Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The External Syntax of Conditional Clauses

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Conditionals

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition ((PSPLC))

  • 171 Accesses

Abstract

The chapter looks at the typology of conditional clauses against the background of the wider typology of adverbial clauses, focusing on their external syntax. Clauses introduced by the conjunction if display (at least) three readings: (i) an event conditional (1a) expresses a condition on the realization of the eventuality encoded in the associated clause, (ii) a factual conditional (Iatridou in Topics in Conditionals. MIT, 1991: 58–96) (1b) introduces a background assumption which serves as the basis for the contextualization of the proposition encoded in the associated clause, (iii) a speech-event conditional (1c) encodes a condition on the realization of the speech event.

Manuela Schönenberger’s research was funded by SNSF grant 188933.

This work was first presented by Liliane Haegeman at the CNRS summer school Conditionals in Paris—Logic, Linguistics and Psychology (ÉCOLE THÉMATIQUE—CNRS) on June 4, 2019. We thank the organizers of the summer school for their invitation and the audience for their comments. Special thanks are due to Andrew Radford and Andrew Weir for help with the English data, to Anne Breitbarth for her comments on a prefinal version of the paper and to two reviewers for this volume who gave extensive comments on an earlier version. Of course, none of them can be held responsible for the way these comments have been interpreted and used.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Various terms are used to refer to the three types of conditionals. What we call factual conditionals have also been labelled pragmatic conditionals (Haegeman 1984b), premise-conditionals (Haegeman 2003), relevance conditionals (Iatridou 1991), factual P-conditionals (Declerck 2000), conditional assertions (Kearns 2006). Speech-event conditionals are also referred to as biscuit conditionals (Austin 1961), for discussion of biscuit conditionals see a.o. Ebert et al. (2008).

  2. 2.

    One subset of conditional clauses, those referred to as event conditionals, also function as clausal arguments. In (i) the bracketed conditional clause is the complement of the preposition for:

    1. (i)

      exactly what it says it is perfect for [if1 you need some cash in your blizzard wallet or you want to give a gift card to someone for holiday or bday].

    (https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1W5EO8HSSX2CW?ASIN=B012JMS4W2)

    We will not go into this pattern here, though it is obviously of independent interest, in particular because to the best of our knowledge, factual if-conditionals cannot function as arguments.

  3. 3.

    We turn to the speech-event related reading corresponding to (1c) in Sect. 4.1.

  4. 4.

    From now on we will use the term ‘concessive’, though closer study of the semantics of while2-clauses might reveal the relative appropriateness of the three labels.

  5. 5.

    We added indeed in (10a) and (10b) to ensure the factual reading of the conditional clause.

  6. 6.

    Observe that in a cartographic view (cf. Cinque and Rizzi [2008] for an introduction), in which syntactic structure closely matches semantic interpretation, the height of attachment of the conditional clauses correlates with a semantic distinction, a point that will become clearer in Sect. 3.2. So the constraint on coordination of ‘likes’ is both semantic and syntactic.

  7. 7.

    In clefted if1-clauses the addition of only is obligatory, a point which we won’t go into here.

  8. 8.

    A radical alternative to this approach taken in Declerck and Reed (2001) is to deny that the distinction between central and peripheral adverbial clauses is syntactic:

    • a subordinate clause is a syntactically dependent clause. Such questions as the scope of negation, focusing, modality, etc.; in the head clause are immaterial to this, as they pertain, not to syntactic, but to semantic integration (Declerck and Reed 2001: 37f.).

    Given that we endorse a view according to which the various patterns discussed in Sect. 2—i.e. scope, temporal subordination, focus, etc.—are syntactically encoded, this viewpoint is not pursued.

  9. 9.

    Andrew Radford (p.c.) confirms that it is hard to get a probably reading for the deleted VP in (23f).

  10. 10.

    Krifka’s (2017, to appear) functional layer JP, adopted by Frey (2018, 2019, 2020), could be reinterpreted as a ‘telescoped’ variant of Cinque’s (1999) topmost four high modal projections: MoodPspeech act, MoodPevaluative, MoodPevidential and ModPepistemic. Cinque’s hierarchy is replicated in (i).

    (i) MoodPspeech act > MoodPevaluative > MoodPevidential > ModP epistemic > TP (Past > TP (Future) > MoodPirrealis > ModPalethic > AspPhabitual > AspPrepetitive > AspPfrequentative > ModPvolitional > AspPcelerative > TP(Anterior) > AspPterminative > AspPcontinuative > AspPretrospective > AspPproximative > AspPdurative > AspPgeneric/progressive > AspPprospective > ModPobligation > ModPpermission/ability > AspPcompletive > VoiceP > AspPcelerative > AspPrepetitive > AspPfrequentative (Cinque 2004: 133, his (3)).

