Invariantist ‘might’ and modal meaning change
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Yanovich, Igor. “Invariantist ‘might’ and Modal Meaning Change.”
Linguist and Philos 36, no. 2 (April 2013): 175–180.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10988-013-9133-5
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Invariantist ‘might’ and modal meaning change
Igor Yanovich
May 13, 2013
Abstract
Invariantism proposed by [Braun, 2013] aims to maintain full identity of semantic
content between all uses of ‘might’. I invoke well-known facts regarding diachronic
change in meanings of modals to argue that invariantism commits us to implausible
duplication of familiar processes of lexical semantic change on the level of “lexical
pragmatics”, with no obvious payoff.
[Braun, 2013] proposes an invariantist theory of ‘might’, which analyzes the literal semantic
content of ‘might’ as extremely weak: according to Braun, ‘might p’ is semantically true iff p
is possible on any possible notion of possibility. Those notions include epistemic possibility,
metaphysical possibility, deontic possibility, and so forth. Under this semantics, ‘might p’
will be true for practically every imaginable p in practically every imaginable context: for
example, if p is metaphysically impossible, but somebody doesn’t know that, ‘might p’ would
still be true on the literal meaning. Obviously, speakers usually use ‘might p’ statements
to convey something much stronger. Braun argues that it is because in addition to literally
conveying (locuting, in Braun’s terms, which I accept for the purposes of this paper) a very
weak proposition by uttering ‘might p’, speakers also express (in Braun’s terms, assert) a
much stronger one. Thus Mrs. Hudson uttering Holmes might be in Paris would normally
assert by that utterance a claim much stronger than the weak literal meaning of the sentence
— for instance, the assertion may be “It is compatible with Mrs. Hudson’s knowledge that
Holmes is in Paris”. [Braun, 2013]’s invariantism is supposed to apply not only to ‘might’,
but to many, or perhaps all, modal words (Braun explicitly mentions ‘must’, ‘possible’ and
‘necessary’).
Invariationism may seem a crazy theory, but it is not. Once we consider sentences like
I graded a million exams yesterday, it becomes apparent that the proposition the speaker
intends to assert may be plausibly taken to be quite different from the one literally expressed
by the uttered sentence. Thus there is no reason to reject the invariantist explanation out
of hand. I refer the reader to [Braun, 2013] for a fuller justification.
What I argue in this note is that despite being a reasonable theory, invariantism commits
us to a quite implausible duplication of familiar mechanisms of semantic diachronic change
1
on the level of pragmatics. The short form of the argument is as follows: once we accept an
invariantist semantics for ‘might’, we are forced to accept it for all modals, because today’s
semantic distribution of ‘might’ is a historical accident; once we do that, all modals (with
the same modal force) become literally synonymous, and the burden of accounting for their
distributional differences has to be shifted to “lexical pragmatics”; as the semantic properties
of modals change, such changes have to be analyzed as changes in this “lexical pragmatics”;
and finally, as modals have both non-modal ancestors and non-modal descendants, we
have to conclude that meaning change first needs to jump from lexical semantics to “lexical
pragmatics” once a word acquires modal meanings, and then back again to lexical semantics
when a modal becomes a post-modal particle or morpheme. The only way to avoid those
two jumps seems to be to say that all words in the language have the same literal meaning,
and it is the “lexical pragmatics” that takes care of all their distributional differences.
*
In many respects, invariantism is close to the familiar contextualism regarding modals.
Under both types of theories, the context determines what the speaker intends to convey
by a ‘might’-claim. Where the two disagree is on what level the context’s influence applies.
Consider 1, cited from [Braun, 2013].
(1) Carla might have run three miles yesterday.
