The Pragmatics of Biscuit Conditionals
نویسندگان
چکیده
links the clauses “you need anything” and “I’m Jill” in a conditional construction, but semantically we may naturally perceive the propositions expressed by these clauses as conditionally unrelated; the name of the woman does not depend on whether the addressee needs anything or not. To humorously misapprehend such conditional sentences, as Martin does, is to pretend to see a conditional relationship where none exists. Examples that would lend themselves to similar joking have been discussed as a special case of conditionals from a variety of angles under a variety of names. I will speak of Biscuit Conditionals (BCs), a term which is derived from Austin’s famous example (2) (Austin 1956).
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