    Further research will have to shed light on the question as to what extent the four distinct levels postulated by Cinque (1999) could or should be correlated to specific peripheral adverbial clauses such as, for instance, factual conditionals, concessive while-clauses, rationale since2/as2/vermits-clauses, etc. For proposals the interested reader is referred to Endo and Haegeman (2019), who propose a general mechanism for the insertion of adverbial clauses in relation to their internal syntax, and Charnavel (2020) for a discussion of French rationale puisque (‘since’) clauses as modifiers of Cinque’s MoodPevidential.

  11. 11.

    For examples from English in relation to resumptive then with conditional clauses (cf. Sect. 4.3.2), we refer the reader to Dancygier and Sweetser (1997: 128f.).

  12. 12.

    It might be objected that the if2-clause in (47b) is not echoic in any obvious way. One could perhaps argue that (47b) constitutes a reply to an implicit or explicit question asking whether the speaker remembers the date of publication.

References

  • Austin, J.L. 1961/1970. Ifs and cans. In J.O. Urmson and G.J. Warnock (eds.), Philosophical Papers, 153–180. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Second edition (1970), 205–232.

    Google Scholar 

  • Auwera, Johan van der. 1986. Conditionals and speech acts. In Elisabeth A. Traugott, Alice ter Meulen, Judy Snitzer Reilly and Charles A. Ferguson (eds.), On Conditionals, 197–214. Cambridge: CUP.

    Google Scholar 

  • Axel, Katrin and Angelika Wöllstein. 2009. German verb-first conditionals as unintegrated clauses. A case study in converging synchronic and diachronic evidence. In Susanne Winkler and Sam Featherston (eds.), The Fruits of Empirical Linguistics, II, 1–37. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Besten, Hans den. 1977/1983/1989. On the interaction of root transformations and lexical deletive rules. In Werner Abraham (ed.), On the Formal Syntax of Westgermania, 47–131. Benjamin: Amsterdam. Reprinted in Hans den Besten 1989, Studies in Westgermanic syntax. Doctoral dissertation, Katholieke Universiteit Brabant. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biasio, Marco and Enrico Castro. 2019. Will in the English protasis: a proposal for motivating the constraint. Paper presented at the Incontro di Grammatica Generativa. Università degli Studi di Padova.

    Google Scholar 

  • Biberauer, Theresa and Ian Roberts. 2017. Conditional inversion and types of parametric change. In Bettelou Los and Pieter de Haan (eds.), Word Order Change in Acquisition and Language Contact: Essays in Honour of Ans van Kemenade, 57–77. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 243].

    Google Scholar 

  • Broekhuis, Hans and Norbert Corver. 2016. Syntax of Dutch. Verbs and Verb Phrases. Volume 3: Chapter 14: Main Clause-External Elements. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Catasso, Nicholas. 2015. On post initial Aber and other syntactic transgressions: some considerations on the nature of V2 in German. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 27(04): 317–365.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charnavel, Isabelle. 2020. French causal puisque-clauses in the light of (not)-at-issueness. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory - Selected Papers from the 47th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL47), Newark, Delaware: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cinque, Guglielmo. 2004. Issues in adverbial syntax. Lingua 114: 683–710.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cinque, Guglielmo. 2008. Two types of non-restrictive relatives. In Olivier Bonami and Patrizia Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 7, 99–137. Paris: CNRS.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cinque, Guglielmo and Luigi Rizzi. 2008. The cartography of syntactic structures. Studies in Linguistics, CISCL working papers. Vol. 2.

    Google Scholar 

  • Close, Reginald A. 1980. Will in if-clauses. In Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik (eds), Studies in English Linguistics, 100–109. London: Longmans.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comrie, Bernard. 1982. Future time reference in the conditional protasis. Australian Journal of Linguistics 22: 143–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coniglio, Marco. 2011. Die Syntax der deutschen Modalpartikeln: ihre Distribution und Lizenzierung in Haupt- und Nebensätzen. Berlin: Akademie.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dancygier, Barbara and Eve Sweetser. 1997. Then in conditional constructions. Cognitive Linguistics 8(2): 109–136.

    Google Scholar 

  • Declerck, Renaat. 1984. Pure future will in if clauses. Lingua 63: 279–312.

    Google Scholar 

  • Declerck, Renaat. 1991. Tense in English. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Declerck, Renaat. 2000. On how to interpret canonical conditional clauses in discourse. Journal of Literary Semantics 29(3): 149–169.

