Conditionals Rajesh Bhatt, Roumyana Pancheva
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[email protected] 1 Overview This contribution provides a survey of the major issues in the syntax of con- ditionals. We present and critically evaluate the findings in the literature per- taining to conditional structures. We furthermore advance a particular view, not articulated in its entirety before, namely that conditional clauses (e.g., if- clauses) are essentially free relatives of possible worlds. Similarly to the more familiar instances of free relatives of individuals, conditional clauses (i) likely involve clause-internal operator-movement to Spec, CP; (ii) they receive the interpretation of definite descriptions; and (iii) they may participate in correl- ative structures as happens in the subcase of conditionals with the proform then. Conditional structures involve an adverbial clause, often referred to as the CONDITIONAL CLAUSE, ANTECEDENT or PROTASIS (the underlined constituent in (1)), and a main clause, known as the CONSEQUENT or APODOSIS. Con- ditional structures are interpreted, in general terms, with the proposition ex- pressed by the antecedent clause specifying the (modal) circumstances in which the proposition expressed by the main clause is true. Thus, (1) states that the possible worlds/situations in which Andrea arrives late (the denotation of the conditional clause) are possible worlds/situations in which Clara gets upset (the denotation of the main clause). (1) If Andrea arrives late, Clara will get upset. Conditionals as in (1) are known as HYPOTHETICAL CONDITIONALS. They are the most common kind of conditional structures discussed in the literature, and consequently, our contribution will mostly focus on them. Other types of conditionals exist as well, notably RELEVANCE CONDITIONALS, as illustrated in (2): (2) If you are thirsty, there is beer in the fridge.