Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale

Rivista | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
Fascicolo | 50 | 2016
Articolo | Subject Obviation as a Semantic Failure: a Preliminary Account

Subject Obviation as a Semantic Failure: a Preliminary Account

Abstract

Subject obviation in subjunctive clauses has drawn attention in the field of formal linguistics since the early eighties. Despite an abundant literature on the phenomenon, obviation still remains in many respects mysterious. This article explores a different approach to the phenomenon, whereby obviation can be accounted for by resorting to the notion of self-knowledge, as generally conceived in the field of philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Under the view proposed here, obviation is caused by a clash between the semantic characteristics of the attitude predicate and those of the embedded clause. Particularly, it is suggested that obviation obtains if and only if an embedded clause expresses self-knowledge.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Presentato: 12 Aprile 2016 | Accettato: 31 Agosto 2016 | Pubblicato 30 Settembre 2016 | Lingua: en

Keywords Self-knowledge • Subjunctive clauses • Obviation • Linguistics

Copyright © 2016 Francesco Costantini. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2499-1562/AnnOc-50-16-5


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