Facts and Ideals: On the Role of doch in Conditionals and Optatives

This paper addresses optative constructions, constructions that express a wish or desire without a modal that means ‘wish’ or ‘want’. Focusing on German, I argue that “expressing a wish” is a possible use of a conditional antecedent that is freely available. The question is how certain elements, such as the contrastive particle doch (or the focus particle nur ‘only’), which are typical for optative constructions, interact with this wish. I argue that they interact with the wish indirectly; they have a meaning that is independent from optativity, but which can be used to bring out an already available wish reading. This is achieved by eliminating alternative readings. Discussing German doch as a case study, I show how this interaction can be made precise. 1 The Puzzle Optative constructions (Scholz 1991, Rosengren 1993, Rifkin 2000, Asarina & Shklovsky 2008, Biezma 2010, Gärtner 2010) express a wish or desire without containing a modal that means wish or want. This is illustrated in (1); (1a) conveys a wish that appears equivalent to the wish described in (1b). (1) a. If only John had come to the party! b. I wish John had come to the party. In many languages, optatives seem to have the shape of conditional antecedents that contain the particle only (Rifkin 2000). In some languages, other particles are prototypical markers of optative constructions; in German, (2a), the unstressed contrast particle doch (cf. Thurmair 1989) seems to support an optative reading; as shown in (2b), Dutch toch can do so as well. (2) a. Wenn Hans doch einmal auf Maria gehört hätte! German if Hans doch once to Maria listened had ‘If only Hans had listened to Maria once!’ b. Als Jan toch eens naar Marie had geluistered! Dutch if Jan toch once to Marie had listened ‘If only Jan had listened to Marie once!’ In Reich, Ingo et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn & Bedeutung 15, ppp–ppp. Universaar – Saarland Unversity Press: Saarbrücken, Germany, 2011.