Pragmatics of Conditional Marking: Implicature, Scalarity, and Exclusivity [1 ed.] 0815333099, 9780815333098

Citation preview

OUTSTANDING DISSERTATIONS IN

LINGUISTICS

edited by LAURENCE HORN YALE UNIVERSITY

A GARLAND SERIES

This page intentionally left blank

PRAGMATICS OF CONDITIONAL MARKING IMPLICATURE, SCALARITY, AND EXCLUSIVITY

SCOTT A. SCHWENTER

~ 1 Routledge ~~

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1999 by Garland Publishing, Inc. Published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 1999 Scott A. Schwenter All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schwenter, Scott A., 1968Pragmatics of conditional marking: implicature, scalarity, and exclusivity / Scott A. Schwenter. p. cm. - (Outstanding dissertations in linguistics) A revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)-Stanford University, 1998. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Grammar, Comparative and general-Conditionals. 2. Semantics. 3. Pragmatics. 4. Implication (Logic) I. Title. II. Series. P292.5.S38 1998 401'.43-dc21 98-51950

ISBN 13: 978-0-815-33309-8 (hbk)

For Brady

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

1 Introduction 1.1 Overview 1.2 Conditionals 1.3 Outline of a theory of meaning 1.4 Methodology 1.5 Outline of the book Notes

1 9 21 32 34 37

2 Conditional Markers: Semantics 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Semantic approaches to conditional protasis markers 2.3 Conditional markers: two types of procedural meaning 2.4 Conclusion Notes 3 Conditional Markers: Pragmatics 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The implicature of "uncertainty" 3.3 The conditional perfection implicature 3.4 Conclusion Notes

vii

39 39 40

62 70 72

75 75

76 89 110 112

4 Exclusivity And Conditional Marker Form I: Adversative Contexts 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Si in adversative contexts 4.3 Four tests to distinguish si and pero in dialogues 4.4 The P A/SN distinction and si 4.5 Conclusion Notes

117 117 126 139 155 169 171

5 Exclusivity And Conditional Marker Form II: Scalar Contexts 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Scalar contexts and "hybrid" examples 5.3 Epistemic justification and si 5.4 Si and argumentative scales 5.5 Conclusion Notes

175 175 190 201 206 224 226

6 Conclusion 6.1 Summary 6.2 Future research directions 6.3 Fin Notes

231 231 238

References

247

Index

261

245 246

viii

Preface

This book is a slightly revised version of my 1998 Stanford University doctoral dissertation, entitled The Pragmatics of Conditional Marking: Implicature, Scalarity, and Exclusivity. The changes made in this version are indeed slight, especially in terms of content, since I assume that one of the prime goals of the series is to faithfully represent the content of the original dissertation. The most significant new additions to the work are an index and an updated bibliography. The dissertation investigates the meaning of conditional markers, in particular si in Spanish and if in English, using both naturallyoccurring and constructed data. It takes as its starting point the widelyheld, but empirically problematic, view of such markers as encoding a "hypothetical" or "irrealis" semantics, and proposes an alternative analysis of conditional marker meaning from a primarily pragmatic perspective. On this analysis, the "hypotheticality" or "irrealis-ness" expressed by such markers is not due to the encoded semantics of the markers themselves, but rather to a Gricean scalar generalized conversational implicature (GCI) of speaker "uncertainty" associated with the canonical conditional markers. As a Gel, this "uncertainty" is a preferred meaning that may be canceled in certain discourse contexts. The encoded semantics of these markers, by contrast, is analyzed here as consisting of strictly procedural components of meaning (cf. Blakemore 1987, inter alia), which convey that the content of the protasis is a sufficient frame for either the content or the speech act in the apodosis. A number of key implications of this analysis are presented in detail. First, it is shown that "factual" uses of conditional protases, typically considered anomalous despite their frequent occurrence in ix

