On affirmative and negative complex conditional connectives

Abstract

This paper describes the characteristic features of clauses introduced by complex conditional connectives (CCCs). Specifically, I analyze the grammatical (§2), semantic (§3, §5, and §6) and pragmatic (§7) properties of these clauses which distinguish them from ij=-conditionals. CCCs are organized into two subsets that stand in complementary distribution: (i) affirmative CCCs and (ii) negative CCCs. These subsets show essentially the same grammatical behavior but differ in terms of their semantics (§ 1 and §4) and their pragmatics (§7). The data are drawn principally from Spanish, but the results of the analysis are, in general, equally applicable to English and French.