A unified analysis of conditionals as topics

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.

Why-questions, topicality and intervention effects in Chinese

“…As a consequence, why does not take part in the scopal interaction of the proposition it modifies (in other words, scope-bearing elements within the propositional argument are fully resolved at the scope positions below the position of why). Meanwhile, I assume that topic is interpreted at the widest possible scope in a sentence (Krifka 2001;Ko 2005;Ebert et al 2014). Topic performs its own speech act of initiating a referent.…”

“…In the following, I provide motivations for the claim that topics are able to scope above speech acts. Various authors have pointed out that if any part of a proposition is capable of scoping out of a speech act, it will have to be a topic (Reinhart 1981;Krifka 2001;Ebert et al 2014). This is because topic establishment is a separate speech act by itself (Krifka further points out that topics even have to scope out of speech acts, given that they function as a separate speech act).…”

“…Various proposals have suggested that the antecedents of biscuit conditionals are topics (Endriss and Hinterwimmer 2008;Ebert et al 2014), which accounts for the fact they scope out of the speech acts performed by the consequents of conditionals. If this is valid, then it is readily predicted by our proposal of topic act that the antecedent in (26) is able to scope above a weishenme-consequent.…”

Chimerical conditionals

“…Ebert & Hinterwimmer (2014) object that in examples like (i), the consequent is asserted regardless of whether the antecedent is true or not.…”

Counterfactual biscuit conditionals: A temporal remoteness Approach

“…In a nutshell, they propose that the syntactic and semantic modal template is the same for hypothetical and biscuit conditionals (contra e.g. Ebert, Ebert & Hinterwimmer (2014)). The difference between the two conditional types lies in the pragmatics: An additional pragmatic inference arising from the notion of conditional independence triggers the 'biscuit' intuition that the consequent is being asserted of the actual world w 0 .…”