from the 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), New York, 17-19 April, 2013
Edited by Christina Tortora, Marcel den Dikken, Ignacio L. Montoya and Teresa O'Neill
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 9] 2016
► pp. 59–78

On capacities and their epistemic extensions

| Instituto de Lengua, Literatura y Antropología (ILLA-CSIC)
| Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Campus Catalunya

The purpose of this paper is twofold; first, we aim to provide a series of tests that identify Spanish ser capaz ‘be capable’ (henceforth SC) as an ambiguous modal, just like English must or can. Specifically, we observe that SC has not only an abilitative flavor, but also an epistemic one. Second, we want to propose an analysis for SC that can account for this ambiguity and that is in accordance with current theories of modality such as Cinque (1999), Kratzer (1981, 1991), and Hacquard (2009, 2010). In a nutshell, we argue that SC can occupy two different positions, a low one below AspP, which corresponds to the abilitative interpretation, and a high one, above AspP, which translates as the epistemic reading. Concerning the semantics, we claim that SC denotes a slight possibility; i.e., the propositional argument is true in at least one world, but it is always true in the non-ordinary worlds.

Published online: 3 February 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.9.04cas
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Cited by 1 other publications

Mari, Alda
2016. Actuality Entailments: When the Modality is in the Presupposition. In Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics. Celebrating 20 Years of LACL (1996–2016) [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 10054], ► pp. 191 ff. DOI logo

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