On necessary conditional marking and proposition suspension

The meaning of the Spanish construction si es que

Bibliographic Data

ID20343906
AuthorsAsela Reig Alamillo (0000-0001-8559-4781, Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Cognitivas , Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos , Av. Universidad 1001 , 62209 Cuernavaca , Morelos , Mexico, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume37
Issue4
Pages465-494
Publication date2021-02-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Linguistic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0167-6318 • E-ISSN: 1613-3676
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/tlr-2020-2052
OpenAlexW3093876586
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited16

This paper offers a unified analysis of the coded meaning of Spanish conditional marker si es que : it conventionally conveys conditionality and the speaker’s lack of commitment to the proposition. This second meaning differentiates si es que from the general conditional marker si . It is also argued that si es que has two values: suspending a proposition and expressing a necessary condition, and established that these two share the conventional meaning but differ in the discourse status of the proposition: suspension takes place when the proposition was explicitly evoked in previous discourse, while the marking of necessary conditionals takes place when the proposition is not evoked, but typically new information. The analysis of Spanish si es que contributes to determining the relationship between the operation of suspending a content and the expression of conditionality

Conditionality · Epistemology · Linguistics · Political science · Proposition · Sociology · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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