Causal dependence in actuality inferences: enough and too predicates as a case study
A range of complement-taking predicates give rise to surprising actuality inferences, in which a modally-embedded complement event is understood non-modally, as taking place in the evaluation world. I argue that actuality inferences can be explained---and unified across predicate classes---on an approach in which the modality of participating predicates is analyzed in causal terms. This talk focuses on an illuminating case study: enough and too predicates.
Hacquard (2005) observes that, like the ability modals at the heart of the puzzle (Bhatt 1999), enough/too predicates have aspect-sensitive actuality inferences. Under imperfective marking, French enough predicates like (1a) are compatible with the non-actualization of their complements; their perfective counterparts (as in 1b) show the complement entailment pattern of implicative verbs like French réussir ('succeed', 'manage'; 2).
(1) a. Juno était assez rapide pour gagner la course, mais elle n'a pas gagné.
Juno was-IMPF fast enough to win the race, but she did not win.
b. Juno a été assez rapide pour gagner la course, #mais elle n'a pas gagné.
Juno was-PFV fast enough to win the race, #but she did not win.
(2) Juno { réussissait / a réussi } à gagner la course, #mais elle n'a pas gagné.
Juno { managed-IMPF / managed-PFV } to win the race, #but she did not win.
Despite the contrast in (1)-(2), I argue that enough/too inferences are---semantically speaking---instances of implicativity. I build on a causal account of implicative lexical semantics (Nadathur 2016, 2019) to show that enough/too actuality inferences arise just in case the compositional interaction between grammatical aspect, modal flavour, and the enough/too matrix adjective reproduces the semantic structure of an implicative: that is, where the matrix adjective denotes an actionable property which is causally involved in realizing the enough/too complement, and the perfective aspect induces an eventive interpretation of the matrix assertion. Insofar as the implicative analysis explains the aspect-sensitivity of enough/too inferences, I suggest that it naturally extends to ability modals' actuality inferences, when coupled with a causal approach to ability.