This paper investigates a unified semantic treatment of the variation in the interpretation arising from would-conditional constructions within Kratzer’s (1991) framework of modality. According to Kratzer’s framework, the modal base and the ordering source are two important parameters that are involved in disambiguating modalized expressions. However, this paper argues that the ordering sources, rather than the modal base, play a crucial role in disambiguating the different interpretations of would-conditionals. Establishing different ordering sources for the different interpretations can resolve the ambiguity of wouldconditionals. In conjunction with this, this paper proposes a unified semantic treatment of would-conditionals with a change of the ordering sources. On the basis of this, this paper shows that the variation in the interpretation can be analyzed in a uniform way by making would-conditionals quantify over different possible worlds, depending on which interpretation is preferable. We can account for how they quantify over different worlds by positing the different ordering sources, but not the modal base.

• Mean-Young Song(Dongguk University)