x

Preface

many types of discourse, fall out from the predictions made by the pragmatic view of conditional marker meaning. Second, it is demonstrated that the "uncertainty" Gel interacts with the well-known implicature of conditional perfection (Geis and Zwicky 1971), and indeed allows one to PREDICT when "biconditional" readings of simple conditionals will and will not arise. Further implications of the analysis arise from the examination of discourse connective uses of si in Spanish in colloquial conversational data. It is shown that these polysemies of conditional marker form, though difficult to relate to conditional marker function on traditional analyses, have a clear synchronic connection to this function when interpreted within the pragmatic model of meaning presented here. The model furthermore allows links to be made between conditionality and other conceptual domains, such as (exclusive) adversativity and (scalar) additivity, and hence has implications for the interface of cognition and communication. While I surely would not claim to have solved all of the problems associated with the meaning of conditional markers like si or if, I 00 feel strongly that this study provides a solid foundation for future research on such markers and also on the constructions, conditional and otherwise, in which they appear. Muncie, Indiana October 1998

Acknow ledgements

The most significant acknowledgement I can make here is to my parents, Bob and Bev Schwenter. That I have been able to complete this study is due directly to their never-ending encouragement and to the fact that they AL WAYS let me know they were proud of me. I can only hope that I will always do the same for my children. Likewise, my sisters Shelley, Kathy, and Nancy never failed to support me, despite their complete (and ongoing) bewilderment about what I actually do. Debo un mont6n de gracias a mi familia en Espana. Desde el primer dia, me han aceptado como su propio hijo, nieto, cunado, 0 sobrino de toda la vida, a pesar de que no me parezco a ninguno de ellos. Y ademas, no se quejaron ni una sola vez (que yo sepa) cuando ponia la grabadora, 0 cuando les hacia preguntas extranas sobre su lengua. Por todo esto y por el simple hecho de que les gusta hablar mucho, siempre les estare agradecido. Throughout the writing of my dissertation, I was blessed with a wonderful committee: Eve Clark, Penny Eckert, and my principal advisor, Elizabeth Traugott. With Eve and Penny I enjoyed many insightful discussions that have helped shape my views of pragmatics and social interaction. In Elizabeth I could not have asked for a more perfect advisor and mentor. From my first day at Stanford, she treated me much more like a colleague than a student, never failing to ask for and, most importantly, pay attention to my ideas and opinions. The intellectual debt lowe to her will be evident to all those who continue on to read the chapters that follow. My thanks also go out to Chaofen Sun, who chaired my dissertation oral, and to Peter Sells, who agreed to play the role of "the fourth" in the oral. My fellow students at Stanford were the source of both intellectual stimulation and (there's really no other way to put it) lots of good times. xi

xii

Acknowledgements

Rachel Nordlinger was the perfect person to share dissertation misery with, always willing and able to be distracted from her work (not like me, of course). Norma Mendoza-Denton was a real life-saver-especially in Hawai'i--and was always there to boost my confidence when I needed it. Jennifer Arnold and Yukiko Morimoto are the best running partners anyone could ever ask for (as is Natalie SchillingEstes, a latecomer to the group). I also enjoyed sharing discussions and laughs with Brad Davidson, Cathryn Donohue, Christine Poulin, Julie Solomon, and Qing Zhang. Many other friends, linguists and non-linguists alike, have generously given their time and support to me along the way, and here I will mention as many as I can: Marc Beaudin, Garland Bills, Emilio Castaneda, Marianna Chodorowska, Maria Josep Cuenca, Alan Hudson, Manuel Perez Saldanya, Salvador Pons Borderfa, Vicent Salvador, Carmen Silva-Corval"(For all the speaker knows) the key mayor may not fit; the door mayor may not open." (1 c) Since the key fits, the door will open.

