Counterfactual mood in Czech, German, Norwegian, and Russian

Abstract

AbstractThe type of mood or tense marking that causes counterfactuality inferences—as figuring prominently, but far from exclusively, in counterfactual conditionals—has not yet received a comprehensive and compositional analysis. Focusing on four languages, the paper presents under-appreciated facts and a novel theory where the mood serves to activate alternatives to modal operators, particularly one: the identity operator, often giving rise to counterfactual implicatures.