The Subjunctive in Modern Greek: Dividing the Labor Between Semantics and Pragmatics

This paper discusses the semantics and pragmatics of some types of na-main clauses in Modern Greek. First, I present the data and discuss earlier attempts to define the semantics of the na+verb construction. I argue that na-clauses have a univocal semantics and semantically encode that the state of affairs described by the proposition expressed is regarded as possible. Assuming this semantics, a principled account of the way in which na-main clauses are interpreted on particular occasions can be provided within an adequate pragmatic theory like relevance theory. In particular, I argue that the information semantically encoded by na contributes to the construction of a higher level explicature with a propositional attitude description carried by the utterance and that various interpretations of na-main clauses involve inferentially enriching the underdetermined semantic specification "possible world."