In a predictive conditional like (1a), an implicature of speaker "uncertainty" like (1 b) regularly arises, since neither the content of the protasis nor that of the apodosis is entailed. However, by changing the connective in question from if to since-which has the effect of entailing the content of the constituent clauses-the implicature of speaker uncertainty can be avoided, as in (Ic). As noted previously in the discussion about "epistemic stance" (chapter 2.2.3), a crucial difference separating connectives like since and if is the sense of speaker certainty associated with the former connective but lacking in the latter. Instead of using a notion like "epistemic stance", the shortcomings of which were detailed above, in this section, I will instead provide an explanation based on a rather distinct perspective regarding the difference between clausal subordinators like since and if. This perspective is a pragmatic one like that sketched by Levinson (1995, 1997). Instead of seeing the difference between two connectives like these as belonging to the realm of coded meaning-as determined by the inherent semantics of since and if-Levinson identifies it as a pragmatic distinction that arises from conventions of use. For these connectives as well as many other linguistic forms, Levinson invokes a heuristic already seen in connection with the Q-principle outlined in chapter 1: "What is not said is not the case" (1995:97). This heuristic is a reformulation of Grice's first maxim of Quantity, "Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange)", and interacts with heuristics that derive from the other principles presented in chapter 1 (I and M), which correspond to Grice's second maxim of Quantity and the maxim of Manner (see also Horn 1984 for a similar attempt at reformulating Gricean Maxims as "principles"). However, unlike the first maxim of Quantity, the Q-principle has a metalinguistic quality, in that it is constrained to "expression-alternates." Recapitulating the discussion in chapter 1.3.2, the effects of the Qprinciple are commonly illustrated by, but not limited to, quantitative scales defined by unilateral entailment (Horn 1972), on which the

78

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

contrasting expressions G and F can be recategorized as an ordered pair, or "Horn scale", . On the same scale,2 S is the "strong" member of the pair, and W the "weak" member, iff a statement containing S unilaterally entails the corresponding statement with W (Horn 1989:231). Conversely, a statement containing W will carry a generalized conversational implicature (GCI) that the stronger statement in which S substitutes for W does not hold; in other words, W implicates the negation of S (Levinson 1995:98, 1997:2). Perhaps the most famous example of an ordered pair that works along these lines is the one formed by the English quantifiers "Hans wrote a novel and then sold the rights to CUP" Hans wrote a novel and he sold the rights to CUP in advance.

Via the I-Principle, a speaker may implicate via the utterance of a sentence like (32a) an enriched version like that in (32b), where the conjoined events of writing a novel and selling the rights to it are interpreted as occurring in temporal succession. That this sense of temporal succession is an implicature and not part of the explicit content of (32a) is shown by its cancellation in (32c), where the adverbial in advance situates Hans' selling of the novel's rights to CUP PRIOR to his finishing it. This example illustrates four common properties of I-inferences (see Levinson 1997:35). First, the inference to temporal succession is a more specific interpretation, in that it is entailed by "what is said" in (32a). Second, the inference has a positive character: when combined with the "explicitly-said" content, this combination-the "total communicated content"--entails the content of what was explicitly said in (32a). Third, the inference is guided by stereotypical assumptions about how the world works, and spelling them out is often redundant; when these assumptions are not met, there is no temporal succession inference, cf. He gave a paper at the pragmatics conference and he didn't even send an abstract. Finally, as opposed to Q-inferences, which have a metalinguistic character (see above), I-inferences do not make reference to contrast sets, to items that might have been said but weren't (e.g. there is no pairwise contrast to another version of (32a) with temporal since instead of and as the conjunction, because there is no Horn-scale of the form to stand for "implicates" and ++> to indicate the "total communicated content", i.e. the content of "what is said" PLUS that of the implicature in question. 2. One of the central problems in work on scalar implicature is determining exactly what the content of the scale in question should be. In some cases, this may not cause much concern: the scale for quantifiers like all and some seems to concern a set of entities. Other times the relevant scalar parameter is not so clear: what is it, exactly, that permits one to talk about the relative "strength" of connectives like since or if! How can we justify such a direct comparison of these connectives? These questions are surely a topic for another book-length study. 3. The labels originally proposed by Gazdar (1979) for these implicatures were "scalar Q-implicatures" and "clausal Q-implicatures", and this terminology is still used by Levinson (1983, 1995, 1997). However, I feel that these labels are potentially misleading, since they might invite the inference that "clausal Q-implicatures" are not scalar, when clearly they are (as noted by Levinson 1997:30). 4. Examples like Since John said he is coming, and I think he is, we'll order a pizza are acceptable because here the speaker's parenthetical remark offers an epistemic judgment on the reported claim embedded under said, not on the fact of saying itself, which is entailed by since. Note in fact that any attempt to hedge what John said once again results in clear contradiction: #Since John said he is coming, and I think he did, we'll order a pizza. I thank Eve Clark for pointing out this type of example to me. 5. There is also an interaction with politeness: to show deference, speakers--even when they are "certain"-often use a weaker verb like think instead of a stronger one like know in order to avoid the appearance of imposing their "certainty" on their interlocutors. Clearly, this function derives from the scale formed by these verbs, and the associated Q-implicature. 6. These particular Spanish complex connectives and their translations are taken from Montolfo (1994), who classifies them as "Affirmative Complex Conditional Connectors" (ACCCs), in order to distinguish them from "Negative" (NCCC) counterparts like a menos que and a no ser que, both of which translate English 'unless.' I will restrict my attention to the ACCCs, and replace the term "Connector" with "Marker." 7. I should point out that this English sentence, in spoken language at least, verges on ungrammaticality for me, and presumably other American English speakers, for whom the use of since is declining (Elizabeth Traugott, p.c.). Nevertheless, it is perfectly acceptable in other dialects of English.

