1. Conditional utterances and conditional thoughts: A radical contextualist account
Chi-Hé Elder & Kasia Jaszczolt
University of Cambridge
ICL19, Geneva
26 July 2013

2. Conditional utterances in English
if p (then) q

3. Conditional utterances in English
Conditional constructions are not the only way to express conditional thoughts
Take one more step and I’ll kill you
Your money or your life

4. Conditional utterances in English
Conditional constructions can be used for other purposes other than expressing conditional thoughts
If you wouldn’t mind, could you close the door?
If that’s a real diamond, I’ll eat my hat!

5. A cross-linguistic perspective
Guugu Yimithirr (Australian, QNL): no overt conditionals
The dog might bark. The postman might run away.
(Evans & Levinson 2009: 443, after Haviland 1979)

6. Outline Classifying conditionals
Conditionals and speakers’ intentions: A corpus-based account
Recovering intended effects through linguistic cues
Radical contextualism
Representing conditional meaning in Interactive Semantics

7. Theoretical assumption
Want a semantics that captures intuitive meanings
The diversity of ways of expressing conditional meaning, as well as the diversity of uses to which conditional if can be put, are not a problem for a radical contextualist theory.
Radical contextualism. Logical form may be enriched or even overridden to give speaker’s intended meaning (Jaszczolt 2010, Default Semantics)

8. Devising criteria for classification
Want to allow that conditional meaning may or may not be speaker’s primary intended meaning
No conditional LF
Primary meaning is conditional
Conditional LF
Primary meaning is not conditional

9. Classifying conditionals
No bi-unique correlation between conditional constructions and conditional meanings
Does not make sense to talk of a category of conditionals in terms of constructions
“The history of the conditional is the story of a syntactic mistake” (Kratzer 2012:106)

10. Criteria for classification
2 roles of the antecedent p:
indicates remoteness from the actual world
speaker is not committed to its truth
is a supposition
restricts situations in which main clause holds

11. Pilot study (ICE-GB, Elder 2012)
46% of conditional utterances use if
Narrowing scope to conditional constructions
Want to look at relation between form and content
Methodological problems of a corpus project

12. Conditionals and speech acts
If you rang her now she’d say yes (advice)
If you hit me with it once more I’ll kill you (threat)
Be great if you would do that (request)

13. Experimental studies in ‘pragmatic conditionals’
Interlocutors infer pragmatic effects from particular aspects of the content of conditional clauses (Bonnefon & Politzer 2010)
What linguistic clues generate these inferences?

14. Speech acts: A disclaimer
Speech are not easily classifiable by grammatical cues (cf. Austin 1962; Searle 1975; Searle & Vanderveken 1985)
It’s not a threat it’s a promise. If you come near my family once more I’ll kill you.
Speakers may not be aware of the speech act they are performing (cf. Sperber & Wilson 1995)
Illocutionary forces may be derived pragmatically
Labels used are for exemplification only

15. Example If you drop the vase it will break
>> Don’t drop the vase
Conditional warning
Main message: Don’t do p p q
hearer’s action
negative consequence
For contextualists, it is the intended meaning which is of interest

16. Indicators of speech acts
Does p or q express volition? If so, of whom?
Does the outcome described in q have a positive/negative effect on someone? If so, on whom?

17. Threat If you do that one more time I’ll kill you
Main message: Don’t do p p q
hearer’s action
speaker’s action
negative consequence to hearer

18. Conditional offer If you’re hungry there are biscuits on the sideboard
>> If you’re hungry there are biscuits which you may have on the sideboard
>> If you’re hungry please help yourself to biscuits on the sideboard
Issuing authority is speaker
Main message: You may do q p q
hearer’s action
positive consequence

19. Discussion
Utterance may have conditional LF with non-conditional primary meaning
LF may be overridden to give primary meaning
Constituent parts of conditional construction may be enriched/overridden giving input to non-conditional implicature

20. No consequent?
Now if you’d like to put on your helmet
…that’d be great?
…you’ll be safe?
…the police won’t catch you?
>> put on your helmet
There need not be one single intended consequent recoverable from the context
At the level of thoughts, there may not be an intention of a consequent

21. Now if you’d like to put on your helmet…
q (inferred)
hearer’s action
positive consequence
Main message: Do p
Conventionalised use of if

22. Intermediary conclusions
Speaker’s primary intended meaning may arise at any level of pragmatic process
There are different degrees of intentions associated with conditional meaning
Why would we want to capture this variety of meaning in semantics?
How is it possible to capture this variety of meaning of conditionals in semantics?

