The Semantics and Pragmatics of Conditional Connectives: cross-linguistic and experimental perspectives
Final Report Abstract
The concept of conditionality is central to human thought and action, which is manifested by a rich repertoire of conditional expressions in natural language. The project investigated the semantics, pragmatics and processing of conditional connectives (CCs) with a focus on German, English and Mandarin Chinese. The formal modeling of the data mainly relied on Giannakidou’s and Giannakiou and Mari’s (2021) (non)veridicality (or speaker commitment) model and Liu’s (2012) multidimensional semantic framework. For the experiments, we used the forced lexical choice task, the reading and rating task, the self-paced reading task and the EEG method. More specifically, the project dealt with three empirical domains. (1) Non-at-issue meanings of conditional connectives: Following Giannakidou and Mari (2021), we assume “nonveridical equilibrium” (implying that p and ¬p as equal possibilities) to be the default for conditionals. The equilibrium of conditionals, as that of questions, can be manipulated to produce bias (i.e., reduced or higher speaker commitment). We show that CCs in both German and Mandarin can trigger different degrees of speaker commitment towards the antecedent proposition, in interaction with polarity items, adverbs, modal verbs. (2) Conditional connectives and polarity items: Regarding the interaction of CCs and polarity items, we have found that firstly, the presence of emphatic NPIs (German jemals/überhaupt, English ever/at all) in conditionals conveys a weakened speaker commitment towards the antecedent. Secondly, whereas factive and non-factive adverbs were equally acceptable with the factive causal connective, non-factive adverbs were preferred over factive ones by CCs. Thirdly, although the antecedent of conditionals is well-established as licenser of weak NPIs, we show that attenuating NPIs such as German sonderlich ‘particularly’ and English all that are degraded in indicative vs. counterfactual conditionals; for this we provide both theoretical accounts and processing perspectives, which sheds light on the interplay between NPI licensing and the semantics and pragmatics of various types of conditionals. (3) Biconditionals and conditional perfection: The project collected data regarding the question whether and in what ways CCs differ in their biconditionality and susceptibility to ‘conditional perfection’ (CP). They show that semantic biconditionals in natural language are rare on the one hand, and on the other hand, there was a high degree of CP in simple conditionals we tested. Taken together, the results of the project contribute advances in our understanding of conditionality and speaker commitment, and provide future avenues and directions for research on the semantics, pragmatics and processing of conditionals and conditional reasoning.
Publications
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Natural Language Conditionals and Conditional Reasoning. Volume 1 (2019), Special Issue of Linguistics Vanguard 5(s3)
Liu, Mingya (ed.)
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The elastic nonveridicality property of indicative conditionals. Linguistics Vanguard, 5(s3).
Liu, Mingya
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Bias and Modality in Conditionals: Experimental Evidence and Theoretical Implications. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 50(6), 1369-1399.
Liu, Mingya; Rotter, Stephanie & Giannakidou, Anastasia
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Processing Non-at-Issue Meanings of Conditional Connectives: The wenn/falls Contrast in German. Frontiers in Psychology, 12(c(2021, 8, 10)).
Liu, Mingya
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Semantics Processing of Conditional Connectives: German wenn ‘if’ Versus nur wenn ‘only if’. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 50(6), 1337-1368.
Liu, Mingya & Barthel, Mathias
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Speaker Commitment in Mandarin Conditional Connectives: Distributional and Experimental Evidence. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (2021), 810-823. Springer International Publishing.
Liu, Mingya & Wang, Yuting
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Jiu-conditionals in Mandarin Chinese: thoughts on a uniform pragmatic analysis of Mandarin conditional constructions. Linguistics Vanguard, 8(s4), 435-446.
Liu, Mingya & Wang, Yuting
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Online comprehension of conditionals in context: A self-paced reading study on wenn (‘if’) versus nur wenn (‘only if’) in German. Linguistics Vanguard, 8(s4), 371-381.
Barthel, Mathias; Tomasello, Rosario & Liu, Mingya
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Processing Attenuating NPIs in Indicative and Counterfactual Conditionals. Frontiers in Psychology, 13(c(2022, 6, 10)).
Schwab, Juliane & Liu, Mingya
