Approaching double fake tensed conditionals
Katrin Schulz
In this talk we will focus on a particular problem concerning the interpretation of tense in
conditionals: Fake Tense. Fake Tense refers to the observation that in English subjunctive
conditionals1 the Simple Past, and sometimes also the Past Perfect, appear not to be
interpreted as semantic past tense or past perfect. For illustration, in the antecedent
of the indicative conditional (1.a) the finite verb is marked for the Simple Past. As
expected, the antecedent refers to a past leaving of Peter. Example (1.b) is a simple
past subjunctive conditional (SP-C) with exactly the same antecedent, but now Peter’s
leaving has to take place in the future. The past perfect subjunctive conditional (1.c)
(PP-C) also refers to the future but has even two layers of past morphology. This raises
questions about the semantic function of the past tense markers in these sentences. This
talk will be focussing on examples like (1.c) were Simple Past as well as the Perfect
appear to be fake.
(1)
a.
b.
c.
If Peter left in time, he will be in Frankfurt this evening.
If Peter left in time, he would be in Frankfurt this evening.
If you had been in Paris next week, we could have met.
Two different lines of approach to fake tense can be distinguished in the literature: pastas-modal approaches (PaM) claim that the past tense markers receive in these contexts a
modal interpretation; past-as-past approaches (PaP) propose that the past still receives
a temporal interpretation, though it contributes in an unexpected way to the meaning of
the sentences. In this talk I will argue against a PaM treatment of the second layer of fake
past morphology in examples like (1.c). Instead, I will propose a PaP approach to the
Perfect in (1.c). This approach will build on an interventionist account of counterfactuals
using causal structural models ([1], [2]).
There is very little discussion of the second layer of fake past in conditionals like (1.c)
in the literature. An exception is the PaM approach of [6], which builds on [2]. [6] proposes that the past tense morphology in subjunctive conditionals carries a presupposition
of distance from the epistemic deictic center, as much as it presupposes distance from
the temporal deictic center in its temporal interpretation. Read as modal the Simple
Past marks that the described eventuality is at least unexpected according to the beliefs
of the speaker. This approach can be extended to the PP-Cs. A modal interpretation of
the double past in PP-Cs conveys that the expressed proposition is false. This accounts
for sentences like (1.c) for which counterfactuality is reported to be not cancellable.
This proposal is challenged by generic counterfactuals (If kangaroos had no tails, they
would topple over). I will present two empirical studies showing that there is a strong
preference to use SP-Cs to express these conditionals, even in case the counterfactuality
is common knowledge and relevant. Given the principle Maximize Presupposition, [6]
seems to predict that in such situations a PP-C should be preferred over a SP-C, since it
comes with the stronger presupposition that the conditional is counterfactual (not just
unexpected). If the observed preference of a SP form over a PP form would apply to
all counterfactuals, the approach could be defended by pointing out that the PP form is
more complex than a SP-C and, therefore, the principle Maximise presupposition doesn’t
apply. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Already in [3] it has been observed that
in certain contexts the PP form is preferred. If in the past it has already been decided
that the antecedent will not become true2 , then the speaker needs to use a PP-C. This
1
2
This holds also for many other languages.
In the examples of [3] the event described in the antecedent already happened in the past.
1
cannot be explained by the PaM approach to PP-Cs sketched above. I propose that we
should opt for a PaP approach, instead.
Most PaP-approaches adopt the idea that conditionals are modal construction. The
relevant modal base for subjunctive conditionals is generally taken to be the set of alternative futures for the actual world at some time t. According to PaP-approaches the
function of the Simple Past in subjunctive conditionals is to move the modal base to a
past time. As an approach to SP-Cs the approach is problematic exactly because of the
observation that for generic counterfactuals the SP form is preferred. Moving the modal
base back in time doesn’t make sense for these counterfactuals. However, for the same
reason a PaP approach to the perfect in PP-C could explain the observation that the PP
form is barely used for generic counterfactuals.