23. Conditionals in radical contextualism
“…while perhaps none of the logical connectives are universally lexically expressed, there is no evidence that languages differ in whether or not logical connectives are present in their logical forms.”
(von Fintel & Matthewson 2008:170)

24. Suppositions as primary or secondary meanings
Now if you’d like to put on your helmet

25. Conditionals in Default Semantics
K. M. Jaszczolt, Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press
K. M. Jaszczolt, ‘Default Semantics’. In: B. Heine and H. Narrog (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

26. 26

27. 27

28. sources of information types of processes

29. Mapping between sources and processes
WK  SCWD or CPI
SC  SCWD or CPI
WS  WS (logical form)
SD  CPI
IS  CD
DS/IS makes use of the processing model and it indexes the components of ∑ with a subscript standing for the type of processing

30. Representing conditional thought (two dimensions)
p  ? ∑,PM
‘If you leave your tea on a wobbly table…’
p  ? ∑, SM
‘If you’d like to put your helmet on’ PM: Put your helmet on
p  qWS, PM
‘If it rains we’ll stay at home’
p  qWS, SM
‘If you’re hungry, there are biscuits on the sideboard’ PM: Help yourself to biscuits
? p  q∑, PM
‘Touch his iPad and he’ll scream’ PM: If you touch his iPad he’ll scream’
? ? p  q∑, SM
‘Please put your helmet on’ SM: If you put your helmet on, you’ll be safer’

31. Fig 3: ∑ for 2. p ? ∑, SM ‘If you’d like to put your helmet on’

32. Fig 4: ∑ for 5. p  q∑, PM ‘Touch his iPad and he’ll scream’

33. Conclusions
Conditional thought may constitute primary or secondary meaning and may be expressed by a conditional or other sentence form;
When conditional thought is adopted as the object of study, the category of conditionals cannot be restricted to specific constructions;
The diversity of (i) uses to which conditional if can be put and (ii) ways of expressing conditional meaning can be represented in a radical contextualist account (DS/IS);
DS/IS allows us to represent (i) the intended use of conditional sentences, as well as (ii) conditional meaning expressed in a non-conditional form.

34. References
Austin, J. L How To Do Things With Words. eds. J. O. Urmson & M. Sbisa. Harvard University Press.
Bonnefon, J.-F. & G. Politzer ‘Pragmatic conditional, conditional pragmatics, and the pragmatic component of conditional reasoning’. In Cognition and Conditionals: Probability and Logic in Human Thinking, eds. M. Oaksford & N. Chater. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Elder, C-H ‘The underlying conditionality of conditionals which do not use if’ eds. J. Naruadol Chancharu, X. F. Hu & M. Mitrovic. Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics 6.
Evans, N. & S. C. Levinson ‘The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science’. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (05), 429–448.
von Fintel, K. & L. Matthewson ‘Universals in semantics’. Linguistic review 25 (1/2), 139.
Jaszczolt, K. M Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jaszczolt, K. M ‘Default Semantics’. In The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis, eds. B. Heine & H. Narrog. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 193–221.
Jaszczolt, K. M. forthcoming. Interactive Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kratzer, A ‘Conditionals’. Reprinted in 2012, Modals and Conditionals. Oxford University Press, pp
Searle, J. R ‘Indirect Speech Acts’. Syntax and Semantics 3, 59–82.
Searle, J. R. & D. Vanderveken Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sperber, D. & D. Wilson Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.