Singularity and plurality of discourse reference to worlds

Abstract

The referential analysis of conditionals has recently been put forth as an alternative of the Kratzer-style restrictor analysis (Schein 2001, Schlenker 2004, among others). Under this analysis, conditional antecedents are definite descriptions of worlds/situations. This paper explores a widely accepted assumption of the referential analysis, namely that conditional antecedents refer to plural objects. I show that the singularity/plurality of conditional antecedents can correlate with whether the conditional expresses modal or adverbial quantification. I use this correlation to motivate an analysis where conditional antecedents are number-neutral by default, but can be forced to denote singular referents. This idea is formally implemented within the dynamic framework by Brasoveanu (2010).