Volume 8, Issue s4 - Special Issue: Natural Language Conditionals and Conditional Reasoning Volume 2; Editor: Mingya Liu

In this paper we argue that the antecedent of a (non-analytic) conditional is causally relevant to the consequent, … at least if standard background conditions hold. Natural counterexamples to the causal relevance analysis are argued to be cases where the standardly assumed background condition(s) do not hold.

Comprehending conditional statements is fundamental for hypothetical reasoning about situations. However, the online comprehension of conditional statements containing different conditional connectives is still debated. We report two self-paced reading experiments on German conditionals presenting the conditional connectives wenn (‘if’) and nur wenn (‘only if’) in identical discourse contexts. In Experiment 1, participants read a conditional sentence followed by the confirmed antecedent p and the confirmed or negated consequent q . The final, critical sentence was presented word by word and contained a positive or negative quantifier ( ein/kein ‘one/no’). Reading times of the two quantifiers did not differ between the two conditional connectives. In Experiment 2, presenting a negated antecedent, reading times for the critical positive quantifier ( ein ) did not differ between conditional connectives, while reading times for the negative quantifier ( kein ) were shorter for nur wenn than for wenn . The results show that comprehenders form distinct predictions about discourse continuations due to differences in the lexical semantics of the tested conditional connectives, shedding light on the role of conditional connectives in the online interpretation of conditionals in general.

We investigate how discourse relations and their subtypes are signalled, extending the set of discourse signals from connectives and lexical cue phrases to the wide range of semantic, syntactic, and orthographic signals of the RST Signalling Corpus (Das, Debopam & Maite Taboada. 2018. RST signalling corpus. Language Resources and Evaluation 52. 149–184). This extension requires re-evaluating previous predictions on discourse signalling, in particular, those of Sanders, Ted. 2005. Coherence, causality and cognitive complexity in discourse. In M. Aurnague, M. Bras, A. Le Draoulec & L. Vieu (eds.), Proceedings/Actes SEM-05, first international symposium on the exploration and modelling of meaning , 105–114. Biarritz causality-by-default hypothesis, the hypothesis of uniform information density (Frank, Austin & Florian Jaeger. 2008. Speaking rationally: Uniform information density as an optimal strategy for language production. In Proceedings of the 30th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society , 933–938. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7d08h6j4 (accessed 18 May 2022)), and the hypothesis that discourse is continuous by preference (Segal, Erwin, Judith Duchan & Paula Scott. 1991. The role of interclausal connectives in narrative structuring. Discourse Processes 14. 27–54; Murray, John. 1997. Connectives and narrative text. Memory and Cognition 25. 227–236). We evaluate the predictions of these theories on the conditional relations in the RST Discourse Treebank (Carlson, Lynn, Daniel Marcu & Mary Ellen Okurowski. 2002. RST Discourse Treebank. LDC2002T07 . Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium), using causal relations as a control group. Informativity and continuity are operationalized in terms of semantic complexity and Givón, Talmy. 1993. English grammar: A function-based introduction , vol. 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins dimensions of deictic shift. Our results show that the hypotheses make accurate predictions only for the relation groups in their entirety but not for the observed in-group variation, in particular, the low amount of marking for the hypothetical subtype of conditional relations. We attribute this difference to the distribution of intra- and inter-sentential occurrences across the conditional subtypes: intra-sentential relations are consistently more marked than inter-sentential ones, and hypothetical relations are special in that they appear predominantly inter-sententially.

The present work analyzes conditional constructions in Spanish that are polysemous between different conditional and non-conditional readings and whose meaning arises pragmatically. This article shows that the feature of uncertainty can help us identify potential conditional constructions, and distinguish constructions that are disguised as conditional, but that do not behave as such. Thus, factual protases are not considered “true” conditionals as their behavior is more akin to causal clauses. I argue that including uncertainty as a determining factor of conditionality can allow us to disambiguate between causal, temporal, and habitual clauses that can also yield a conditional meaning and vice versa. I also provide four tests that can allow us to disambiguate between conditionality, temporality, and habituality.

