TELEOLOGICAL MODALITY IN GRAMMAR AND DISCOURSE

Abstract

There seems to be something intrinsically special about the pursuit of goals compared to that of knowledge and regulations. When one is asked about how to achieve a goal, it's often sufficient to list one way, as opposed to all the ways to fulfill the goal. However, when it comes to asking about what one is allowed to do, for instance, it seems that one should be maximally informative by giving all true answers. This dissertation investigates teleological (i.e., goal-oriented) modality that's used to express possibilities and necessities given particular goals. In it, I examine two constructions in which teleological modality gives rise to unexpected readings that seem to be absent with any other modal flavors. The first one is so called "anankastic conditionals"; the second one is dubbed "sufficiency modal constructions". What is so special about teleological modality? Does it require a separate grammatical treatment from other modality? I argue that in both environments, the apparent restriction to teleological modality is not a grammatical constraint, but an indirect consequence of the fact that we conceptualize teleological necessity differently than necessity claims of other flavors. Specifically, I argue that teleological necessity claims are compatible with multiple possibilities to achieve a goal, while deontic and epistemic necessities state the absolute.