RT Journal Article
T1 Beyond conditionality: On the pragmaticalization of interpersonal if-constructions in English conversation
A1 Lastres López, Cristina
K1 Conditional
K1 Pragmaticalization
K1 Decategorialization
K1 Interpersonal
K1 Stance
K1 Engagement
K1 Insubordination
AB This article explores if-constructions in face-to-face conversation, using data extracted from the British component of the International Corpus of English. The study proposes a functional-pragmatic approach to analyse the uses and functions of if-constructions and suggests a path of pragmaticalization in which conditionals move beyond their prototypical ideational function and come to express interpersonal functions in discourse. Such path of pragmaticalization is also argued to lie behind the possible development of insubordinated if-clauses and of pragmatic markers introduced by if. Corpus results show the great diversity of functions that if-constructions have in conversation and reveal that pragmaticalized types of conditionals outnumber prototypical cause-consequence conditionals in conversation. The analysis also shows that certain morphosyntactic features traditionally associated with conditionals, such as the presence of a modal verb in the apodosis or the occurrence of the if-clause in sentence-initial position, only correlate with the most prototypical conditionals, a finding which is interpreted as an indication of the decategorialization of certain if-constructions
PB Elsevier
YR 2020
FD 2020
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/34895
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/34895
LA eng
NO Journal of Pragmatics Volume 157 , February 2020, Pages 68-83
NO The Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (grants FPU15/02519 and FFI2017-86884-P), the European Regional Development Fund and the Regional Government of Galicia (grants ED431B 2017/12  and ED431D 2017/09). This paper and its author have benefitted from illuminating discussions with Bas Aarts, Kristin Davidse, Rachele De Felice, Karen Dwyer, Teresa Fanego, Jean-Christophe Verstraete, and Sean Wallis.
DS Minerva
RD 8 jun 2026