Languages & Linguistics
First Conditional
The First Conditional is a grammatical structure used to talk about real or possible future situations. It consists of an if-clause in the present simple tense and a main clause with "will" or "can" plus the base form of the verb. This conditional is used to express likely or possible outcomes based on a specific condition being met.
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5 Key excerpts on "First Conditional"
- Paul Kroeger(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Language Science Press(Publisher)
One factor that makes the analysis of conditional sentences so challenging is that the conditional structure can be used for a variety of di ferent functions, not only in English but in many other languages as well. We introduce the most common of these in §19.2. In §19.3 we focus on “standard” conditionals, i.e. those in which neither the antecedent nor the consequent is asserted or presupposed to be true. In many languages these conditionals may be marked by tense, mood, or other grammatical indicators to show the speaker’s degree of con fdence as to how likely the antecedent is to be true. In §19.4 we will return to the question raised in Chapter 9 as to whether the meaning of English if can be adequately represented or defned in terms o f the material implication operator (→) of propositional logic. We will see that, for a number of reasons, this does not seem to be possible. (Of course, that does not mean that the material implication operator is useless for doing natural language semantics; it is an indispensible part of the logical metalanguage. It just means that material implication does not provide a simple translation equivalent for English if .) 1 Tis is a version of the “Ramsey Test” from Stalnaker (1968). 2 Greenberg (1963: 84–85); Comrie (1986: 83). 348 19.2 Four uses of if We go on in §19.5 to discuss one very infuential approach to de fning the mean-ing of if , which takes it to be a marker of restriction for modals or other types of quantifers. §19.6 discusses some o f the special challenges posed by counterfac-tual condi tionals, in which the antecedent is presupposed to be false. Finally, in §19.7 we argue for a distinction between truth-conditional vs. speech act condi-tionals, and provide some evidence for the claim that speech act conditionals are not part of the propositional content that is being asserted, questioned, etc.
eBook - PDF- D. Zaefferer(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Conditionals and Unconditionals: Cross-linguistic and Logical Aspects Dietmar Zaefferer Institutfür Deutsche Philologie Universität München Schellingstr. 3 D-8000 München 40 Although conditional sentences are important in all languages, and although their logic' has been thoroughly, if inconclusively, investigated by philosophers, our knowledge and understanding of them in the languages of the world is very poor. (Palmer 1986: 188) 0. Introduction The main purpose of this paper is to argue against the sceptic tenor of its anti-motto, the quotation of Palmer's, and for the continuation of a love story called 'typology meets formal semantics' that has started its delicate course some time ago at the 1983 Stanford symposium on conditionals, and that still needs a lot of encouragement in order to blossom. I think that it deserves this encouragement because it promises substantial progress both for the research in typology and linguistic universals and for formal semantics and language-oriented logics. I will try to argue for this using the example of conditional forms and functions and their relatives on the one hand, and a theory of conditionals inspired by ideas of Barwise, Gardenfors, Heim, Kratzer, Lewis and Rott 1 on the other. Whereas this paper emphasizes the typological data and presents the theory only in rough outline, a (partially overlapping) companion paper to the present one (Zaefferer 1990) spells out the theory in more detail after only a short summary of the typological findings. To get started, some terminological clarifications will be proposed and some methodological principles will be stated. 0.1. Terminological clarifications First: What do I understand by a conditional? A conditional or more explicitly a conditional form is a grammatical structure or construction that encodes a conditional function as its primary purpose.
- Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher, Wolfgang Raible, Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher, Wolfgang Raible(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
998 X. Syntactic Typology 76. Conditional constructions 1. Introduction 2. Conditionals in logic and linguistics 3. Conditional markers 4. Tense, aspect, mood, modality and polarity in conditionals 5. Conditionals are topics 6. Conditionals, concessive conditionals and concessives 7. Special abbreviations 8. References 1. Introduction Conditionals are a subclass of sentences that contain adverbial clauses of circumstance. The inventory of circumstantial relations that may be expressed by complex sentences with adverbial clauses traditionally includes con-ditional relations, in addition to causal, temporal, concessive, concessive conditional, comparative, purposive and resultative ones. A prototypical conditional sentence, like (1) (1) If the weather is fine we shall go for a walk. consists of two clauses, one of which (if the weather is fine), usually called protasis, ante-cedent or, simply, «/-clause, expresses a prop-osition whose fulfillment or non-fulfillment is relevant to the degree of reality assigned to the proposition expressed by another clause (we shall go for a walk), usually called apodo-sis or consequent (Trask 1993: 55). There are not many systematic cross-linguistic studies of conditionals. Among the few are Traugott et al. 1986, Athanasiadou & Dirven 1997, Xrakovskij 1998. Our overview of the structure of condi-tionals across languages will be organized as follows: In §2., we shall briefly discuss how the conditional relation in natural languages differs from material implication as defined in logic. § 3. examines formal types of condi-tionals. In §4., we will look at grammatical marking of protasis and apodosis. In § 5., discourse functions of conditionals are dis-cussed. Finally, in § 6., we show how condi-tionals are related to concessive conditionals and concessives.
eBook - PDFWho Climbs the Grammar-Tree
[leaves for David Reibel]
- Rosemarie Tracy(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
But from a broader perspective, such as is given by Situational Grammar, it appears that verb forms are determined by the kind of situation they designate, and that this in turn is a function of the text-world in force for the particular (stage of the) discourse. What we might call a 'Conditional situation 1 stems from a text-world which is designated so as to be distinct from the current immediate situation or any of the historical situations leading up to it. This is a common text-world type for all hypothetical, imaginary, fictitious or fantastic situations, but what distinguishes a conditional situation from the more narrative types of imaginary world is the fact that a science-fiction story or a fairy tale, for instance, will normally remain 'inside 1 its world and can therefore use ordinary narrative tenses etc. The conditional situa-tion, on the other hand, has almost always a parallel relationship with the 'actual 1 world, and is constantly in comparison with it. We have so far distinguished two kinds of uses for the form would: an independent use, in which it is in some sense the Past or Remote form of will (e.g. (30) and (31) above); and a dependent use, either the Conditional construction (e.g. (32), (33) and (35)) or Reported speech (e.g. (34) above). In both of the dependent types, there is a sequence of tenses rule in English, though with several permissible variations. I shall start with the dependent Condi-tional construction. As set out above, the Conditional partakes of a hypothetical text-world which is in constant comparison with the world around it (itself a text-world like any other). This is actually effected as follows: the i/-clause delineate the hypothetical world, which is, in textual terms, embedded in the text-world already delineated for the containing discourse.
eBook - PDF- Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr, Irmengard Rauch, Gerald F. Carr(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Instead their conditionality is a matter of negotiation and agree-ment between the interlocutors concerning the discourse progression. In-terlocutors must work together in order to find common ground and thence advance the communication. In such conditionals verb-first is a fitting iconic marker. The concep-tual integration of the speech-act protasis and the content-level apodosis is paralleled in the communicative-pragmatic integration of the clauses into a single information unit, entailing a reduction of semantic indepen-dence, prosodic independence and illocutive weight in the apodosis (cf. note 9). I hypothesize that such a reduction in illocutive weight helps to deliver the proposition in a polite, non-confrontational manner and in-vites negotiation between the interlocutors. The data analyzed are sugges-tive and promising. However, more data will have to be considered to verify the preliminary results and arrive at a more complete analysis of German conditional clauses in discourse. Notes 1. Responding to certain aspects of Kopeke's and Panther's analysis (1989), this article reports on some of my preliminary findings in my dissertation project. I wish to thank my professors, Irmengard Rauch and Thomas F. Shannon, as well as my fellow stu-dents for their valuable comments. 2. Unless indicated otherwise, the data come from the Freiburger Korpus (FKO ) and the Dialogstrukturenkorpus (DSK ). I would like to thank the Institut für deutsche Sprache (IDS) in Mannheim for providing me with on-line access to their computerized data-base. The searches were carried out using COSMAS, the IDS' database search system. I am grateful to the staff at the IDS for their help and support, particularly to Dr. Irmtraud Jüttner, who introduced me to COSMAS and patiently responded to my questions in countless e-mail messages.
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