Real Conditionals

Philosophers and logicians have long debated how best to understand conditional or hypothetical sentences. William G. Lycan has a distinctive approach to this debate, attending not just to the semantics of such sentences, but equally to their syntax. He shows how insights from linguistic theory help to illuminate problems about the meaning and function of conditionals. For instance, philosophers and logicians have had problems analysing the locutions 'only if', 'unless', and 'even if'. Lycan sets out a general semantic theory of conditionals which works for all such sentences; he assigns meanings to them in a way that explains how and why those meanings depend upon features of utterance context. According to Lycan's theory the 'if'-clauses refer to items called 'events', 'circumstances', or 'conditions'. Real Conditionals gives at last the definitive presentation of this original approach to a topic at the intersection of philosophy, logic, and linguistics. Lycan's characteristically lively and witty expository style ensures that it can be enjoyed by readers from all three disciplines.

"Conditional sentences” express factual implications, or hypothetical situations and their consequences. There are two clauses in conditional sentences: Dependent clause: Expresses the condition Main clause: Expresses the consequence This Book Covers The Following Topics: What are “Conditional Sentences”? Present Real Conditional Sentences Present Unreal Conditional Sentences Past Real Conditional Sentences Past Unreal Conditional Sentences Future Real Conditional Sentences Future Unreal Conditional Sentences Continuous Forms of Conditional Sentences Mixed Conditional Sentences 'Were To' - Conditional Sentences 'Special Force' - Conditional Sentences 'Wish'- Conditional Sentences 'Miscellaneous' - Conditional Sentences Conditional Sentences: Exercise – 1 Conditional Sentences: Exercise – 2 Summary Sample This: Present Real Conditional Sentences The Present Real Conditional Is Used To Talk About What You Normally Do In Real-Life Situations. STRUCTURE [First Part – If / When + Subject + Present Verb…, Second Part – Simple Present] OR [First Part – Simple Present, Second Part – If / When + Subject + Present Verb…] Whether Use “If” OR “When”? "If" implies - things don’t happen regularly. “When” implies - things happen regularly. If you eat too much fast food, it makes you overweight. Or [It makes you overweight if you eat too much fast food.] If you put salt on salad, they taste nicer. Or [They taste nicer if you put salt on salad.] When I have free time, I often sit in the library. [Regularly] Or [I often sit in the library when I have free time.] MORE EXAMPLES: [First Part – If / When + Subject + Present Verb…, Second Part – Simple Present] If I move to school, I never take my mobile. If you want to be a super-achiever, first recognize your own capabilities. If it melts, it raises the sea level. If something bad happens anywhere, it is natural to be sad. If you heat water, it boils. If the office closes early, we definitely go to the library. If you need help, call me. If I don’t come on time, you are supposed to leave the office. If you feel sleepy, just go to bed. If that isn’t absolute verification, I don’t know what is. If the contractors fail to achieve the target within the specified period, they are liable to pay damages. If you don't get the first good, be content with the second good. [Note: Use of Imperative Sentence] If you are working for something with convictions, you are satisfied. If proper punishment is not awarded to the accused, the faith of the society is shaken in the legal system of the country. [Note: Use of passive voice – is + awarded, and is + shaken] If uranium is bombarded with a neutron, it absorbs some. If a Swedish govt. is interested in such a deal at all, Sweden can negotiate for itself a better deal. If a person is abused repeatedly then that person has the right to object and the right to argue also. If my statement has pained someone then I regret it. If they have done something wrong that doesn’t mean I have also done something wrong. If the refugee cannot afford to pay, she may be refused access to the hospital or have her refugee card confiscated. [First Part – Simple Present, Second Part – If / When + Subject + Present Verb…] I have come to bother you if you don’t mind. We don’t even know if any person by that name exists. Their wages are cut if they do not report for duty on time. You learn a language better if you visit the country where it is spoken. Agency works under pressure if one goes by what the ex-Director says. I apologize if at all the article hurt anyone. Power companies can hike the tariffs if the cost of imported coal rises. Hang me if I am guilty. I meet him if I go there. Butter dissolves if you leave it in sun. Plants die if you don’t water them. Milk goes off if you don’t keep it in a cool place. Ask the officer if you have any problems. I don’t mind if you sit in my cabin. Customers get upset if they are being overcharged. I have no problem if her name is disclosed. They promised to slash power rates if they are elected. Existing laws can be a deterrent if a time-based trial is conducted. Do you mind if I turn on the radio for a while? A death row convict cannot be executed if he is not physically and mentally fit. A student may not be motivated to work hard if a promotion is guaranteed. Many of the deaths can be avoided if bikers wear helmets. I go by taxi when the bus is late.

Conditional sentences are among the most intriguing and puzzling features of language: analysis of their meaning and function has important implications for, and uses in, many areas of philosophy. Jonathan Bennett, one of the world's leading experts, distils many years' work and teaching into this Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, the fullest and most authoritative treatment of the subject. The literature on conditionals is difficult - needlessly so. Bennett's treatment is meticulously careful and luminously clear. He presents and evaluates in detail various approaches to the understanding of 'indicative' conditionals (like 'If Shakespeare didn't write Hamlet, some aristocrat did') and 'subjunctive' conditionals (like 'If rabbits had not been deliberately introduced into New Zealand, there would be none there today'); and he offers his own view, which will be recognized as a major original contribution to the subject. Journeying through this intellectual territory brings one into contact with the metaphysics of possible worlds, probability and belief-change, probability and logic, the pragmatics of conversation, determinism, ambiguity, vagueness, the law of excluded middle, facts versus events, and more. One might perhaps learn more philosophy from a thorough study of conditionals than from any other kind of work. Bennett's Guide is an ideal introduction for undergraduates with a philosophical grounding, and will also be a rich source of illumination and stimulation for graduate students and professional philosophers.