Suppose Alice uttered 1 intending to assert that for all she knows, Carla ran three miles
(an epistemic reading), and Beth uttered the same 1 knowing full well that Carla didn’t
run three miles yesterday, but intending to state that at some point yesterday it was metaphysically possible for Carla to do so (a metaphysical reading). A contextualist would
say that the context determines whether 1 features an epistemic or a metaphysical use of
‘might’, so that the semantic content of 1 would depend on the context. Braun, being an
invariantist, says that the semantic content of the sentence is the same in both utterances,
though the propositions asserted by Alice and Beth differ. For an invariantist, “ ‘might’ is
not context-sensitive” ([Braun, 2013, p. 2]), and whether the speaker intended a metaphysical or an epistemic interpretation is determined with the help of the context on the level
of pragmatics.1
1
[Braun, 2013] discusses the relevant issues mostly using different instances of epistemic ‘might’, but
the distinction between contextualism and invariantism in that domain is much smaller. Braun assumes
that a contextualist theory has to ascribe different semantic content to different instances of epistemic
‘might’. That is not true, as [MacFarlane, 2009] discusses. For example, a contextualist may analyze the
content of (epistemic) ‘might’ as “The argument proposition of ‘might’ is compatible with the relevant
body of knowledge in the context”, for all contexts. Under this version of contextualism, the truth value
(extension) of any ‘might p’ expression may, of course, vary across contexts, but its semantic content
always remains the same: it expresses a relation between the argument proposition and the relevant body
of knowledge. MacFarlane calls such a position non-indexical contextualism. The contextualist proposal of
2
It is a synchronic fact of Present-Day English that different modals with the same modal
force (e.g., possibility modals ‘might’, ‘may’, ‘can’) are associated with different ranges
of so-called modal flavors. A ‘might’-claim can be used to assert an epistemic or metaphysical possibility, but it cannot be used to convey permission (as in May/Can I go to
the bathroom? ), ability (as in Rob can only swim 60 meters), or, say, a “desirable possibility”/wish (as in May all your dreams come true! ). There are in principle two ways to
explain those facts for an invariantist. First, one can say that it is only ‘might’ that is
not context-sensitive, while the other modals are. Then the pragmatic mechanisms which
generate stronger propositions from the very weak literal semantic content of ‘might’ may
be designed so as to derive only metaphysical and epistemic assertions. Second, the invariantist can say that there is a number of different pragmatic mechanisms responsible for the
derivation of stronger meanings: e.g., one mechanism for deriving epistemic assertions, another for ability ones, and so forth. Those mechanisms would then be indexed to particular
modal words, so that, for example, the mechanism for deriving ability assertions may be
indexed to ‘can’, but not to ‘may’ or ‘might’. We can call those lexically-indexed pragmatic
mechanisms a part of the “lexical pragmatics” of the modal.2
Once we take into account diachronic facts, the first invariantist explanation sketched
above is immediately falsified. It is not just that modals express different ranges of
modal flavors synchronically: the range expressed by a particular modal changes over time
(cf. [Bybee et al., 1994], [van der Auwera and Plungian, 1998] for cross-linguistic surveys).
For instance, several centuries ago ‘can’ was not used as a permission modal (e.g., the Oxford English Dictionary only records such uses from the late 19th century). As another
example, ‘may’ cannot express ability or circumstantial possibility in Present-Day English,
but those modal flavors were predominant for it in Old English. The modal still exhibited
ability uses as late as in the 15th century, cf. 2.
(2) From the Paston letters, year 1452 :
I am sory I may wrythe no bettyr at þis tyme, but I trvst xe wyl be pacient.
[Yanovich, 2013] is an example of a full-fledged contextualist theory of this form.
The difference between non-indexical contextualism and invariantism in the realm of epistemic modality
is not in whether they take its semantic content to be invariant across contexts (both of them do), but in
the kind of semantic content they ascribe to the modal: invariantism takes it to be much weaker. That
contrast between the two types of theories becomes more apparent when we compare several modal flavors.
2
Note that by itself, the very existence of lexically indexed pragmatic mechanisms is not problematic,
cf. [Horn and Bayer, 1984]. For example, as [Searle, 1975] observes, (i) can implicate the request in (iii),
but the literally synonymous (ii) cannot. In this case the possibility to implicate a request by a question
about ability is indexed to questions with ‘can’, and not indexed to those with ‘able’.
(i)
Can you close the door?
(ii)
Are you able to close the door?
(iii)
Close the door.
3
‘I am sorry that I cannot write better at this time, but I hope that you will be
patient.’
As the range of modal flavors of a particular modal changes with time, it is wrong to overfit
the general pragmatic principles deriving the stronger meanings to the modern distribution
of a single modal like ‘might’. Thus only the second path remains open for an invariantist:
pragmatic mechanisms deriving different strengthened assertions need to be indexed to
particular words.
Under this explanation, all possibility modals would share the same literal meaning of
“weak possibility”, in Braun’s sense of the term. All the differences between their actual
usage would be derived from their word-specific pragmatics. Furthermore, historical change
would affect that word-specific pragmatics of the modals, leaving their semantics completely
invariant.
As the relevant pragmatic mechanisms have to be tied to particular lexical items, it is fair
to say that the range of mechanisms indexed to a word constitutes a part of its content. The
invariantist thus avoids saying that the association with particular modal flavors is a part
of the semantic content of ‘might’, but is still forced to admit that this same association is
a part of its word-specific pragmatics. This seems to me an unjustified duplication of levels
of content.
I see no independent benefit of such duplication, and an obvious disadvantage. I will again
illustrate with a diachronic example. It is well known in historical linguistics that modal
words develop from non-modal ones, and sometimes develop into “post-modal” items such
as tense markers etc. For example, ought developed from a lexical verb meaning “to own”,
and did not yet have modal uses in Old English (see [Nordlinger and Traugott, 1997]).
