Interpreting conditionals: Time, knowledge, and causation

Abstract

The paper seeks to characterize prototypical conditionality and to show how less central interpretations are arrived at. As a category, conditionals are defined with respect to two parameters: 1. (i) the presence of if, which signals non-assertiveness of the assumption in its scope, and 2. (ii) the syntactic frame if p, then q, which accounts for there being a semantic or pragmatic relation between p and q, such that q cannot be asserted without a prior assumption of p. Within this broad formula, conditionals can express more than one type of unassertability and several kinds of relations between p and q. The analysis below focuses on English conditionals, in which both these aspects of interpretation are signaled through verb forms used in both clauses; in particular, what the verb forms are claimed to reveal (apart from temporal reference) is the speaker's epistemic stance and the cognitive domain in which the relation between p and q holds. Thus the verb forms provide a basis on which a new classification of English conditionals is offered. The resulting distinctions seem to be applicable also to other languages, although not all of the verb form contrasts may be marked parallelly to English.