1 Genericity: Interpretation and Uses II ENS Paris, June, 24th-25th, 2010 Workshop on Dispositions, Abilities and States Rethinking ability: ability as modality and ability as action Anastasia Giannakidou & Eleni Staraki University of Chicago {giannaki, estar}@uchicago.edu Goals of this talk • Show that in Greek we can distinguish empirically two kinds of ability attributions: ability-as-action; ability-as-modality. This distinction has a venerable tradition that goes back to Aristotle (on Interpretation), and was recently revived in Mari and Martin (2007, 2009). • The former is veridical (in the sense of Giannakidou 1998, i.e. it gives rise to the actuality entailment), but the latter is a nonveridical modality. • Argue against the aspectual analyses of Hacquard (2009), Bhatt (1999) and Pinon 2003, by offering new evidence from Greek showing that veridicality (i.e. actuality entailment) emerges with CAN also with imperfective aspect, as well as present tense, contrary to the predictions of both theories. • The difference between action and modality CAN is reflected on the choice of complement: Action CAN takes a paratactic complement introduced by conjunction ke—the ability reading is lost in this type of complement. The paratactic complement has an accomplishment meaning, and implicative verbs like ‘kataferno’ manage are also compatible with it. • We take the paratactic complement to suggest a more complex structure of the action-CAN akin to Dowty’s [φ CAUSE [BECOME ψ]]. The effect of past or perfective is simply the one we find with accomplishments. Ability-CAN is a modal verb. Implications: • Our analysis implies a richer meaning of ability (e.g. as opposed to mere possibility) the components of which can be differentiated in the syntax. • We are not dealing with lexical ambiguity, but with meaning shift, which is often expressed in Greek with the complementizer choice (which coincides with mood choice, Giannakidou 1998, 2009; for Romance languages, see Quer 1998, 2001). • This meaning shift yields an action CAN. Unlike in Bhatt, the effect is not brought about by aspect, but it is an inherent component of the meaning of CAN.