Alexander Williams
Department of Linguistics
University of Maryland

Must Haves (Joint work with Valentine Hacquard and Dan Goodhue)

This is an exploratory talk about epistemic uses of “have to” and how they differ from those of “must”. The difference is important semantically because analyses of epistemic modality have been based on the bad behavior of the latter, not shared by the former. It is also interesting pragmatically, due to their very different interactions with focus structure. The work is a collaboration between me, Valentine Hacquard and Dan Goodhue.