Abstract for Sabine Iatridou's talk

How to say "ought" in foreign: The morphological composition and meaning of certain necessity modals [co-authored with Kai von Fintel]
Sabine Iatridou (MIT)
May 11, 2006 (Thursday)
4:15 PM - ; Room 6417, the CUNY Graduate Center

In a variety of languages (French, Spanish, Dutch, Greek, Croatian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and others), what is used to express the modal "ought to" is a necessity modal augmented by counterfactual morphology. We investigate this modal concept, the reason for its morphological make-up in the languages above, and what it can teach us about modality in general.