Divergent Approximators

Abstract

We often mark uncertainty in our utterances with words like maybe, but when we mark uncertainty on numerals, some surprising effects, including approximation, result. This paper describes these unexpected effects and provides a possible world semantics analysis. This analysis will in turn inform our view on other scalar modifiers, like approximately. Additionally, it will help identify a complication for so-called slack regulators (e.g. loosely speaking, exactly), pointing to the unexplored importance of modality in differentiating approximators. I will propose that some approximators, like maybe, have modal components and behave differently from non-modal approximators, like approximately, most noticeably in their ability to accommodate contextual information.