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Veridicality and the cause-effect relation in Russian esli- and raz-conditionals: experimenting with conditional perfection and logical entailment

  • Natalia Zevakhina EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: June 30, 2022

Abstract

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.


Corresponding author: Natalia Zevakhina, HSE University, Moscow, Russian Federation, E-mail:

Funding source: The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation

Award Identifier / Grant number: the Agreement No 075-15-2020-793

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers of the paper, to the editors of this special issue, to the organizers of the workshop “The Semantics and Pragmatics of Conditional Connectives” (Mingya Liu and Mathias Barthel), and to Alex Dainiak and Magdalena Kaufmann for all the fruitful discussions and valuable comments upon earlier versions of the paper. This work has been supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation within Agreement No 075–15-2020-793.

Appendix A

Link to the materials (critical and control items) of the first and second experiments and their English translations: https://zevakhina.github.io/experiments/veridicality-and-cause-effect-stimuli-and-fillers.pdf.

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Received: 2021-03-07
Accepted: 2021-07-19
Published Online: 2022-06-30

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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