    Google Scholar 

  • Declerck, Renaat and Susan Reed. 2001. Conditionals: A Comprehensive Empirical Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ebert, Christian, Cornelia Endriss and Stefan Hinterwimmer. 2008. A unified analysis of indicative and biscuit conditionals as topics. In Tova Friedman and Satoshi Ito (eds.), SALT XVIII, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Endo, Yokio and Liliane Haegeman. 2019. Adverbial clauses and adverbial concord. Glossa-A Journal of General Linguistics 4: 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fabb, Nigel. 1990. The difference between English restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses. Journal of Linguistics 26: 57–79.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frey, Werner. 2011. Peripheral adverbial clauses, their licensing and the prefield in German. In Eva Breindl, Gisella Ferraresi and Anna Volodina (eds.), Satzverknüpfung – Zur Interaktion von Form, Bedeutung und Diskursfunktion, 41–77. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frey, Werner. 2016. On some correlations between formal and interpretative properties of causal clauses. In Ingo Reich and Augustin Speyer (eds.), Co- and Subordination in German and Other Languages. Special Issue of Linguistische Berichte 21: 153–179. Hamburg: Buske.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frey, Werner. 2018. On the syntax discourse interface with different kinds of not-at-issue expressions. CGSW 33, 27–28 August 2018, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frey, Werner. 2019. Linking some syntactic and semantic features of concessives and adversatives. Paper presented at DGfS, AG 5, Bremen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frey, Werner. 2020. On the categorical status of different dependent clauses. Ms.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frey, Werner and Andre Meinunger. 2019. Topic marking and illocutionary force. In Valéria Molnár, Verner Egerland and Susanne Winkler (eds.), Architecture of Topic, 95–138. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giannakidou, Anastasia. 1998. Polarity Sensitivity as (Non) Veridical Dependency. (Linguistics today 23). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giorgi, Alexandra. 2014. Prosodic signals as syntactic formatives in the left periphery. In Anna Cardinaletti, Guglielmo Cinque and Yoshio Endo (eds.), On Peripheries, Exploring Clause Initial and Clause Final Positions, 161–188. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobe Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane. 1984a. Parasitic gaps and adverbial clauses. Journal of Linguistics 20: 229–232.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane. 1984b. Pragmatic conditionals in English. Folia Linguistica 18: 485–502.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane. 1984c. Remarks on adverbial clauses and definite anaphora. Linguistic Inquiry 15: 712–715.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane. 1991. Parenthetical adverbials: the radical orphanage approach. In Shuki Chiba, Akira Ogawa, Yasuaki Fuiwara, Norio Yamada, Osamu Koma and Takao Yagi (eds.), Aspects of Modern English Linguistics: Papers presented to Masatomo Ukaji on His 60th Birthday, 232–254. Tokyo: Kaitakushi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane. 1996. Verb second, the split CP and null subjects in early Dutch finite clauses. GenGenP. Available on: http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/001059.

  • Haegeman, Liliane. 2003. Conditional clauses: external and internal syntax. Mind and Language 18: 317–339.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane. 2009. Parenthetical adverbials: the radical orphanage approach. In Benjamin Shaer, Philippa Cook, Werner Frey and Claudia Maienborn (eds.), Dislocated Elements in Discourse: Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Perspectives, 331–347. London: Routledge. Reprinted from Haegeman (1991).

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane. 2010. The movement derivation of conditional clauses. Linguistic Inquiry 41: 595–621.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane. 2012. Adverbial Clauses, Main Clause Phenomena and the Composition of the Left Periphery. Oxford: OUP.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane and Brian Robinson. 1979. A note on some aspects of the use of will in affirmative declarative sentences. Journal of Linguistics 15: 109–110.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane and Herman Wekker. 1984. The syntax and interpretation of futurate adverbials in English. Journal of Linguistics 20: 263–281.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane, Benjamin Shaer and Werner Frey. 2009. Postscript: problems and solutions for orphan analyses. In Philippa Cook, Werner Frey and Claudia Maienborn (eds.), Dislocated Elements in Discourse: Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Perspectives, 348–365. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane and Ciro Greco. 2018. West flemish V3 and the interaction of syntax and discourse. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 21(1): 1–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haegeman, Liliane and Ciro Greco. 2020. Frame setters and microvariation of subject-initial verb second. In Rebecca Woods and Sam Wolfe (eds.), Rethinking Verb Second, 61–89. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holmberg Anders. 2020. On the bottleneck hypothesis of verb second in Swedish. In Rebecca Woods and Sam Wolfe (eds.), Rethinking Verb Second, 40–60. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hornstein, Norbert. 1990. As Time Goes By. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • The Handbook of English, 159–219. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iatridou, Sabine. 1991. Topics in Conditionals. Ph.D dissertation. Boston: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Iatridou, Sabine and David Embick. 1994. Conditional inversion. In Mercè Gonzàlez (ed.), Proceedings of the North Easter Linguistic Society 24, 189–203. Amherst: Graduate Linguistics Student Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jespersen, Otto. 1909–49. A Modern English Grammar. Heidelberg/Copenhagen/London: Karl Winter/Einar Munksgaard/Allen and Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kearns, John T. 2006. Conditional assertion, denial, and supposition as illocutionary acts. Linguistics and Philosophy 29(4): 455–485.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koster, Jan. 2000. Extraposition as parallel construal. Ms. University of Groningen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krifka, Manfred. 2017. Assertions and judgements, epistemics and evidentials. Paper presented at the Workshop Speech Acts: Meanings, Uses, Syntactic and Prosodic Realizations, Leibniz-ZAS Berlin, May 29–31, 2017. https://amor.cms.hu-berlin.de/~h2816i3x/Talks/CommitmentEpistemicsHandout.pdf.

