The observations

Let us take a closer look at the puzzle of the missing interpretation. If you look at the form of would conditionals and pay particular attention to the syntactic

tense and aspect markings of these sentences, then you see that the finite verb in antecedent as well as consequent is marked for the simple past.1 _{Similarly, would}

have conditionals show a simple past marking on the finite verb in antecedent and consequent followed by a syntactic perfect formed by have plus a past participle. A first outline of a syntactic structure for subjunctive conditionals respecting these observations, that also tries to stay as close as possible to surface structure, would appear as described in figure 6.1.2

@ @_@ @ @_@ HH HHH @ @_@ @ @_@ IF PAST p PAST WOLL q @ @_@ @ @_@ HH HHH @ @_@ @ @_@ @ @_@ @ @_@ IF PAST PERF p PAST WOLL PERF q

Figure 6.1: A simple syntactic analysis of would and would have conditionals Let us consider what predictions for the temporal properties of subjunctive conditionals we would make if we combined this structure with standard ap- proaches to the meaning of the simple past, the perfect and the modal WOLL. Standardly, the simple past is interpreted as localizing the evaluation time of the sentence it is attached to at some contextually given time point before the utterance time, while the perfect is interpreted as localizing the evaluation time of the phrase in its scope at some point in the past of the evaluation time of the perfect. We also need to say something about the temporal properties of the modal. It is often proposed that the evaluation time for the phrase in the scope of the modal is localized at or in the future of the evaluation time of the modal. Taking everything together, this means that under assumption of the structure described in figure 6.1, a conditional like (101) can be paraphrased as follows.3

1_{The position that would is syntactically the past form of will is held by many authors}

(Palmer 1986, Comrie 1985, Quirk et al. 1985). It is less clear, whether might is the past form of may, because might, in contrast to would, cannot occur in contexts where it means past time reference. However, in earlier stages of English, both modals where used frequently in past tense conetxts. I adopt the position that at least on the level of form both modals are marked for the simple past.

2_{The structure is decomposed to a level where the place at which the past tense and the}

perfect make their contribution in th elogical form becomes clear, but not beyond this level. The remaining sentence radicals are denoted by small letters.

3_{Depending on which theory for the interpretation of the simple past and the perfect it}

(101) If Peter took the plane, he would be in Frankfurt this evening. If at some contextual given point t in the past Peter took the plane, it follows that at some contextually given point t′ _{in the past it would be}

the case that at some time t′′_{≥ t}′ _{this evening Peter is in Frankfurt.}

This cannot lead to a correct description of the meaning of this conditional. The antecedent of a would conditional can never refer to the past, but always refers to the present or the future. That the interpretation of the consequent does not follow this description is less obvious. The predictions made for the evaluation time for the modal are difficult to confirm or falsify based on intuitions about the meaning of (101). But it is intuitively clear that the evaluation time for the phrase in scope of the modal cannot lie in the past. The approach sketched above, however, would predict that it should be possible to evaluate this phrase in the past – the only constraint so far is that this time does not lie before the past evaluation time of the modal. Thus, we see that the predictions of this standard approach to the meaning of the past tense in conditionals do not match the observed temporal properties. It rather looks as if, semantically, there is no past tense active in the antecedent and consequent of these conditionals.

Let us turn to would have conditionals now. Also in this case the meaning predicted by combining the surface structure given in figure 6.1 with the standard approach to the past tense and the perfect is not correct. According to such an approach a sentence like (102) would mean something like the following.

(102) If Peter had taken the plane, he would have been in Frankfurt this evening. If at some point t′

1 in the past of some contextually given past time t1

Peter had taken the plane, it follows that at some contextually given point t2 in the past it would be the case that at some point t′2 ≥ t2 the

perfect statement in scope of the modal is true, i.e. there is some time t′′

2 < t′2 this evening where Peter is in Frankfurt.

Let us focus on the antecedent, because there the problem is most transparent. While the antecedent of a would have conditional is often evaluated in the past, it does not refer to the past of some past time, as do standard past perfect constructions. Furthermore, it has been noticed by many authors that would have conditionals can also be evaluated in the future or at the present (see, for instance, Jespersen 1924, Dudman 1984, Leirbukt 1991). The following examples illustrate this possibility. The first one is due to Leirbukt (1991). He mentions a daily soap as his source. Together with the second sentence it exemplifies the possibility of would have conditionals to refer to the future. The last sentence shows that reference to the present is possible as well.

(103) a. I’m glad that you called. In a quarter of an hour I would have been gone.

b. If you had called in a quarter of an hour, I would have been gone. c. Unfortunately, Peter left us the other day. But if he had been here now,

he would have been terribly glad to see you.

Also for would have conditionals it looks as if the past tense is not interpreted as such. One even gets the impression that the same is true for the perfect as well. This misfit between what standard approaches to the simple past and the perfect predict and the actual temporal properties we observe for subjunctive conditionals – where their semantics seems to have no effect – is what we call the puzzle of the missing interpretation.

Before one can start to look for an explanation of this puzzle, it is important to realize that the observed mispredictions made are not only a result of the adopted meanings for the past and the perfect, but also the logical structure assumed for subjunctive conditionals. This suggests that we distinguish two ways to approach the puzzle of the missing interpretation. First, one could claim that the proposed syntactic structure that governs compositional semantic is false. Such a position may try to maintain the standard meaning for the past and the perfect, proposing that they contribute their meanings not in the way and at the place that would follow from the trees in figure 6.1 on page 162. We will call approaches that follow this line past-as-past approaches. A different option is to say that surface structure describes correctly the place where the tenses and the perfect contribute their meanings, but the meanings assumed by standard semantics for the past and the perfect are not correct – at least in the context of subjunctive conditionals. This is the strategy that most authors discussing the puzzle of the missing interpretation strategy follow. Approaches along this line will be called here past-as-modal accounts, because they often propose a modal meaning for the simple past (and sometimes also the perfect) in conditional contexts. In the following, we will discuss a number of proposals following either the past-as-past strategy or the past-as-modal strategy. We will discuss their respective potential, but also the problems they come with and thereby set the basis for the explanation of the puzzle of the missing interpretation that will be proposed in section 6.4.