The proposal. I propose that we keep a PaM-approach for the Simple Past in subjunctive conditionals, but adopt a PaP-approach for the second layer of past tense markers
in PP-Cs. The proposal is is based on a interventionist approach to the meaning of
counterfactual conditionals ([1], [4], [5]). We add a causal network ([4]) to our model
to keep track of the relevant (causal) laws/generalisations. Conditional are evaluated
as follows: we first change the cause of events using an intervention. An intervention
is a manipulation of the world that forces the antecedent to be true. Then we use the
information on the laws to infer which changes follow from the intervention. Finally, we
check whether in the resulting (partial) world the consequent is true. We adopt here the
particular approach proposed in [1]. According to this approach (and contra to [4], [5])
interventions are only possible for chancy events.
Going back to the problem of fake Perfect in PP-Cs: I propose that the Perfect is
used to locate the intervention in the past, while in SP-Cs the intervention is located
at the present or in the future. I follow [6] in proposing that these restrictions on the
location of the intervention are presuppositional. This idea can be also spelled out in
terms of the modal approach to conditionals, but it uses a different modal base and
ordering source than the standard approach based on the historical accessibility relation.
This shift has a couple of advantages. Among other things, the approach can account
for the central asymmetries observed in [3] between SP-Cs and PP-Cs (time asymmetry
and presupposition asymmetry) without distinguishing two different evaluation times for
conditionals. But most importantly, it allows us to account for the Morgenbesser cases
like example (2), that are known to be problematic for PaP approaches.
(2)
A coin is going to be thrown and you have bet $5 on heads. Fortunately heads
comes up and you win. You say: If I had bet on tails I would have lost.
In an interventionist approach the outcome of the coin flip stays constant, because the
event is causally independent from the antecedent. The conditional comes out as true.
To sum up, combining a PaM approach to the Simple Past and a PaP approach to the
Perfect in PP-Cs allows us to account for the distribution of SP-Cs and PP-Cs in case of
generic counterfactuals. The switch to an interventionist perspective on the semantics of
conditionals helps us to improve on shortcomings of other PaP approaches. Finally, this
approach is able to account for the necessary counterfactuality of sentences like (1.c). As
stated above, the interventionist approach can be translated into a standard restrictor
approach. In the relevant ordering source interventions take place a close as possible to
the antecedent. If we combine this with the presupposition carried by the ”fake” Perfect,
we get that the closest possible intervention that made the antecedent true has been a
past intervention. From this it follows that the antecedent has to be counterfactual.
2
References:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
Hiddleston (2005). A Causal Theory of Counterfactuals. Nous 39(4).
Iatridou (2000). The grammatical ingredients of counterfactuality, Linguistic Inquiry,
31.
Ippolito (2013). Subjunctive conditionals: a linguistic analysis. MiT Press.
Pearl (2000). Causality. Cambridge University Press.
Pearl (2013). Structural Counterfactuals: A Brief Introduction. Cognitive Science,
37.
Schulz (2014). Fake Tense in conditional sentences. Natural Language Semantics, 22.
Appendix: Empirical results
Study 1 The first study is a corpus study using 10 articles published in the last 20 years on the subject
of counterpossible conditionals.3 The corpus was annotated manually for form: ‘sp’ for SP-Cs, ‘pp’ for
PP-Cs, ‘ind’ for indicative conditionals and ‘mix’ for cases in which antecedent and consequent differ in
form. The table below gives the results for those conditionals in the corpus that did not refer to the
past.
sp
counterfactuals
percentages
counterpossibles
percentages
total
175
147
sp
161
92%
133
90 %
pp
4
2%
5
3%
ind
5
3%
5
3%
pp
ind
mixed cases
3%
3%
2%
mix
5
3%
4
3%
92%
Figure 1: Results of the 1st study, the diagram only displays the results for the first row: counterfactuals
Study 2 The second study is an online study on generic counterfactuals (designed with Qualtrics, published on prolific.ac). Participants where asked to judge the naturalness of the SP-C form compared to
the PP-C form. The questionnaire consisted of 12 sample sentences plus 24 fillers, distracting the participants from the conditional form and the generic content of the target sentences. The 52 participants
could choose between the following answers: SP-C is the more natural form (SP-C), PP-C is the more
natural form (PP-C), both forms are equally natural (both), none of the two forms sounds natural for
the given example (none).
40
30
percentages
SP-C
66 %
PP-C
9%
both
19 %
none
7%
20
10
0
SP
PP
both
none
Figure 2: Results of the 2nd study
3
Counterpossible conditionals are conditionals with an antecedent that cannot possibly be true. A
typical example would be ”If Hobbes had succeeded in squaring the circle, ...”.
3