What’s the winning number for next week’s Mega Millions? If Julie knew the number, Leah would know the number. But you know that neither person holds this precious secret — and not just because Mega Millions hasn’t been drawn yet. You know because you understand the implication of the sentence, even though it is free of any “not,” “no,” or other form of negation. How you understand sentences like this — how you make what linguists call a “counterfactual inference” — is the fruit of a 30-year professional partnership between Kai…
