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Toward a Unified Linguistic Approach to Conditionals—Some Empirical Evidence

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Conditionals

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

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Abstract

This paper reappraises Greenberg’s Universal of Word Order 14 concerning the linear order of the two clauses in a conditional construction. It also looks into the linguistic criteria for defining a conditional construction, as laid down by (Comrie et al. in On Conditionals. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 77–99, 1986). These criteria include clause order, markers of protasis and apodosis, degrees of hypotheticality and time reference. The paper asserts that adopting a unified approach to the linguistic typology of conditionals is crucial for any linguistically oriented research into conditional constructions. The paper attempts to satisfy this need and introduces a scale of hypotheticality in relation to the epistemic stance of both the Speaker (s) and the Hearer (h).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On the viability of using the term ‘material conditional’ in natural language, Barwise (1986: 21) has the following to say: “For those of us involved in the attempt to spell out the relation between statements and those aspects of reality they are about, conditionals are a thorny issue. Within this semantic tradition, common wisdom can be summarized rather contentiously as follows: classical model theory gives us the semantics of the material conditional. It works fine for mathematical conditionals, but is a disaster if applied to ordinary language conditionals, especially counterfactual conditionals. Within the possible worlds framework, there are various treatments, some of which are quite successful for certain types of natural language conditionals, including counterfactuals, but they are all a disaster when applied to mathematical conditionals.”

  2. 2.

    In line with the linguistics tradition, I have chosen to use the terms ‘protasis’ and ‘apodosis’ here, although I believe the terms ‘antecedent’ and ‘consequent’ are a more appropriate way of denoting the two clauses in a conditional construct.

  3. 3.

    Luo Yujia, a native speaker of Chinese and a doctoral candidate at INALCO, Paris.

  4. 4.

    I am grateful to David E. Over for reminding me that even in “even if” conditionals, a link, albeit of “topic”, can be established.

  5. 5.

    It seems that Iatridou (2000) intends this to be either sets of times or sets of worlds; in the latter case, the “speaker set” is akin to “the world according to the speaker”.

Abbreviations

ACC:

accusative case

ADV :

adverb

COND :

conditional

CPM :

complementizer

DAT :

dative case

ERG :

ergative case

F :

feminine gender

FUT :

future tense

GEN :

genitive case

HAB :

habitual aspect

IMPFV :

imperfective aspect

LOC :

locative case

M :

masculine gender

NOM :

nominative case

PART :

particle

PFV :

perfective aspect, perfect tense

PL :

plural number

POSS :

possessive case

PROG :

progressive aspect

PRON :

pronoun

PRS :

present tense

SUFF :

suffix

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to my mentors, Stefan Kaufmann and David E. Over, for their unwavering support and active encouragement (both academic and personal) without which I would not have been able to finish this article. As a linguist by trade, I eagerly and gladly accepted their advice on a variety of subjects. Obviously, any errors in the paper are my own. I would also like to thank friends and colleagues from different universities for their help with the data judgment: John Lowe (Oxford), Tanmoy Bhattacharya (Delhi), K.V.R. Subbarao (Delhi), Amba Kulkarni (Hyderabad), Anuradha Sudharsan (Hyderabad) and Prashant Pardeshi (Tokyo). Again, none of these individuals should be held accountable for any inaccuracies in the paper.

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

    Ghanshyam Sharma

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  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

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Sharma, G. (2023). Toward a Unified Linguistic Approach to Conditionals—Some Empirical Evidence. 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_11

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