<i>Vouloir</i> in the landscape of volition and desire

Summary The paper explores a variety of bouletic attitudes in French, which it studies in the light of the distinction between mere-desire and action-oriented volition. It shows that avoir envie is not rational and not action-oriented, while espérer and vouloir are rational with only vouloir being action-oriented. Vouloir in the conditional fills the fourth possibility, featuring irrationality and action-orientedness. Several semantic tests substantiate these notions. The analysis distinguishes between experiential, rational and actionable modal bases for bouletic attitudes and derives the facts observed from properties of the modal bases that are lexically triggered and their entailments. Along the way, the paper contributes some new pieces to the discussion surrounding the effects of the COND (Conditionnel) on voilitional and epistemics.