This paper experimentally investigates the role of veridicality and the cause-effect relation in the derivation of (a) conditional perfection and (b) logical entailment in Russian esli -conditionals and raz -conditionals. It provides further evidence that conditional perfection is a structurally defined phenomenon. Moreover, it presents a crosslinguistic and intra-linguistic variation in conditional connectives used in indicative and subjunctive counterfactual conditionals. Finally, confirming the causal network theory proposed in Schulz (2007, Minimal models in semantics and pragmatics: Free choice, exhaustivity, and conditionals . Amsterdam: ILLC Dissertation), the paper points out that effect-to-cause subjunctive counterfactuals are less acceptable than cause-to-effect ones.

Stemming from a wh -question, the Sicilian marker cusà ( cu sa ‘who knows’) expresses several epistemic meanings, which can also reach the realm of conditionality. The paper explores the discourse profile of cusà as it emerges from the analysis of diachronic data (from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and present-day informal Sicilian, namely spoken Sicilian and present-day informal Sicilian as written by speakers on the web. These data suggest a possible path of development leading from the wh- question to new functions. We propose that the origin of this development can be explained in the light of the strategy of the “impossible question”, while the diverse functions of cusà emerged through concomitant processes of desemantization, reanalysis, and subjectification.

Conditional antecedents often contain elements that require the truth of the antecedent proposition to be open. One such element is Japanese moshi , which can occur in conditional antecedents and topics. I argue that in both constructions, moshi requires the context to be “iffy”, in that the antecedent proposition or the set of individuals picked out by the topic must not be settled by the context. I build on Ebert, Christian, Cornelia Ebert & Stefan Hinterwimmer (2014. A unified analysis of conditionals as topics. Linguistics and Philosophy 37(5). 353–408) and analyze moshi as an element that imposes a variation requirement on the speech act performed by conditional antecedents and topics.

Conditionals in Mandarin can be expressed by conjunctive sentences with no overt conditional connective (Type 1: P , Q ) or with a conditional connective (CC) in the antecedent (Type 2: CC P , Q ) and/or a conditional particle (CP) in the consequent (Type 3: (CC) P , CP Q ). In this paper, we focus on jiu- conditionals (Type 3) without CCs. We assume that jiu in Mandarin is ambiguous between jiu 1 (unstressed, nonexclusive, left associating) and jiu 2 (stressed, exclusive, right associating), and that jiu -conditionals involve jiu 1 without exclusive force. We argue against a conditional conjunction analysis of jiu- conditionals and for a scalar analysis of jiu in conditionals as well as in temporal or spatial use. Furthermore, we present what we believe is the first uniform pragmatic account of Mandarin conditional constructions across Types 1–3: it is the subjective (non)veridicality property of the first clause P that determines the reading of the sentence P , Q . If P is entailed or presupposed, we get a conjunctive reading; if P is not entailed or presupposed, that is, if it is nonveridical, we get a conditional reading. Devices triggering the conditional reading include CCs or negative polarity items in the antecedent, as well as the broader discourse context or world knowledge.

This paper investigates the relation between conditionals and modals in Polish. In particular, it looks into whether modalized indirect reports of conditionals – specifically, reports which involve the use of root modality verbs – reflect the number of alternative antecedents foregrounded in the context of the reported conditional utterance. It finds that the root possibility modal mogę is preferred when many alternative antecedents are foregrounded (i.e. when p is interpreted as a sufficient but not necessary condition for q ), whereas the root necessity modal muszę is preferred in contexts where there are no alternative antecedents (i.e. when p is interpreted as a necessary condition for q ). The results are comparable to those obtained for English (see Sztencel and Duffy 2018), thus providing initial support for their cross-linguistic generalizability. Furthermore, a parallel is drawn between the basic structure of instrumental practical reasoning (e.g. Walton 2007) and modalized indirect reports of conditionals. This parallel offers a rationale for the method of investigating instrumental practical reasoning by the proxy of indirect speech reports.

