We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Hurford Conditionals.
- Authors
Mandelkern, Matthew; Romoli, Jacopo
- Abstract
Compare the following conditionals: Bad #If John is not in Paris, he is in France. Good If John is in France, he is not in Paris. Good sounds entirely natural, whereas Bad sounds quite strange. This contrast is puzzling, because Bad and Good have the same structure at a certain level of logical abstraction: (1) If p+, then p. We argue that existing theories of informational oddness do not distinguish between Bad and Good. We do not have an account of the divergence in judgments about the two, but we think this is a fascinating puzzle which we pose here in the hope others will be able to solve it.
- Subjects
CONDITIONALS (Grammar); SENTENCES (Grammar); LOGIC; LINGUISTICS; LANGUAGE &; languages
- Publication
Journal of Semantics, 2018, Vol 35, Issue 2, p357
- ISSN
0167-5133
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/jos/ffx022