[PLing] Talk by Magdalena Kaufmann & Stefan Kaufmann 1 July

[Iva Kovač]

Dear colleagues,

We would like to invite you to our next talk within the Theoretical 
Linguistics Colloquium.

Speaker: Magdalena Kaufmann & Stefan Kaufmann (University of 
Connecticut)

Date/venue: July 1st, 14:00 - 15:30, Sensengasse 3a, 1090 Vienna, 
Seminarraum 3

Upcoming events as well as further information can be found on our 
website:
https://sites.google.com/view/totlvienna/upcoming

We are looking forward to seeing you at the talk,
Iva Kovač, Magdalena Lohninger and Valerie Wurm

Title & abstract:

Ways of being iffy

There are many ways of talking conditionally, about what will or would 
be the case in certain hypothetical situations. We are interested in the 
various linguistic forms that are available for expressing such meanings 
in English and across languages.

The first part of the talk is concerned with English if-then sentences. 
They create special environments for the interpretation of their 
constituents. Specifically, the semantic contribution of temporal, 
aspectual and modal expressions in conditionals can differ in puzzling 
ways from their "ordinary" meaning in simple matrix clauses. We present 
a framework for the analysis of such apparent mismatches, developed for 
English if-sentences and tested against a range of other languages and 
constructions. Among its hallmarks is an integrated analysis of 
"indicative" and "subjunctive" conditionals, as well as a novel approach 
to the role of "fake Past" in conditionals.

In the second part of the talk, we turn to a set of expressions which 
can be recruited for the expression of conditional meanings, even though 
that is not their prototypical function. Their analysis tests the 
potential as well as the limits of the approach introduced earlier. 
Specifically, sentential conjunctions and juxtapositions are also 
well-known to give rise to (indicative) conditional meanings. The effect 
itself can be analyzed as a form of topicalization, but this leaves 
unexplained puzzling restrictions on what sorts of conditionals can be 
expressed in this way. We argue that these patterns provide evidence to 
rethink the landscape of conditional theorizing: what are standardly 
considered competing frameworks constitute two strategies for expressing 
hypothetical conditionals that are both employed in natural language.
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