This paper investigates the interpretation of the modal particle bylo in Modern Russian. On the intuitive level, sentences in which this particle appears report events that do not proceed normally and fail to receive an expected continuation. For instance, the particle is appropriate in a context whereby an eventuality begins but fails to reach completion, is intended but fails to be realized, or reaches completion, but its result is annulled. The paper proposes an intensional analysis of the particle, making use (...) of the notion of inertia worlds, worlds in which events are not interrupted and reach their normal completion (Dowty, Word and meaning in Montague grammar, 1979 ). The particle signals that an event that takes place in the actual world is followed by an eventuality of a certain type in all of the corresponding inertia worlds but not in reality. The bylo construction is further compared to the progressive aspect, which has been argued to involve a statement about inertia worlds. It is shown that the two phenomena describe eventualities from different perspectives but are unified by their intensional flavor, as well as by pointing to a distinction between the actual world and the inertia ones. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between dynamic and truth conditional semantics for epistemic modals. It provides a generalization of a standard dynamic update semantics for modals. This new semantics derives a Kripke semantics for modals and a standard dynamic semantics for modals as special cases. The semantics allows for new characterizations of a variety of principles in modal logic, including the inconsistency of ‘p and might not p’. Finally, the semantics provides a construction procedure for transforming any truth conditional semantics (...) for modals into a dynamic semantics for modals with similar properties. (shrink)