Epistemic stance without epistemic modals: the case of the presumptive future
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper deals with the non-temporal use of the future in Italian knownas ‘epistemic’ or ‘presumptive’ (PF) in declaratives and interrogatives. We firstdistinguish PF from epistemic necessity and possibility, as well as from weaknecessity modals, providing in the process the main empirical challenges PF raises.We then propose and justify a semantic account that treats PF as a special normalitymodal that involves a subjective likelihood component. Since in our account theprejacent (the proposition in the scope of the modal) is at issue, the use of PF triggersthe implicature that the speaker is not in a position to appeal to what she knows inorder to support her commitment to the prejacent. This, we claim, is the source ofthe intuition that PF is often used to offer a “guess” relative to the question underdiscussion (QUD).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".