Biscuit Conditionals and Prohibited ‘Then’

Abstract

It is generally agreed that there are two kinds of indicative conditionals that do not contain conditional 'then.' There are hypothetical conditionals such as 'If Mary has done the groceries, there is beer in the fridge' and there are biscuit conditionals such as 'If you are thirsty, there is beer in the fridge.' There is also broad consensus that we cannot find an analogous distinction between hypothetical and biscuit conditionals within indicative conditionals that do feature 'then.' Conditionals containing 'then,' it is assumed, are uniformly read as hypothetical conditionals. In this article, I shall argue that there are biscuit conditionals featuring 'then.' This result, I take it, is not only interesting on its own. It also puts pressure on the popular view that conditional 'then' triggers the presupposition that in some situations in which the conditional's antecedent is not true, its consequent is not true either.

Logical Form, Conditionals, Pseudo-Conditionals

“…Not only standard if-sentences often exhibit the same features, but it is not even obvious that these features are essential to biscuit conditionals. According to (Zakkou, 2017), for example, there are reasonably clear examples of biscuit conditionals which include 'then'.…”

When Conditionals Lack Conditionality: The Semantics of Biscuit Conditionals in some Selected Texts from the Holy Quran and the Qudsi Hadiths: A Default Semantics-Theoretic Perspective

“…Much research has been conducted on Biscuit Conditionals (Iatridou, 1991;von Fintel, 1997von Fintel, , 2011DeRose & Grandy, 1999;Siegel, 2006;Franke, 2007;Predelli, 2009;Joh, 2011;Douven, 2012;Swanson, 2013;Rhee, 2014;Francez, 2015;Schulz, 2015;Skovgaard-Olsen, 2016;Zakkou, 2017;Rieser, 2017), among others. These studies agree that Biscuit Conditionals go beyond conditionality towards other primary meanings.…”

Perspectival biscuits

“…Biscuit conditionals typically resist then; which often "forces" a hypothetical reading(Iatridou 1994). However, the reliability of this diagnostic has been challenged byZakkou (2017), among others.…”