Turkish “unless” is not biconditional unless the pragmatic context allows it (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Semantics of ‘unless’ Conditionals: Evidence from ‘unless’ and Disjunctive Inferences
The Spanish journal of psychology, 2011
We report the results of an experiment investigating conditional inferences from conditional assertions such as 'Juan won't go to León unless Nuria goes to Madrid' and 'Either Nuria goes to Madrid or Juan won't go to León'. This experiment addresses Dancygier's claims about the semantics of 'unless' by examining inferential endorsements of 'not-A unless B' and 'Either B or not-A' in the canonical order, presenting the categorical premise after the conditional assertions, and in the inverse order, presenting the categorical premise before the conditional assertions. The results of the experiment confirm that the representation of 'unless' includes two possibilities, although as Dancygier holds one of the possibilities may not be complete. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the strategic nature of conditional reasoning and recent convergent theories of linguistic processing.
The semantics and pragmatics of 'unless'
In this article the authors examine six different analyses of the meaning of 'unless' that have been argued in the literature, and present a new analysis in which a careful distinction is made between the semantic meaning and the pragmatic interpretations of 'unless'. Contrary to the common belief that 'unless' cannot be used in irrealis conditionals, it is shown that 'unless' can actually be used in two different senses there, one in which it alternates with 'except if', but not 'if...not' (e.g. 'He wouldn’t have done it {unless I had / except if I had / *if I hadn’t} asked him to, and I didn’t') and one in which it alternates with 'if...not' but not with 'except if' (e.g. 'You did do well, but you wouldn’t have succeeded {unless I had / if I hadn’t / *except if I had} helped you)'. It is shown, finally, how the various interpretations of 'unless' can be reconciled with a common semantic meaning and how the different constraints on the use of 'unless', 'except if' and 'if...not' can be accounted for.
Conjunction Meets Negation: A Study in Cross-linguistic Variation / (with B Haddican) 2004
Journal of Semantics, 2004
The central topic of this inquiry is a cross-linguistic contrast in the interaction of conjunction and negation. In Hungarian (Russian, Serbian, Italian, Japanese), in contrast to English (German), negated definite conjunctions are naturally and exclusively interpreted as `neither'. It is proposed that Hungarian conjunctions simply replicate the behavior of plurals, their closest semantic relatives. More puzzling is why English-type languages present a different range of interpretations. By teasing out finer distinctions in intonation and context the paper tracks down missing readings and argues that it is eventually not necessary to postulate a radical cross-linguistic semantic difference. In the course of making that argument it is observed that negated conjunctions on the `neither' reading carry the expectation that the predicate hold of both conjuncts. The paper investigates several hypotheses concerning the source of this expectation. * This paper benefitted greatly from comments by an anonymous reviewer. We are grateful to Arto Anttila,
The Interaction of Negation with Focus: ne...ne phrases in Turkish
Lingua, 2003
This article is an attempt to investigate subject and object phrases coordinated with ne…ne ‘neither …nor’ in Turkish. Arguing against the common Turkological practice, it is suggested that the use of subject or object ne…ne phrases with negative predicates, in addition to those with non-negative predicates, is well-motivated in terms of their information structure. In other words, ne…ne phrases with negative and non-negative predicates differentiate for their focal properties and this is reflected in their information structures. In accordance with the generalizations reached in terms of their information structures, the syntactic behavior of subject and object ne…ne phrases in matrix and embedded clauses is given an account within the minimalist framework of Chomsky (Chomsky, N., 1995. Categories and transformations. In: The Minimalist Program. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). BoImage koviImage and Takahashi's [Ling. Inquiry 29 (1998) 347] arguments for lowering at LF are also adopted to overcome the problems raised by the ne…ne phrases in embedded clauses.
Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje, 2019
The complex subordinator unless (Cr. osim ako; Sl. razen če) introduces subordinate conditional clauses carrying exceptive meaning. It is usually assumed that unless-clauses are akin to (and replaceable by) negative if-conditional clauses, with the choice of one over the other being governed by semantic and pragmatic factors. This paper investigates subordinate unless-clauses in Croatian and Slovenian in comparison to English, primarily with regard to their interpretation, the possibility of expressing hypothetical and factual meanings, and the (non-)occurrence of pleonastic negation. Based on the data collected from referential corpora of Croatian, Slovenian and English we aim to establish not only the similarities that exist regarding unless-clauses across the three languages, but also some significant differences: as opposed to Croatian and Slovenian, English unless-clauses rarely/ /untypically express hypothetical meanings. As for the occurrence of pleonastic negation in unless-...
Negation of Conditionals in Natural Language and Thought
Logical Investigations, 2021
External negation of conditionals occurs in sentences beginning with 'It is not true that if' or similar phrases, and it is not rare in natural language. A conditional may also be denied by another with the same antecedent and opposite consequent. Most often, when the denied conditional is implicative, the denying one is concessive, and vice versa. Here I argue that, in natural language pragmatics, 'If A, ∼B' entails '∼(if A, B)', but '∼(if A, B)' does not entail 'If A, ∼B'. 'If A, B' and 'If A, ∼B' deny each other, but are contraries, not contradictories. Truth conditions that are relevant in human reasoning and discourse often depend not only on semantic but also on pragmatic factors. Examples are provided showing that sentences having the forms '∼(if A, B)' and 'If A, ∼B' may have different pragmatic truth conditions. The principle of Conditional Excluded Middle, therefore, does not apply to natural language use of conditionals. Three squares of opposition provide a representation the aforementioned relations.
Conditionals and unconditionals: Cross-linguistic and logical aspects
Semantic universals and universal semantics, 1991
This series of books on the semantics of natural language contains collections of original research on selected topics as well as monographs in this area. Contributions from linguists, philosophers, logicians, computer-scientists and cognitive psychologists are brought together to promote interdisciplinary and international research. Editors Alice ter Meulen Other books in this series: 1. Alice G.B. ter Meulen (ed.) Studies in Mode/theoretic Semantics 2. Jeroen Groenendijk, Theo M.V. Janssen and Martin Stokhof (eds.) Truth, Interpretation and Information 3. Fred Landman and Frank Veltman (eds.) Varieties of Formal Semantics 4. Johan van Benthem and Alice G.B. ter Meulen (eds.) Generalized Quantifiers in Natural Languages 5. Vincenzo Lo Cascio and Co Vet (eds.) Temporal Structure in Sentence and Discourse 6. Fred Landman Towards a Theory of Information 7. Jeroen Groenendijk, Dick de Jongh, Martin Stokhof (eds.) Foundations of Pragmatics and Lexical Semantics 8. Jeroen Groenendijk, Dick de Jongh, Martin Stokhof (eds.) Studies in Discourse Representations Theory 9. Michael Moortgat Categoria I Investigations 10. Irena Bellert Feature System for Quantification Structures in Natural Languages 11. R. Bartsch, J. van Benthem and P. van Emde Boas (eds.)