The volume brings together a selection of papers from a symposium on Conditionality held in the University of Duisburg on 25-26 March 1994. Ten years after the Stanford symposium, the Proceedings of which were edited by Traugott et al. (1986), the area of conditionality is revisited in a synthesis of issues and aspects with insights drawn from the wider framework of general processes of conceptualisation. One major question is therefore what conceptual categories fall under conditionality or how far the notion of conditionality can be extended. The volume represents the up-to-date research on most aspects of conditionality some of which include the relationship between conditionality, hypotheticality and counterfactuality, polarity, historical perspectives, concessives, the acquisition of conditionals.

This volume is a collection of articles written by more than 40 scholars who work in the field of Arabic dialectology. All articles are revised versions of papers presented at the 9th Conference of the Association Internationale de Dialectologie Arabe (AIDA) held in Pescara in March 2011. The variety of dialects represented in the book engage various issues in Arabic dialectology - such as sedentary and Bedouin dialects, sociolinguistic phenomena, and the written dimension - investigated from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The broad range of meaningful subjects that are tackled in the book offer an important contribution to the current debates on general linguistics and sociolinguistics, Arabic linguistics, Arabic literature, as well as Semitic and Islamic studies. (Series: Neue Beihefte zur Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes - Vol. 8)

This book addresses an apparent paradox in the psychology of thinking. On the one hand, human beings are a highly successful species. On the other, intelligent adults are known to exhibit numerous errors and biases in laboratory studies of reasoning and decision making. There has been much debate among both philosophers and psychologists about the implications of such studies for human rationality. The authors argue that this debate is marked by a confusion between two distinct notions: (a) personal rationality (rationality1 Evans and Over argue that people have a high degree of rationality1 but only a limited capacity for rationality2. The book re-interprets the psychological literature on reasoning and decision making, showing that many normative errors, by abstract standards, reflect the operation of processes that would normally help to achieve ordinary goals. Topics discussed include relevance effects in reasoning and decision making, the influence of prior beliefs on thinking, and the argument that apparently non-logical reasoning can reflect efficient decision making. The authors also discuss the problem of deductive competence - whether people have it, and what mechanism can account for it. As the book progresses, increasing emphasis is given to the authors' dual process theory of thinking, in which a distinction between tacit and explicit cognitive systems is developed. It is argued that much of human capacity for rationality1 is invested in tacit cognitive processes, which reflect both innate mechanisms and biologically constrained learning. However, the authors go on to argue that human beings also possess an explicit thinking system, which underlies their unique - if limited - capacity to be rational.

This book is an extremely detailed and comprehensive examination of conditional sentences in English, using many examples from actual language-use. The syntax and semantics of conditionals (including tense and mood options) and the functions of conditionals in discourse are examined in depth, producing an all-round linguistic view of the subject which contains a wealth of original observations and analyses. Not only linguists specializing in grammar but also those interested in pragmatics and the philosophy of language will find this book a rewarding and illuminating source.

Conditionals encode speculation. They convey how events could have been different in the past or present, or might be different in the future if particular conditions had been or will be met. While all languages afford the means to speculate or hypothesize about possible events, the ways in which they do so vary. This work explores some of this variation through an analysis of the stucture and semantics of complex conditional sentences in Russian and Macedonian. It addresses typological questions about the general properties of natural language conditionals and examines the role of the grammatical categories tense, aspect, mood and status in the coding of conditional meaning. The book also discusses the relationship between the use of these categories and the shape of a language's conditional system. For example, the use of tense in counterfactual contexts in Macedonian correlates with the grammaticalization of more shades of conditional meaning than are grammaticalized in Russian, which does not employ tense forms in this way. The study draws on data from a rich variety of sources and thus includes kinds of conditionals overlooked in many other studies. The book addresses issues of concern to Slavists and raises questions for those interested in conditionals and the coding of hypothetical meaning.

The proposed book is best described as a linguistically oriented textbook taking the grammar of English as its subject matter. It is directed to professional teachers of English (ESL and EFL) and their students, as well as those currently training to become teachers of English. The book is also likely to be of interest to interpreters, translators and other English language professionals. It will explore selected aspects and problem areas of English from a broadly “functional” linguistic perspective. My experience as a teacher and teacher trainer has shown me that this perspective has the potential to inspire teachers and students with a genuine enthusiasm for the grammatical features of English and that it often enables them to “make sense” of the grammar in a way that all too often other approaches signally fail to do. An important focus of the book is on understanding grammar as a series of conventionalized patterns rather than a set of rules (which is how grammar has traditionally been presented). Moreover, unlike many other grammar books, this book emphasizes how the grammatical constructions under consideration are employed in various types of communicative situation, attention being given to the importance of discourse context in interpreting the target forms. In line with contemporary linguists generally, the approach adopted is descriptive rather than prescriptive. While the main focus is on English, I offer occasional comments on how the issue under discussion is expressed in languages other than English. Apart from the inherent interest which I hope such comparisons may have for the reader, I take the view that these can be helpful in casting further light on the grammar of English.