Abstract
The paper focusses on the syntactic and semantic licensing conditions of constructions like Max akzeptiert es, wenn Lea Geige spielt. ‘Max accepts it if Lea plays the violin’. The clause introduced by wenn ‘if’ has a double function in that it is an adverbial that provides the protasis of an implication as well as the propositional argument of a matrix predicate. The paper argues against Pullum [15], Pesetsky [14], and Hinterwimmer [8], suggesting that the conditional conjunction wenn encodes two implication types: the classic type: if p is contingent and true, then q(p) and the preference type: if p is contingent, then q(p). Additionally, the paper focusses on the characteristic properties of the matrix predicates that license argument conditionals.
The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful discussions with Robert Fittler and Hubert Truckenbrodt, as well as the comments of the anonymous reviewers.
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- 1.
Each construction type shown here can be exemplified by a corpus example provided by the ZAS-Database on clause-embedding predicates.
- 2.
- 3.
As to m-command, Pesetsky proposes two versions, me- and md-command. Since the difference between them is not relevant for our purposes, we neglect it at this place.
- 4.
(19a) corresponds to Hinterwimmer's [8] (31a) and (19b) corresponds to his (24a).
- 5.
Sudhoff [26] provides a similar proposal for embedded dass-clauses in German.
- 6.
- 7.
The motivation for assuming ellipsis is due to Hubert Truckenbrodt (p.c.).
- 8.
Regarding German NPI-elements see Richter & Soehn [16].
- 9.
- 10.
According to Égré [3], a predicate is veridical if A predicate dass σ ⇒ σ and a predicate is factive if A (non) predicate dass σ ⇒ σ.
- 11.
Predicates licensing a non-reducible ob-form correspond to Groenendijk & Stokhof’s [6] question intension embedding predicates, and predicates allowing a reducible ob-form are consistent with Groenendijk and Stokhof 's question extension embedding predicates.
- 12.
Zweifeln dass σ is consistent with zweifeln dass ¬σ. Thus, zweifeln ob construes the reducible ob-form [A zweifelt dass σ] [A zweifelt dass ¬σ], but is not related to question extensions – cf. Schwabe & Fittler [23].
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Schwabe, K. (2015). On the Licensing of Argument Conditionals. In: Aher, M., Hole, D., Jeřábek, E., Kupke, C. (eds) Logic, Language, and Computation. TbiLLC 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8984. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46906-4_17
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