Influence of modality markers on the conditional interpretation of the German preposition ohne

This paper investigates the impact of modality markers on the conditional interpretation of the German preposition ohne (‘without’). It tackles the question whether it is the preposition itself that possesses a conditional sense or whether it may be due to a modal context that the interpretation arises. The paper presents an annotation study for modality factors (e.g. mood, modal auxiliary verbs, modal adjectives, modal adverbs, modal infinitives, negation) in the context of these sentences. The statistical analysis of the data has been carried out by means of a correspondence analysis in order to identify the relevant factors for the conditional interpretation. The results suggest that primarily the verb mood has an influence. 1 Conditional interpretation of ohne Conditionality can be expressed by a variety of linguistic means. The most typical form is the conditional sentence that is signaled by the subordinators if... then... and establishes a relation between a condition in the antecedent and a depending state of affairs in the consequent. The conditional relation belongs to a subgroup of CCC relations, as they are sometimes referred to (Kortmann, 1997), standing for conditionals, causals, and concessives. But although conditionality is an attested interclausal relation, there are examples in which the same relation is expressed by prepositional phrases, e.g. (1). (1) Ohne größere Wanderung ist es kaum Without bigger hike is it hardly möglich die Insel kennenzulernen. possible the island to.get.to.know ‘Without a long hike it is almost impossible to get to know the island.’ The paraphrase of (1) as a conditional sentence stresses the conditional relation: “If there is no long hike, it is almost impossible to get to know the island.” In the paraphrase the subordinated ifclause expresses the condition in the antecedent, while the matrix clause expresses the depending state of affairs in the consequent. As the preposition ohne carries an inherent negation, the negation become explicit in the paraphrase with the if-clause. In the former example (1) solely the ohne-PP constitutes the antecedent and expresses the condition, which is precisely a negative condition. Negative condition is defined by Kortmann (1997:86) as “If not p, q: The coming of about q depends on the nonfulfillment of p.” But should the preposition ohne (‘without’) hence be attributed a negative conditional interpretation? The preposition ohne expresses that something is lacking or absent in general. The set of all senses and subsenses (which are indicated by the underscore) for German ohne can be found in Table 1 (cf. Müller and Roch, 2012). Examples are provided in English.