'If' strings in English : a new syntactic and semantic analysis
| dc.contributor.author | Castro, Miguel A. de | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2017-11-17T00:42:20Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2017-11-17T00:42:20Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 1990 | |
| dc.date.issued | 1990 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2017-10-23T04:03:38Z | |
| dc.description.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. | en_AU |
| dc.format.extent | xiv, 223 p | |
| dc.identifier.other | b1770000 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1885/133828 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_AU |
| dc.subject.lcsh | English language Clauses | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | English language Sentences | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | English language Semantics | |
| dc.title | 'If' strings in English : a new syntactic and semantic analysis | en_AU |
| dc.type | Thesis (PhD) | en_AU |
| dcterms.valid | 1990 | en_AU |
| local.contributor.affiliation | Automated Reasoning Project & Department of Philosophy, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University | en_AU |
| local.description.notes | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Australian National University, 1990. This thesis has been made available through exception 200AB to the Copyright Act. | en_AU |
| local.identifier.doi | 10.25911/5d70f445696bb | |
| local.mintdoi | mint | |
| local.type.degree | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) | en_AU |
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