'If' strings in English : a new syntactic and semantic analysis
Date
1990
Authors
Castro, Miguel A. de
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Abstract
Present Day English if is, on the one hand, a nonassertive (interrogative)
marker; on the other, a 'conditional' marker. If suffers from semantic
schizophrenia.
This thesis tries to lend support to the conjecture that if is always a
nonassertive marker. If correct, we shall not only have a new semantic
and syntactic analysis of 'conditional' Sentences but we shall also have
cured if of its long-standing schizophrenia. The conjecture does seem to .
be justified both on systematic and historic grounds.
Coordinators describe special kinds of relations. Adverbial Subordinate
Clauses describe special kinds of entities. Present Day English if
does not describe a special kind of relation called 'conditional'. Nor do if
Clauses describe a special kind of entities called 'conditions'. That is, if is
not a Coordinator like and, or and but or an adverbial Subordinator like
when and where. If structures describe any kind of entity in almost any
kind of relation. What are traditionally called 'conditionals' are Sentences
where the event or proposition described by the if Clause is in a causal or
logical relation to another event or proposition. Most logical properties of
'conditionals' are properties of the relation, not of if.
So, what does if signal? If signals that the entity described by the
Clause it heads is possible (as opposed to being actual). More exactly,
the speaker, at the time of the utterance, believes that there is or may be
someone who does not take the entity described by her/him to be actual.
If is, then, a scope and a speech-act marker, like perhaps and not.
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