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This chapter builds the formal framework of the authors’ theory by studying modalization, specifically epistemic modality. The chapter centers around the notions of veridicality, nonveridicality, antiveridicality (which coincides with negation), veridical commitment, epistemic weakening, and defines veridical and nonveridical states. The new concept of modal bias is defined for necessity modals such as MUST. Veridical modal bases are characterized by homogeneity, but nonveridical bases are partitioned. Bias is due to a meta-evaluation function that ranks the prejacent as a better possibility than its negation. Modal adverbs express this function, and the structure is called modal spread. Bias gives the illusion of veridical commitment, but a biased modal base is still nonveridical, i.e., it does not entail p. The presence of a nonveridical epistemic modal base is a presupposition of all modals, and the authors call this the Nonveridicality Axiom. If a lexical entry obeys the Axiom, it will be to license the subjunctive. The authors give licensing conditions for subjunctive and indicative, and treat them as polarity items.

This chapter offers a detailed analysis of the mood choice with doxastic (i.e., belief verbs) attitude verbs in Greek and Italian. The authors distinguish between Solipsistic and Suppositional Belief, as well as mood flexibility with Italian doxastic verbs. The authors use the label “doxastic” to refer to verbs that express attitudes of belief, thought, consciousness, consideration, understanding, perception opinion, dream, imagination, fiction (dream, imagine), memory, verbs of personal taste. These verbs are also sometimes referred to as “cognitive”. There are two main patterns: (a) doxastic verbs that are solipsistic (solipsistic doxastics), and strictly select the indicative, which is the pattern observed in Greek and French doxastic verbs; and (b) doxastic verbs have mood flexibility, with repercussions in meaning, as is illustrated in Italian and Portuguese. The authors call these suppositional doxastics. This chapter also develops the authors’ notion of epistemic and doxastic commitment of an individual anchor to the truth of p. Suppositional doxastic verbs obey the Nonveridicality Axiom of Modals. The chapter also discusses the pragmatics of mood morphemes and proposes that they contribute anchoring conditions to the common ground, or a private model of evaluation. The relation between veridicality and informativity is also addressed.

This chapter explains why the subjunctive/infinitive is chosen with ability modals (ability modality) and implicative verbs, instead of a finite clause when a language makes it available. The selection of the subjunctive is expected with ability modals since, as modals, they obey the Nonveridicality Axiom. The authors propose a new analysis of ability modality by treating the modal ABLE as the dispositional counterpart of epistemic MUST, entailing action to p only in the Ideal worlds. For implicatives, the authors offer an analysis of MANAGE as an aspectual operator presupposing that a volitional agent i tried to bring about p, without, in fact, entailing actualization of p. This presupposition alone suffices to license the subjunctive, which, as we argued, is triggered by a nonveridical presupposition. This account relies on the affinity between managing and trying, and the nonveridicality of TRY-predicates. Under certain circumstances, ability modals an actuality entailment, which the authors argue depends not on perfective aspect but on past tense.

This chapter addresses the diversity of the subjunctive while trying establish a unified core crosslingustically. Giannakidou proposes that optional subjunctive contributes an evaluation. The evaluation in all cases consists in the creation of a nonveridical modal space. Three kinds of evaluation are distinguished. The first is epistemic weakening of the proposition where the subjunctive is added, in which case we talk about epistemic subjunctive, which the author analyzes as a possibility modal. Secondly, we have the emotive subjunctive following emotive verbs in some Romance languages. In this case, the subjunctive is claimed to involve nonveridical partitioning between p and non p worlds as a presupposition. The third case of evaluation is observed in dual mood patterns, and the subjunctive there is a preference ordering such that p worlds are preferred over non-p worlds. The evaluative subjunctive, in all cases, creates a weakening, i.e. a nonveridical modal space. There is one underlying property of all contexts that enable the subjunctive: they are all nonveridical. Nonveridical domains are modal domains partitioned into p and non-p worlds, and the partition is typically the result of an ordering. Nonveridical domains are epistemically weaker spaces. The indicative, on the other hand, reflects veridicality.

This chapter concerns the role that syntax plays in licensing NPIs (negative polarity items). Scholars have argued for a semantic approach to characterizing the unifying properties of the wide range of licensors, such as negation, disjunction, interrogation, and subjunctives, licensors that all share the semantic notion of nonveridicality. The author extends this approach to Arabic NPIs in this chapter but also argues that syntax is heavily involved in licensing these items. In particular, the role of the categorial status, syntactic configurations, and syntactic processes such as movement in licensing NPIs are discussed. The author argues for a unified analysis with a minimal set of basic syntactic operations such as Merge and Move, and licensing configurations of c-command and Spec-Head (specifier-head). The analysis captures the true nature of perceived mutual exclusivity between NPIs and the enclitic negative marker as an epiphenomenon of the availability of multiple loci for negation.

In this chapter the theory of nonveridicality is presented, along with the relevant evidence from Standard Modern Greek regarding negator choice. It is argued that negator choice in Modern Greek must be understood as a polarity phenomenon: NEG2 μη‎(ν‎) /mi(n)/ is a polarity item licensed in nonveridical contexts. For this reason NEG2 cooccurs with subjunctives, questions and other nonveridical elements. Furthermore, crosslinguistic extensions are identified of the idea that negator choice depends on nonveridicality regarding a number of indoeuropean (Vedic, Hittite, Armenian, Albanian), as well as typologically and genetically unrelated languages, such as Zulu and Algonquian.

This chapter examines sentential negation during the Hellenistic Koine stage of Greek based on non-atticizing texts mainly from the first century BC to the second century AD. Structural developments of the language are presented that support a treatment for nonveridicality as encoded in a syntactic projection, independent from morphological mood and independent from complementizer position. A treatment of the licensing of polarity items is proposed—among which is the Greek NEG2—in terms of syntactic agreement. Nonveridical operators are taken to introduce the Nonveridicality Phrase (NONVERP) in syntax, encoding the observation that nonveridical environments tend to be morphologically marked in ways that can be distinct from mood marking. Furthermore, in the Koine Greek stage, NEG2 gets more specialized in its lexical negation function at the expense of NEG1, while Negative Concord structures get significantly reduced, a change that was linked to Greek word-order particulars.