Conditional Markers: Pragmatics

113

8. Note however that the possibility of inserting then does not ALWAYS coincide with the conditional perfection implicature. 9. In personal communication, Larry Horn has pointed out to me many more speech-act conditionals that do indeed give rise to conditional perfection, as well as some examples that give rise to the implicature despite not having the form of conditionals. For instance, Stop here on red, a roadsign commonly seen at intersections in the USA, gives rise to its converse "Don't stop here on non-red" with little difficulty. 10. There is a third possible analysis of the phenomena linked to conditional perfection. This analysis is implicit in the brief discussion of conditionals in Ducrot (1990, 1993), and basically amounts to a denial of the view that there exists an IMPLICATURE of the conditional perfection sort. The claim instead is that the meaning of the two segments P and Q in a conditional cannot be considered separately as independent propositions. The Q that occurs with P is uniquely specified by that particular P; thus, any other Q, even one containing an equivalent proposition when viewed in isolation, is not really the "same" Q. To put this another way, the Q that occurs with P necessarily carries a trace of that P-it is actually Qp-and any other Q occurring with another condition, say M, is no longer just Q but rather Qm. Support for Ducrot's argument comes from examples like You'll be ill if you smoke, and you'll be ill if you drink, where the speaker can continue on by saying but the first illness is worse than the second. The Qs of each example are in fact propositionally idential (you'll be il~, but yet they can be nominalized separately, and can be seen to contain the "trace" of their antecedents: one is therefore characterizable as "sickness-from-smoking" and the other "sickness-from-drinking" (Ducrot 1993:58). It seems that this particular view of the matter would also be consonant with the view of an approach like Construction Grammar (e.g. Fillmore 1986), especially since it appears to illustrate that "the pragmatic forces or effects [viz. what is usually called the conditional perfection IMPLICATURE] ... are conveyed according to conventions of language [viz. the conditional construction] rather than by a process of conversational reasoning and so must be accounted for by the grammar" (Kay 1997: 124). 11. See Horn (1991) for discussion of a number of cases where redundant affirmation of entailed material IS possible. 12. The register differences are clear: if and only ifbelongs to the domain of academic discourse, as does its abbreviated version iff. An appropriate context for the utterance of the first sentence of (29c) is quite difficult to imagine, unless the party was being thrown by (and for) linguists, logicians, mathematicians or some other group of persons with a penchant for using this

