A unified analysis of conditionals as topics - Kölner UniversitätsPublikationsServer

Ebert, Christian, Ebert, Cornelia and Hinterwimmer, Stefan (2014). A unified analysis of conditionals as topics. Linguist. Philos., 37 (5). S. 353 - 409. DORDRECHT: SPRINGER. ISSN 1573-0549

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DOI:10.1007/s10988-014-9158-4

Abstract

We bring out syntactic and semantic similarities of two types of conditionals with fronted antecedents [normal indicative conditionals (NCs) and biscuit conditionals (BCs)] and two types of left dislocation constructions in German (German left dislocation and hanging topic left dislocation), which mark two types of topicality (aboutness topicality and relevance topicality). On the basis of these similarities we argue that (the antecedent if-clauses of) NCs and BCs are aboutness topics and relevance topics, respectively. Our analysis extends the approach to aboutness topicality of Endriss (Quantificational topics. A scopal treatment of exceptional wide scope phenomena, 2009) to relevance topics to derive the semantic and pragmatic contribution of left-dislocated DPs and applies it to an analysis of conditionals as (maximal) pluralities of possible worlds. We show how this uniform approach to the interpretation of topicality accounts for the nominal left dislocation constructions as well as for the semantic and pragmatic effects observed in connection with the two types of conditionals. We furthermore discuss the potential of our proposal to deal with subjunctive biscuit conditionals, if-clauses modifying speech acts different from assertions, conditionals with right-dislocated if-clauses, and nested conditionals.

Item Type:

Journal Article

Creators:

Creators	Email	ORCID	ORCID Put Code
Ebert, Christian	UNSPECIFIED	UNSPECIFIED	UNSPECIFIED
Ebert, Cornelia	UNSPECIFIED	UNSPECIFIED	UNSPECIFIED
Hinterwimmer, Stefan	UNSPECIFIED	UNSPECIFIED	UNSPECIFIED