In recent years, formal linguistic analysis has expanded its scope to include objects of study beyond natural language, under the umbrella of Super Linguistics (where the intended meaning of super is its Latinate meaning ‘beyond’); see (Patel-Grosz et al. 2022. Super linguistics: An introduction. Unpublished manuscript, April 2022 version. Available at: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005242). One super linguistic object of study is emojis, which can be analyzed as digital counterparts of gestures and facial expressions, but which also share properties with natural language expressions such as alas and unfortunately (Grosz, Patrick Georg, Gabriel Greenberg, Christian De Leon & Elsi Kaiser. 2021b. A semantics of face emoji in discourse . Manuscript, December 2021 version. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005981 (Accepted with minor revisions for publication in Linguistics and Philosophy)). In this paper, I use conditionals as a case study to argue that natural language semantics can benefit from investigating the semantics of emojis. I start by arguing that face emojis (disk-shaped pictographs with stylized facial expressions) operate on contextually salient propositions. I show that they can comment on the presuppositions of wh -questions and definite descriptions, but not on conversational implicatures. I then show that face emojis can also comment on the counterfactual inferences of subjunctive conditionals (or, more broadly, subjunctive if -clauses). This suggests that these counterfactual inferences may be presupposition-like and not, as widely assumed, an instance of implicature (see Zakkou, Julia. 2019. Presupposing counterfactuality. Semantics and Pragmatics 12(21). 1–20, for recent discussion). The study of emojis, a nonstandard object for linguistic inquiry, can thus directly inform more traditional linguistic exploration.

We discuss German examples where counterfactuals restricting an epistemic modal are embedded under glauben ‘believe’. Such sentences raise a puzzle for the analysis of counterfactuals, modals, and belief attributions within possible-worlds semantics. Their truth conditions suggest that the modal’s domain is determined exclusively by the subject’s belief state, but evaluating the counterfactual separately at each of the subject’s doxastic alternatives does not yield the correct quantificational domain: the domain ends up being determined by the facts of each particular world, which include propositions the subject does not believe. We therefore revise the semantics of counterfactuals: counterfactuals still rely on an ordering among worlds that can be derived from a premise set (Kratzer, Angelika. 1978. Semantik der Rede: Kontexttheorie – Modalwörter – Konditionalsätze (Monographien Linguistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft 38). Königstein: Scriptor, 2012 [1981]a. The notional category of modality. In Modals and conditionals (Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics 36), 27–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press), but rather than uniquely characterizing a world, this premise set can be compatible with multiple worlds. In belief contexts, the attitude subject’s belief state as a whole determines the relevant ordering. This, in turn, motivates a revision of the semantics of believe : following Yalcin’s work on epistemic modals (Yalcin, Seth. 2007. Epistemic modals. Mind 116. 983–1026), we submit that evaluation indices are complex, consisting of a world and an ordering among worlds. Counterfactuals are sensitive to the ordering component of an index. Attitude verbs shift both components, relativizing the ordering to the attitude subject.

Many languages assign additional conditional interpretations to apparently regular sentential conjunctions (conditional conjunctions, CCs). Following previous ideas (Kaufmann, Magdalena. 2018. Topics in conditional conjunctions. Invited talk at NELS , vol. 49. Cornell University; Starr, Will. 2018. Conjoining imperatives and declaratives. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21. 1159–1176), we provide additional support for the hypothesis that CCs involve topicalized first conjuncts. We argue that Japanese and Korean, which appear to lack CCs, in fact mark them quite transparently. Both languages combine sentential conjunctions with topic markers: Japanese -te=wa (standardly considered one of the language’s conditional connectives) and Korean -ko=nun (occurring naturally, not discussed in the literature). We show that Japanese conditional =to fits into the pattern of CCs as well: it is derived by topicalization of conjunctive =to . Conjunctive =to is normally restricted to NPs, but it can coordinate finite clauses so long as the finite verb does not precede =to (Koizumi, Masatoshi. 2000. String vacuous overt verb raising. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 9(3). 227–285). We argue that this requirement can be met in a topicalized clause carrying default tense; the resultant configuration is the conditional connective =to . Semantically, CCs are known to be more restricted than if -conditionals in not readily realizing epistemic conditionals. The elements - te=wa , =to , and -ko=nun are all subject to exactly this restriction, which we refine to exclude only non-predictive epistemics. Following the transparent structure in Japanese and Korean, we interpret CCs by predicating the regular conjunction distributively of the set of (contextually salient and epistemically accessible) situations described by the topicalized first conjunct. We argue that apparent cases of focus on or within the first conjunct of CCs constitute contrastive topics or corrections.