German subjectively veridical sicher sein ‘be certain’ can embed ob-clauses in negative contexts, while subjectively veridical glauben ‘believe’ and nonveridical möglich sein ‘be possible’ cannot. The Logical Form of F isn’t certain if M is in Rome is regarded as the negated disjunction of two sentences ¬(cf σ ∨ cf ¬σ) or ¬cf σ ∧ ¬cf ¬σ. Be certain can have this LF because ¬cf σ and ¬cf ¬σ are compatible and nonveridical. Believe excludes this LF because ¬bf σ and ¬bf ¬σ are incompatible in a question-under-discussion context. It follows from this incompatibility and from the incompatibility of bf σ and bf ¬σ that bf ¬σ and ¬bf σ are equivalent. Therefore believe cannot be nonveridical. Be possible doesn’t allow the LF either. Similar to believe, ¬pf σ and ¬pf ¬σ are incompatible. But unlike believe, pf σ and pf ¬σ are compatible.
CITATION STYLE
Schwabe, K. (2019). Misfits: On Unexpected German Ob-Predicates. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) (Vol. 11456 LNCS, pp. 253–274). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-59565-7_13
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.