| This dissertation examines the semantics of English and Japanese modal expressions. Japanese modal expressions are morpho-syntactically more complex than their English counterparts. The present work focuses on a variety of morpho-syntatic encodings of modality, and examines the logical consequences. Three different types of modal expressions are analyzed in this dissertation: counterfactual modals (Chapter 2), sufficiency modal constructions (Chapter 3), and deontic modal expressions (Chapter 4).;The present dissertation shows that (i) some "logical" expressions such as a past tense morpheme and a scalar element affect the interpretation of modal expressions according to their syntactic positions, and that (ii) some English and Japanese modal expressions produce a similar concept through different logical structures.;Chapter 2 examines Japanese counterfactual conditionals and modals. I propose that the past tense morpheme contributes to producing the meaning of counterfactuality in two different ways, depending on its syntactic position. Chapter 3 investigates the semantics of sufficiency modal constructions in English and Japanese. For English, I argue that Krasikova and Zhechev's (2005, 2006) analysis is the most plausible. I then go on to examine its Japanese counterpart, proposing a scope-based account of the scalar additive particle -sae 'even'. Chapter 4 discusses deontic modal expressions. Throughout Chapters 3 and 4, I show that Japanese sufficiency modal constructions and deontic modal expressions have a complex morphology, which consists of an if-clause and the predicate ii 'good'. I submit a semantic analysis which is faithful to the morpho-syntax of these constructions, maintaining that they convey that a relevant situation described by the if clause has a counterpart whose maximal extension (i.e. the world) is "good" in terms of conversational backgrounds. The proposed analysis is compatible with monotonic properties of these modal expressions, and explains the issue of "free choice permission.". |