Similarly, can in Old English meant “to know” rather than “to be able” (see [Plank, 1984,
pp. 323-4]). Furthermore, it is not uncommon for a modal word to retain both modal and
non-modal uses for some time. In fact, both for ought and for can such coexistence of
modal and non-modal uses continued for quite a while, after which those lexical items split
into pairs of a modal with impoverished modal-verb morphology and a lexical verb with
regular morphology.3
An invariantist thus has to stipulate a non-trivial shift in the process of historical change:
before a would-be modal word acquires its first modal uses, it is subject to the regular
change of semantic content, proceeding in a gradual manner. However, as soon as that word
starts to convey modal meanings, we need to say that it abruptly becomes able to express
the almost trivial weak-possibility meaning. Further historical change within the modal
domain only concerns the word-specific pragmatics of the modal. But then when a modal
3
In the case of ‘ought’, the lexical verb still survives as ‘owe’; in the case of ‘can’, the lexical verb died
out, but the noun ‘cunning’ derived from it still exists (initially ‘cunning’ meant “(practical) knowledge”).
4
acquires any post-modal uses (e.g., as a tense marker, subordination marker, conditional
clause marker), an opposite shift needs to be posited: suddenly we shift back to familiar
changes in lexical semantics. I am not aware of any indication that historical meaning
change within the modal domain is different from historical change in other domains.
In fact, if we compare what an invariantist is forced to say about modals with what is known
or at least hypothesized about how semantics and pragmatics interact in diachronic change,
matters become even worse: the shift to “lexical pragmatics” that invariantism has to
stipulate seems to be in the opposite direction from the actual progression of events. It is not
uncommon for lexically indexed pragmatic mechanisms to become a part of the semantics
with time: cf. [Horn and Bayer, 1984]’s observation about My dog just went to the bathroom
on the kitchen floor, where the semantic content of go to the bathroom is what has earlier
been conveyed only as an implicature. Furthermore, some explanatory accounts of historical
meaning change in modals rely on turning pragmatic properties of particular uses of modals
into a part of their semantic content, cf. [Traugott and Dasher, 2002]. Such developments
from (lexicalized) pragmatic properties to semantic properties make sense conceptually: first
we have general pragmatic mechanisms computing additional meanings; gradually those
meanings may get conventionalized, becoming indexed to particular words or constructions;
finally, such conventions of usage may turn into conventions of meaning. Invariantism, in
contrast to that, has to go from conventions of meaning to conventions of usage when
pre-modals acquire modal meanings, with the simultaneous radical impoverishment of the
conventions of meaning associated with a given word.
While the problems just described do not immediately falsify invariantism, they increase the
explanatory burden on it. To justify the back-and-forth switches between semantic changes
and word-specific pragmatic changes, the benefit of maintaining the identity of semantic
content across all possible modal uses should better be significant. It is not obvious to
me that it is. For example, applying Braun’s reasoning to 3, 4 and 5, we derive that if
Mrs. Hudson overhears Lestrade and Mycroft in 3 and 4 (on the relevant readings) and
says 5, then she said something true. But this is not a judgement that speakers of English
seem to have.
(3) Lestrade: “Holmes can swim across the English Channel”
(=“Holmes has the physical ability to do so”)
(4) Mycroft: “Holmes may swim across the English Channel”
(=“Holmes is permitted to do so, there is no law prohibiting such crossing”)
(5) Lestrade and Mycroft said that Holmes might swim across the English Channel.
Let me sum up the argument I laid out. (A) The range of modal flavors that ‘might’ can
express in Present-Day English is a historical accident: that range was subject to diachronic
change. The same is true for any other modal. (B) If an invariantist posits identity of
5
semantic content for all uses of one particular modal (e.g., ‘might’), from (A) we derive that
such semantic identity has to be posited for all modals (with the same force). (C) Having
posited semantic identity for all modals, an invariantist is forced to derive the differences
in their actual usage within the pragmatics. That requires indexing various pragmatic
mechanisms of modal strengthening to individual words, creating “lexical pragmatics”. (D)
From (C) and the well-known facts about the trajectories of modal meaning change, we
have to conclude that when a non-modal word acquires modal uses (which happened to
many, if not all, of today’s modals), its semantics abruptly suffers a severe impoverishment,
resulting in Braun’s “weak possibility” meaning, while the lexical pragmatics is enormously
enriched so as to account for all the peculiarities of the actual distribution. When a modal
develops into a post-modal, a reverse shift needs to happen. (E) There is no independent
evidence for the existence of such shifts. If anything, we should expect conventionalization
of lexically-indexed pragmatics into the semantic content, not the other way round, as
invariantism has to assume for the case when a non-modal turns into a modal. (G) The
only payoff we get is treating all modals (with the same modal force) as having identical
semantic content. It is not obvious that this “payoff” is a good thing at all, given the
judgements about 3-5.
To conclude, it is not that invariantism is an option a priori not worth exploring. In the
cases that [Braun, 2013] discusses, it makes reasonable predictions. But once we consider
the facts about modal meaning change, invariantism forces us to commit to a number of
fairly implausible consequences, with unclear benefits.
References
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[MacFarlane, 2009] MacFarlane, J. (2009). Nonindexical contextualism. Synthese, 166:231–
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[Nordlinger and Traugott, 1997] Nordlinger, R. and Traugott, E. C. (1997). Scope and the
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