Conditionals and prediction: time, knowledge, and causation in conditional constructions

This book offers a new and in-depth analysis of English conditional sentences. In a wide-ranging discussion, Dancygier classifies conditional constructions according to time-reference and modality. She shows how the basic meaning parameters of conditionality, such as causation and logical sequence, correlate to formal parameters of the linguistic constructions which are used to express them. Dancygier suggests that the function of prediction is central to the definition of conditionality, and that conditional sentences display certain formal features – verb forms, typical clause order, or intonation, each of which correlates to aspects of interpretation such as the type of reasoning involved, the role of causality, the use of contextual information, or the speaker’s knowledge. Although the analysis is based primarily on English, it provides a theoretical framework that can be extended cross-linguistically to a broad range of grammatical phenomena. It will be essential reading for scholars and students concerned with the role of conditionals in English and many other languages.