114

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

phrasing. Only if is not restricted in this way, and is common in colloquial registers. 13. This is the crucial point on which the present account, as well as that of van der Auwera (1997a), diverges from that of Horn (1996:6). Horn marks as pragmatically anomalous sentences like #He'll go to church if and only if you do, and not even then if. ... My consultants and I, native speakers of American, British, and Australian English, all agree that this kind of example, when taken to completion as in (31 c), is just as acceptable as the one with only if (31b). Given these judgments, Horn's view that an if and only if condition is both a necessary and the EXCLUSIVE sufficient one among all other candidates is not supported. These same consultants (including myself) also disagree with the judgments Horn makes regarding inversion. Whereas he does not consider the inverted version of an if and only if conditional to be bad, he neither places a * nor even a # before non-inverted examples like If and only if you build it, they will come which to my consultants and me is not only bad, but nearly impossible. In a footnote, Horn does mention the existence of individual differences in judgments, but only with respect to inverted if and only if examples, which we find impeccable (and, indeed, the only possible grammatical option). 14. The point of this objection actually seems to be much more general: lexical scales that give rise to Q-based conversational implicatures, which are formed by "equally lexicalized" pairwise contrasts in English, may not be so restricted in other languages. For instance, as shown above, the Spanish forms typically translated as 'since', ya que and puesto que appear to make a Horn scale with si, even though the former are written as two words. But, despite their orthography, these forms behave like single words: nothing can intervene between yalpuesto and que, nor can puesto inflect for gender or number as it can when used predicatively. 15. It is important to note here that the implicated negation always has wide scope over the conjunction(s) in higher members of additive scales. 16. See chapter 5.1.2 below for more discussion of different types (semantic, pragmatic, argumentative) of scales relevant to language use. 17. I label the scale (pseudo-)substitutive since it does not involve a contrasting lexical pair. 18. For those having difficulty finding a plausible context for (40), imagine a situation in which a friend holding the rank of lecturer (Le. lower than assistant professor) tells you she wants to dine at the faculty club. You then respond by saying (40), which is in turn amenable to an additive (41a) and,

Conditional Markers: Pragmatics

115

perhaps, also to a substitutive one (41 b), Whatever the reading, your lecturer friend gets the point. 19. Nevertheless, it should be noted that in at least some cases the demands of relevance playa role in conditional perfection. For instance, a speaker who says If it rains, they'll cancel the game is normally taken as implicating that game cancellation will only occur in the case of rain, but this same speaker does not seem to be ruling out game cancellation in the event of some more devastating natural phenomenon, e.g. an earthquake. That is, there is no implicature that the game will be played even in the aftermath of the tremor. What the non-production of such an implicature seems to suggest is that the set of conditions under consideration is restricted to a relevant subset of those that can be used to predict game-cancellation.

This page intentionally left blank

CHAPTER 4

Exclusivity and Conditional Marker Form I: Adversative Contexts

4.1 Introduction

A good deal of the last chapter was dedicated to demonstrating a strong connection between the concepts of CONDITIONALITY, in particular the conditional status indicated by canonical markers like if and si, and the implicature of conditional perfection, which has the effect of EXCLUDING other possible conditions from consideration. In the literature on conditionals, the two conceptual domains of conditionality and exclusivity are not linked very often, since essentially only those analyses that take into account pragmatic factors like the conditional perfection implicature have attempted to elucidate this connection. Nevertheless, as I have shown, a very common effect of uttering a predictive conditional of the form If X, (then) Y or Si X, (entonces) Y is a conversational implicature that transforms a merely sufficient condition P (the propositional content of X) into a necessary and sufficient one, so that P is suggested to be the only condition under which the consequent proposition Q (the content corresponding to Y) is valid. In this chapter I investigate the conditionality-exclusivity link in more detail, and show that it leads to an account of certain usages of si as a discourse connective in colloquial Spanish conversations. Unlike the uses of conditional markers that were the focus of the preceding two chapters, the uses of si of interest here are not to be 117

118

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

found in full conditional sentences. Rather, they occur in independent assertions with declarative sentence form and intonation; moreover, si can be removed from these assertions without altering the propositional content of what, in Grice's terms, is explicitly "said." The removal of si does, however, alter other aspects of the meaning of these assertions, and most of this chapter will be dedicated to elucidating these "other aspects." A typical example of this use of si is in (1): (1) [Sisters Rand Q are looking in a clothing shop window] R: Ah, mira que chaqueta mas chula! 'Ah, look what a cool jacket!' ~ Q: Si es horrible! 'SI it's horrible (i.e. very ugly)!' (ALC)

