Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART I GENERAL STUDIES
- PART II PARTICULAR STUDIES
- 5 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF ‘DONKEY’-SENTENCES
- 6 GENERIC INFORMATION, CONDITIONAL CONTEXTS AND CONSTRAINTS
- 7 DATA SEMANTICS AND THE PRAGMATICS OF INDICATIVE CONDITIONALS
- 8 REMARKS ON THE SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF CONDITIONALS
- 9 THE USE OF CONDITIONALS IN INDUCEMENTS AND DETERRENTS
- 10 CONDITIONALS AND SPEECH ACTS
- 11 CONSTRAINTS ON THE FORM AND MEANING OF THE PROTASIS
- 12 CONDITIONALS, CONCESSIVE CONDITIONALS AND CONCESSIVES: AREAS OF CONTRAST, OVERLAP AND NEUTRALIZATION
- 13 THE REALIS–IRREALIS CONTINUUM IN THE CLASSICAL GREEK CONDITIONAL
- 14 THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF si-CLAUSES IN ROMANCE
- 15 FIRST STEPS IN ACQUIRING CONDITIONALS
- 16 THE ACQUISITION OF TEMPORALS AND CONDITIONALS
- 17 CONDITIONALS ARE DISCOURSE-BOUND
- 18 CONDITIONALS IN DISCOURSE: A TEXT-BASED STUDY FROM ENGLISH
- Index of names
- Index of languages
- Index of subjects
14 - THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF si-CLAUSES IN ROMANCE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART I GENERAL STUDIES
- PART II PARTICULAR STUDIES
- 5 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF ‘DONKEY’-SENTENCES
- 6 GENERIC INFORMATION, CONDITIONAL CONTEXTS AND CONSTRAINTS
- 7 DATA SEMANTICS AND THE PRAGMATICS OF INDICATIVE CONDITIONALS
- 8 REMARKS ON THE SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF CONDITIONALS
- 9 THE USE OF CONDITIONALS IN INDUCEMENTS AND DETERRENTS
- 10 CONDITIONALS AND SPEECH ACTS
- 11 CONSTRAINTS ON THE FORM AND MEANING OF THE PROTASIS
- 12 CONDITIONALS, CONCESSIVE CONDITIONALS AND CONCESSIVES: AREAS OF CONTRAST, OVERLAP AND NEUTRALIZATION
- 13 THE REALIS–IRREALIS CONTINUUM IN THE CLASSICAL GREEK CONDITIONAL
- 14 THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF si-CLAUSES IN ROMANCE
- 15 FIRST STEPS IN ACQUIRING CONDITIONALS
- 16 THE ACQUISITION OF TEMPORALS AND CONDITIONALS
- 17 CONDITIONALS ARE DISCOURSE-BOUND
- 18 CONDITIONALS IN DISCOURSE: A TEXT-BASED STUDY FROM ENGLISH
- Index of names
- Index of languages
- Index of subjects
Summary
Editors' note. This paper traces the two-thousand-year history of conditional sentence types from Latin to the modern Romance languages. The rich documentation of these languages allows detailed consideration of the thoroughgoing changes in the tense/aspect/ mood systems of the verb. In spite of successive shifts and new formations, the system of conditionals remains fundamentally the same in terms of basic semantic parameters of hypotheticality (real, potential, unreal) and time (past, nonpast). However, the boundary between potential and unreal conditionals is less clear-cut than between real and either of them, and the time parameter is less clear-cut in potential and unreal than in real conditions. This paper relates to those of König, Bowerman and Reilly in its dynamic approach, and to ter Meulen's and Reilly's in its focus on temporality.
INTRODUCTION
The historical study of conditional sentences in a particular language or language family is a complex and difficult task. One of the major reasons for this is the nondiscrete nature of the category involved, in that the meaning of conditional sentences seems to shade off imperceptibly into adjacent semantic areas, in particular those of concession, cause and time. Equally, even where, as in the case of Romance, there is one favoured structure for conditional sentences (a biclausal sentence incorporating a protasis introduced by the conjunction si), this will not always carry the relevant value, while conversely there will be other structures with diverse functions which can and do in certain circumstances serve to mark a hypothetical antecedent–consequent relation.
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- Information
- On Conditionals , pp. 265 - 284Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986
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