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

Conditional utterances and conditional thoughts: A radical contextualist account

Chi-Hé Elder & Kasia JaszczoltUniversity of Cambridge

ICL19, Geneva26 July 2013

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Conditional utterances in English

if p (then) q

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Conditional utterances in English

Conditional constructions are not the only way to express conditional thoughts

(1) Take one more step and I’ll kill you(2) Your money or your life

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Conditional utterances in English

Conditional constructions can be used for other purposes other than expressing conditional thoughts

(3) If you wouldn’t mind, could you close the door?

(4) If that’s a real diamond, I’ll eat my hat!

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A cross-linguistic perspective

Guugu Yimithirr (Australian, QNL): no overt conditionals

(5) The dog might bark. The postman might run away.

(Evans & Levinson 2009: 443, after Haviland 1979)

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Outline

Classifying conditionalsConditionals and speakers’ intentions: A corpus-based accountRecovering intended effects through linguistic cuesRadical contextualismRepresenting conditional meaning in Interactive Semantics

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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)

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Devising criteria for classification

Want to allow that conditional meaning may or may not be speaker’s primary intended meaning

No conditional LFPrimary meaning is conditional

Conditional LFPrimary meaning is conditionalPrimary meaning is not conditional

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Classifying conditionals

No bi-unique correlation between conditional constructions and conditional meaningsDoes 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)

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Criteria for classification

2 roles of the antecedent p:

indicates remoteness from the actual world

speaker is not committed to its truth

is a suppositionrestricts situations in which main clause holds

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Pilot study (ICE-GB, Elder 2012)

46% of conditional utterances use if

Narrowing scope to conditional constructionsWant to look at relation between form and content

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Conditionals and speech acts

(6) If you rang her now she’d say yes (advice)

(7) If you hit me with it once more I’ll kill you (threat)

(8) Be great if you would do that (request)

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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?

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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 pragmaticallyLabels used are for exemplification only

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Example

(9) If you drop the vase it will break>> Don’t drop the vase

Conditional warningMain message: Don’t do p

p q

hearer’s action negative consequence

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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?

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Threat

(10) 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

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Conditional offer(11) 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 speakerMain message: You may do q

p q

hearer’s action

positive consequence

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Discussion

Utterance may have conditional LF with non-conditional primary meaningLF may be overridden to give primary meaningConstituent parts of conditional construction may be enriched/overridden giving input to non-conditional implicature

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No consequent?

(12) 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 contextAt the level of thoughts, there may not be an intention of a consequent

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Now if you’d like to put on your helmet…

p q (inferred)

hearer’s action positive consequence

Main message: Do pConventionalised use of if

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Intermediary conclusions

Speaker’s primary intended meaning may arise at any level of pragmatic processThere 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?

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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)

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Suppositions as primary or secondary meanings

(12) Now if you’d like to put on your helmet

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Conditionals in Default Semantics

K. M. Jaszczolt, 2005. Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press

K. M. Jaszczolt, 2010. ‘Default Semantics’. In: B. Heine and H. Narrog (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 215-246.

world knowledge (WK)

word meaning and sentence structure (WS)

situation of discourse (SD)

stereotypes and presumptions properties of human inferential system (IS) about society and culture (SC)

Fig. 1: Sources of information contributing to a merger representation Σ

merger representation Σ

Primary meaning:

combination of word meaning and sentence structure (WS)

conscious pragmatic inferencepm (from situation of discourse, social and

social, cultural and cognitive defaults (CD) cultural assumptions, and world world-knowledge defaultspm (SCWDpm) knowledge) (CPIpm) Secondary meanings:

Social, cultural and world-knowledge defaultssm (SCWDsm) conscious pragmatic inferencesm (CPIsm)

Fig. 2: Utterance interpretation according to the processing model of the revised version of Default Semantics

merger representation Σ

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sources of information types of processes

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Mapping between sources and processes

WK SCWD or CPISC SCWD or CPIWS WS (logical form)SD CPIIS CD

DS/IS makes use of the processing model and it indexes the components of ∑ with a subscript standing for the type of processing

Representing conditional thought (two dimensions)1. p ? ∑,PM

‘If you leave your tea on a wobbly table…’

2. p ? ∑, SM

‘If you’d like to put your helmet on’ PM: Put your helmet on

3. p qWS, PM

‘If it rains we’ll stay at home’

4. p qWS, SM

‘If you’re hungry, there are biscuits on the sideboard’ PM: Help yourself to biscuits

5. ? p q∑, PM

‘Touch his iPad and he’ll scream’ PM: If you touch his iPad he’ll scream’

6. ? ? p q∑, SM

‘Please put your helmet on’ SM: If you put your helmet on, you’ll be safer’

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Fig 3: ∑ for 2. p ? ∑, SM

‘If you’d like to put your helmet on’

∑

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Fig 4: ∑ for 5. p q∑, PM

‘Touch his iPad and he’ll scream’

∑

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ConclusionsConditional 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.

ReferencesAustin, J. L. 1962. How To Do Things With Words. eds. J. O. Urmson & M. Sbisa.

Harvard University Press.Bonnefon, J.-F. & G. Politzer. 2010. ‘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. 2012. ‘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. 2009. ‘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. 2008. ‘Universals in semantics’. Linguistic review 25 (1/2), 139.

Jaszczolt, K. M. 2005. Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jaszczolt, K. M. 2010. ‘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. 1991. ‘Conditionals’. Reprinted in 2012, Modals and Conditionals. Oxford University Press, pp. 86-108.

Searle, J. R. 1975. ‘Indirect Speech Acts’. Syntax and Semantics 3, 59–82.Searle, J. R. & D. Vanderveken. 1985. Foundations of illocutionary logic.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Sperber, D. & D. Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford:

Blackwell Publishing.