Composing wie wenn—the semantics of hypothetical comparison clauses in German

Abstract

This paper addresses the compositional semantics of hypothetical comparison clauses (= HCCs) in German. HCCs are introduced by either wie (‘how’) or als (‘as’); for example, Ben fährt Rad, {wie wenn er betrunken wäre / als wenn er betrunken wäre / als ob er betrunken wäre / als wäre er betrunken} (‘Ben is cycling as if he were drunk’). I argue for the following hypotheses: (i) Based on an explicit conditional antecedent, HCCs license the interpolation of hypothetical scenarios that give rise to an equivalence relation between entities provided by these scenarios and the given explicit matrix information. (ii) The equivalence relation may hold either between particularized properties (e.g., manners) of hypothetical events and the given matrix event (= V-HCCs), or between hypothetical topic situations and the matrix situation against which the given matrix clause as a whole is evaluated (= S-HCCs). The proposed semantic distinction is traced back to a structural contrast and, thus, is compositionally motivated: V-HCCs relate to the verbal head of the matrix clause, while S-HCCs are non-integrated CP-adjuncts. (iii) Both wie and als lexically encode the relevant mediating equivalence relation; while HCCs with wie allow a regular compositional interpretation in terms of by and large ordinary free relative clauses, als projects rather idiosyncratic semantic (and syntactic) properties.