  • Krifka, Manfred. To appear. Layers of assertive causes: propositions, judgements, commitments, acts. In Jutta M. Hartmann and Angelika Wöllstein (eds.), Propositionale Argumente im Sprachvergleich: Theorie und Empirie. Propositional Arguments in Cross-Linguistic Research: Theoretical and Empirical Issues. [Studien zur Deutschen Sprache]. Tuebingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leech, Geoffrey N. 1971. Meaning and the English Verb, xiv + 132. London: Longman (2nd and 3rd editions: 1987, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  • McCawley, James D. 1971. Tense and time reference in English. In Charles J. Fillmore and D. Terence Langėndoen (eds.), Studies in Linguistic Semantics, 96–113. Irvington: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meinunger, Andre. 2004. Interface restrictions on Verb Second. Linguistics in Potsdam 22: 51–81.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nieuwint, Pieter. 1986. Present and future in conditional protases. Linguistics 24: 371–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Palmer, Frank. 1965. A Linguistic Study of the English Verb. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Palmer, Frank. 1974. The English Verb. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Potts, Christopher. 2015. Presupposition and implicature. In Shalom Lappin and Chris Fox (eds.), Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory (2nd edition), 168–202. Oxford: Wiley/Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ros, Hilke. 2005. Functional phrase structure: integrating functional ideas in generative adverbial syntax. Ph.D. dissertation, Ghent University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rutherford, William. 1970. Some observations concerning subordinate clauses in English. Language 46: 97–115.

    Google Scholar 

  • Safir, Kenneth. 1986. Relative clauses in a theory of binding and levels. Linguistic Inquiry 17: 663–690.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schönenberger, Manuela and Liliane Haegeman. To appear. English rationale since and a reassessment of the typology of adverbial clauses. Ms. Ghent University/University of Geneva.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaer, Benjamin and Werner Frey 2004. ‘Integrated’ and ‘non-integrated’ left peripheral elements in German and English. In Benjamin Shaer, Werner Frey and Claudia Maienborn (eds.), Proceedings of the Dislocated Elements Workshop, ZAS Berlin, November 2003. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 35(2): 465–502.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sweetser, Eve E. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Takami, Ken-ichi. 1988. The syntax of if-clauses: three types of if-clauses and X’-theory. Lingua 1988: 263–281.

    Google Scholar 

  • Velde, John te. 2013. West Germanic left-dislocated adverbial clauses: the role of the semantic interface. Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 18: 163–206.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wakker, Gerry. 1996. Conditionals at different levels of the clause. In Betty Devriend, Louis Goossens and Johan van der Auwera (eds.), Complex Structures, 177–199. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wekker, Herman C. 1976. The Expression of Future Time in Contemporary British English. Amsterdam: North Holland.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wekker, Herman C. 1977. Future reference in adverbial clauses. Interlanguage Studies Bulletin 2: 64–77.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitman, Neal. 2004. Semantics and pragmatics of English verbal dependent coordination. Language 80(3): 403–434. Retrieved August 20, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/4489719.

  • Williams, Edwin.1978. Across the board rule application. Linguistic Inquiry 9: 31–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woods, Rebecca and Sam Wolfe. 2020. Rethinking Verb Second. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zandvoort, Reinart Willem. 1975. A Handbook of English Grammar. London: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Groups Ugent, DiaLing, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Liliane Haegeman

  2. University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Manuela Schönenberger

Authors
  1. Liliane Haegeman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Manuela Schönenberger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Liliane Haegeman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs Mansfield, CT, USA

    Stefan Kaufmann

  2. Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham, UK

    David E. Over

  3. Department of South Asian Studies, National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations (INALCO), Paris, France

    Ghanshyam Sharma

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Haegeman, L., Schönenberger, M. (2023). The External Syntax of Conditional Clauses. In: Kaufmann, S., Over, D.E., Sharma, G. (eds) Conditionals. Palgrave Studies in Pragmatics, Language and Cognition. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05682-6_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05682-6_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-05681-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-05682-6

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation