Concessive Conditionals Research Articles

Unconditionally conditional

Abstract The purpose of this study is to assess from a corpus-based discourse-pragmatic perspective certain claims made in the literature concerning English wh- concessive conditional constructions (e.g. Whoever/No matter who comes to the party, it will be fun), namely that these utterance-types correlate with interrogative semantics, scalarity and potential modality. By means of an extensive investigation of corpus data these claims are shown to be largely unsupported by attested usage. Based on Dancygier and Sweetser’s classification of conditional constructions, it is found that potential modality is paradigmatic only of content-level concessive conditionals, and not of the epistemic, speech-act or metalinguistic varieties. Contrary to claims in the literature, scalarity is demonstrated to not be typical of wh- concessive conditionals. The lack of scalarity in most wh- concessive conditionals is argued to cast into doubt the category label “concessive conditional” applied to these constructions in a substantial part of the literature and to favour an alternative designation such as “irrelevance conditional.” The empirical data further reveals that wh- concessive conditionals practically never involve pure ignorance, and this is argued to be problematic on the discourse-pragmatic level for the claim that they have interrogative semantics.

Logical Form, Conditionals, Pseudo-Conditionals

This paper raises some questions about the formalization of sentences containing ‘if’ or similar expressions. In particular, it focuses on three kinds of sentences that resemble conditionals in some respects but exhibit distinctive logical features that deserve separate consideration: whether-or-not sentences, biscuit conditionals, and concessive conditionals. As will be suggested, the examples discussed show in different ways that an adequate formalization of a sentence must take into account the content expressed by the sentence. This upshot is arguably what one should expect on the view that logical form is determined by truth conditions.

An Axiomatic System for Concessive Conditionals

According to the analysis of concessive conditionals suggested by Crupi and Iacona, a concessive conditional p↪q\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$p{{\\,\\mathrm{\\hookrightarrow }\\,}}q$$\\end{document} is adequately formalized as a conjunction of conditionals. This paper presents a sound and complete axiomatic system for concessive conditionals so understood. The soundness and completeness proofs that will be provided rely on a method that has been employed by Raidl, Iacona, and Crupi to prove the soundness and completeness of an analogous system for evidential conditionals.

Emerging into your family of constructions

AbstractStarting from the term “family of constructions”, the present article investigates lexical and syntactic variation in a subtype of German concessive conditionals which is marked bywas(‘what’) in combination with expressions of irrelevance likeegal(‘no matter’). 12,894 examples from the DeReKo corpus (Deutsches Referenzkorpus) are analysed manually for seven variables. Both the quantitative and the qualitative results suggest that combinations ofwaswith an expression of irrelevance, or “[IRRwas]” for short, form part of a recently entrenched constructional schema [IRRw-] of concessive-conditional subordinators which are emerging into the family of concessive-conditional constructions in present-day German.

The encoding of irrelevance in discourse: tanto between concession and justification

he paper sets out to investigate the linguistic expression of irrelevance in discourse, by focusing on the functions and uses of the marker tanto in present-day Italian. The marker encodes the irrelevance of a given condition, thus conveying a concessive meaning not distant from the value expressed by concessive conditionals or ‘no matter’ predicates. In the construction [p, tanto q], the marker tanto conveys the fact that q holds in any case, namely whether p, non-p, or any value of p is the case. After discussing how the notion of irrelevance has been treated in the literature on conditionals, concessives and predicates of indifference, we will discuss the results of a corpus-based study on spoken Italian, identifying and annotating all the occurrences of irrelevance-tanto. We will show that irrelevance may be expressed by a number of different discourse patterns, explicitly mentioning the irrelevant proposition, the null-effect and the motivation for irrelevance, or omitting one or more of these components. It will be argued that the cases in which speakers simply refer to the irrelevance of a given proposition are rare in our sample, whereas it is more frequent that they also mention the motivation underlying irrelevance, justifying their indifference and thus crucially acting at the intersubjective level. We will show, indeed, that tanto may also be used alone as a discourse marker encoding the speaker’s attitude of indifference: in these cases, tanto is pronounced with suspensive intonation, and subsumes under its semantics the adversative, justificative, and indiscriminative value, activating meanings that speakers are supposed to share.

Additive concessive conditionals

This paper develops an account of additive concessive conditionals, ACCs, such as the German Wir gehen wandern,auch wennes regnet ‘We will go walking even (lit. also) if it rains’. Concessivity is here understood as an essentially modal notion: the actual world does not conform to contextual assumptions, expectations or priorities (Müller 2016). I adopt a modal analysis of conditionals which interprets them relative to an ordering source (Kratzer, 1986). With ACCs, the concessive interpretation arises from the contradiction between the asserted conditional “if p then q” and the conditional perfection (CP) “if p then not q” of the conditional presupposed by the additive “if not p then q” (Pasch, 1995). This contradiction triggers the inference that the actual world does not conform to the ordering constraints that restrict the CP of the additive presupposition. This account predicts that additive conditionals should not receive a concessive interpretation in contexts that do not support conditional perfection. This prediction is borne out.

Concessive conditionals beyond Europe

Abstract The present study is concerned with complex sentences known as concessive conditionals from a functional-typological perspective. It examines the coding strategies used in the protasis of the three subtypes of concessive conditionals – viz. scalar, alternative, and universal concessive conditionals – in a global sample of 17 languages, thus complementing a previous study of their formal properties in European languages (Haspelmath & König 1998). The results include some coding strategies which are unattested in European languages and suggest that Haspelmath & König’s division between languages which mark the three subtypes uniformly and languages which mark them differentially is too simplistic, there being at least four overall marking patterns rather than two. Although these results are only preliminary in nature, they do look promising for future research, which should be based on a larger and more strictly stratified sample.

On the Logical Form of Concessive Conditionals

On the Logical Form of Concessive Conditionals

O pochodzeniu pol. ile (stpol. jele), czyli gdy etymologia spotyka składnię

Relative pronouns i- / je- and restrictive particle -le became conflated in concessive conditionals (e.g. No matter how much financial support we get, we will go ahead with our project). This syntactic environment explains, why Old Polish ile functioned in the oldest Polish texts as indefinite pronoun ‘no matter how much’ (so-called free choice determiner). The present paper aims to show, in which way the historical syntax may enrich our knowledge on etymology and language changes.

Concessive conditionals as a family of constructions

AbstractThis squib sketches an approach to concessive conditionals (CCs) from the perspective of Radical Construction Grammar (Croft 2001). It brings earlier functional-typological work on CCs to bear on language-particular constructionist analyses of CCs, using the notions of ‘family (of constructions)’ and ‘prototype’ as the bridge. After suggesting how these notions can be applied to CCs under a functional-typological approach, the structure of the CC sub-constructicon in German is discussed, and directions for future research are offered to round the squib off.

Meaning-preserving contraposition of natural language conditionals

It is argued that contraposition is valid for a class of natural language conditionals, if some modifications are allowed to preserve the meaning of the original conditional. In many cases, implicit temporal indices must be considered, making a change in verb tense necessary. A suitable contrapositive for implicative counterfactual conditionals can also usually be found. In some cases, the addition of certain words is necessary to preserve meaning that is present in the original sentence and would be lost or changed in the contrapositive without them. A distinction is made between adding new meaning and adding new words to preserve existing meaning. For concessive conditionals and relevance conditionals, however, no valid contrapositive can be found. They do not belong to the class of contraposable conditionals, which can be independently defined. Difficult cases are also discussed in which the contradictory of the consequent semantically entails the truth of the antecedent. In such cases the content of the antecedent is implicit in the meaning of the consequent. Contraposition becomes possible if what is implicit in the original consequent is made explicit in the contrapositive antecedent.

Concessive Conditionals Without Even if and Nonconcessive Conditionals with Even if

This paper investigates whether even if A, B is pragmatically polysemic, so that a nonconcessive conditional may have even if, and whether concessive conditionals, pragmatically defined, can fail to have even if or a non-temporal still. Different paraphrases are used to help elucidate pragmatic meanings. A theory of the pragmatic meanings of concessive and implicative conditionals is presented. The semantic meaning of even if and the question of whether concessive conditionals imply the truth of their consequents are also discussed.

Alguns marcadors d'oposició en <i>Diccionari per a ociosos</i> de Joan Fuster i en les seves traduccions

Summary: This paper analyzes several markers of opposition or contrast in the essay Diccionari per a ociosos (Dictionary for the idle) by Joan Fuster and in its translations to Spanish, English, Italian and French. It adopts a contrastive stylistic perspective that takes into account the genre of this book and studies the discursive construction of the author’s ethos. The paper examines firstly the main concessive constructions (including concessive conditionals) and connectives contained in the essay, contrasting them with the choices made by translators. Later, it includes other oppositive/contrastive discourse markers within the texts examined. Furthermore, it characterizes the degree of grammaticalization reached by these markers in each language. Keywords: Concessive connectives, opposition discourse markers, grammaticalization, translation, Joan Fuster

Conditional constructions in African languages

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue of Studies in African Linguistics devoted to conditional constructions in African languages. I first describe the motivation for this volume and the common terminological conventions used in the papers, before discussing some of the more influential attempts to categorize conditional constructions together with some of the functions of conditional constructions. I then present an overview of conditional constructions in African languages, noting the various kinds of conditional meanings that are distinguished grammatically in different languages, and types of isomorphism between conditional constructions and other categories. I conclude with a note on concessive conditionals.

A Compositional Semantics for ‘Even If’ Conditionals

This paper presents the first possible world semantics for concessive conditionals (i.e., even if A, C conditionals) constructed in a compositional way. First, the meaning of if is formalized through a semantics that builds on the proposal given by Stalnaker [1968]. A major difference from Stalnaker’s approach is that irrelevant conditionals (i.e., conditionals where the antecedent and the consequent have no connection) are false in this new setting. Second, the meaning of even is analyzed through a formal semantics based on the notion of scale. This analysis overcomes the problems arising in standard approaches, in which even is analyzed with the help of pragmatic presuppositions. Finally, the two particles are combined in order to provide a formal analysis of even if. This theory predicts the major phenomena concerning the behavior of concessive conditionals and without any call to pragmatic explanations. More generally, this approach creates the possibility of a compositional analysis of other conditionals such as if then or only if forms.

Focus, scales, and concessive conditionals in German

Based on examples from spoken talk-in-interaction, this paper deals with German auch/selbst/sogar wenn constructions. It aims to show that two auch/selbst/sogar wenn patterns have to be distinguished. The first pattern – auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional sufficiency – is characterized by a free and compositional relationship between the focus particle (i.e., auch, selbst, or sogar), a regular conditional wenn-clause, and the matrix clause.The second pattern – auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional insufficiency – is only partially compositional: it is characterized by a syntactic and semantic fusion of the focus particle and wenn into a complex complementizer with concessive characteristics. The second pattern has often been discussed under the names “concessive/irrelevance conditional” or “unconditional”.Moreover, it will be shown that auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional insufficiency can be explained in terms of a lexicalized inference foregrounded by regular conditional wenn-clauses preceded by scalar additive focus particles. This argument provides a reasonable diachronic explanation for the synchronic similarities and differences between auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional sufficiency and auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional insufficiency.

The relevance effect and conditionals

More than a decade of research has found strong evidence for P(if A, then C)=P(C|A) (“the Equation”). We argue, however, that this hypothesis provides an overly simplified picture due to its inability to account for relevance. We manipulated relevance in the evaluation of the probability and acceptability of indicative conditionals and found that relevance moderates the effect of P(C|A). This corroborates the Default and Penalty Hypothesis put forward in this paper. Finally, the probability and acceptability of concessive conditionals (“Even if A, then still C”) were investigated and it was found that the Equation provides a better account of concessive conditionals than of indicatives across relevance manipulations.

Concessive conditionals in Turkish

Concessive conditionals in Turkish

Acerca de la expresión de la condicionalidad y de la concesividad en judeoespañol moderno escrito

Conditionality and concessivity are two linguistic categories that are closely related. So far, they have hardly been studied in Judeo-Spanish. This article helps closing this research gap. As its main objective, the paper offers a synthesis of the linguistic mechanisms of conditional and concessive expression in Sephardic texts from 1880 to 1930. The considered linguistic mechanisms do not only include syntactic aspects but also semantic, pragmatic and contextual ones. Next to the prototypical conditional and concessive clauses, two further, peripheral categories will be presented: the pseudo-conditionals and the concessive conditionals. For the history of Judeo-Spanish, the mentioned decades are characterized by processes of expanding and modernizing the language. This development is primarily influenced by the contact with French and Italian and can not only be observed in the lexicon but also in syntactic structures such as the conditional and concessive clauses.

영어의 두 가지 양보조건문과 even의 의미에 대한 함의

영어의 두 가지 양보조건문과 even의 의미에 대한 함의