Three types of conditionals and their verb forms in English and Portuguese
- 1 January 2008
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH in Cognitive Linguistics
- Vol. 19 (2), 219-240
- https://doi.org/10.1515/cog.2008.009
Abstract
An examination of conditionals in different languages leads to a distinction of three types of conditionals instead of the usual two (indicative and subjunctive). The three types can be explained by the degree of acceptance or as-if acceptance of the truth of the antecedent. The labels subjunctive and indicative are shown to be inadequate. So-called indicative conditionals comprise two classes, the very frequent uncertain-fact conditionals and the quite rare accepted-fact conditionals. Uncertain-fact conditionals may have a time shift in contemporary English and the future subjunctive in Portuguese (though not all of them do). Moreover, paraphrases of if with in case or supposing are usually possible with approximately the same meaning. Accepted-fact conditionals never have these features.Keywords
This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
- What if ? Questions About ConditionalsMind & Language, 2003
- Conditional Clauses: External and Internal SyntaxMind & Language, 2003
- The Grammatical Ingredients of CounterfactualityLinguistic Inquiry, 2000
- David Lewis on indicative and counterfactual conditionalsAnalysis, 1998
- Classifying Conditionals: The Traditional Way is RightMind, 1995
- On ConditionalsMind, 1995
- Indicative and SubjunctiveAnalysis, 1988
- Antecedents and consequentsTheoria, 1986
- Parsing 'If'-SentencesAnalysis, 1984
- A Note on Subjunctive and Counterfactual ConditionalsAnalysis, 1951