If the lights are on, this is an epistemic indicative conditional : a study on modality

Abstract

This dissertation aims to discuss current Kratzerian approaches on modality and a few of its related features while contextualizing them ontologically as well as illustrating them with the analysis of Brazilian Portuguese epistemic indicative conditionals. This work consists of three chapters arranged interdependently. The first chapter provides ontological foundations concerning language and its connections with thought, mind, evolution and the world. Possible worlds theory, as well as knowledge and belief are also adressed in this chapter. Modality is approached as a phenomenon of the mind that is expressed in natural language in many ways, one of them, conditionals, is the focus of the analysis of this work. Chapter two concerns the formal approaches to the semantic analysis of modality in natural language, following the framework proposed by Kratzer (1977, 1979, 1981, 1986, 1991, 2012) with added discussions concerning evidentiality, epistemic modals, context and temporal and aspectual relations. Chapter three discusses the notions adressed in the previous chapter concerning their application in the analysis of Brazilian Portuguese epistemic indicative conditionals. This work seeks to provide theoretical improvements to the analysis of modality in natural language, as well as to expand the formal linguistic analysis of modality in Brazilian Portuguese.