I have left si untranslated in (1), though it is probably most akin to 'but.' It clearly cannot be translated by English if, which does not occur in independent assertions with declarative intonation. An important aspect of the pragmatic force of si in (1) is its EXCLUSIVE nature: Q is saying that the jacket is very ugly, a position incompatible with R's, who deems it to be "cool." Thus, the jacket can either be "cool" or "horrible", but not both; Q's contribution restricts the jacket to the latter descriptor, and denies the applicability or relevance of the former. And beyond the exclusive force, there is also a palpable sense of adversativity in the exchange: si indexes Q's disagreement with R's position, and introduces a correction of that position, viz. Q's assessment of the jacket in question. In this chapter I will concentrate my attention on how the exclusivity attached to this usage of s i is exploited in contexts of "adversativity" like that in (1). However, it should be noted from the outset that there are other, related, types of context in which si with exclusive meaning is often found. For lack of a better term, I will call these latter context-types, contexts of "scalarity"; these will be the focus of chapter 5. The synchronic relationship between these two uses appears to be one of polysemy. The connection between the uses is made via the meaning of exclusivity that they convey, but they are also differentiated by their relative functional distance from conditional marker uses of si like those seen in chapters 2 and 3. Other differences between the two (classes of) uses will be presented in chapter 5, especially in 5.1.1. Despite these differences, however, any attempt at discretely separating the adversative and scalar uses of si is on the wrong track, because there actually exists a clear synchronic continuum

119

Adversative Contexts

of uses from more to less adversative, with scalarity intervening along the way (this is demonstrated in 5.2 below). Therefore, I envision the synchronic derivational relationship between the different polysemies of si as in (2): (2) Conditional Marker

~

Adversative ~ Scalar

As the diagram illustrates, the conditional marker polysemy can be taken as a starting point for understanding the others: it is with this polysemy that the sense of exclusivity, as a Gel, arises. The other polysemies promote exclusivity to conventional status, i.e. as part of their encoded (but non-truth-conditional) semantics. As I will show below, the semantics of exclusivity associated with the discourse connective uses is compatible with contexts where adversativity or scalarity (and at times, both; see chapter 5.2 below) come into play. From both a synchronic as well as a historical perspective, the use of a prototypical conditional conjunction like si as a pragmatic marker of objections or refutations raises many questions, e.g., What is the link between conditionality and this kind of adversativity? How can one account for the development of this function of si? However, because these "refutational" uses of si are limited mainly to colloquial conversations, any detailed diachronic study of their evolution would face serious obstacles upon seeking to secure the right kinds of data. l Hence, such a study is not being attempted here. Nonetheless, synchronically one can attempt to draw parallels between conditionality and different types of adversativity, and illustrate how, for instance, the different functions of the same marker can be related among themselves. This is one of the main tasks of the present chapter. The structure of the remainder of this chapter is as follows. In the rest of this section, I establish a link between "independent" uses of si like that in (1) and full conditional constructions. In section 4.2, I present a brief overview of adversativity and describe in more detail the adversative use of si in declaratives introduced above in (1). In section 4.3, I compare these uses of si to another adversative connective in Spanish, pero 'but', and provide a means for distinguishing their use in dialogues. Next, in section 4.4, I show how si (and other connectives) fit into a system of adversativity generalizable from the well-known distinction between PA (e.g. pero, German aber) and SN (sino, German sondern) conjunction (cf. Anscombre and Ducrot 1977; Horn 1985; Lang 1984).2 I will summarize my conclusions in section 4.5.

120

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

4.1.1 Conditional Form-Adversative Function In Chapter 1.2.3, I noted briefly that full conditionals are a prime example of an adverbial construction that can receive other, nonconditional, interpretations given certain contextual conditions. Indeed, as pointed out by Konig (e.g. 1986), conditionals are often "read as" concessive conditionals or pure concessives in a discourse context, illustrating the overlap possible between (i) canonical conditional form and (ii) typically non-conditional realms of function. One of the realms where this overlap is most clear is concession, which forms part of a larger functional class of adversatives whose main function is to indicate speaker assessment of contrast between competing points of view (see section 4.2.1 below). However, beyond the overlap that one encounters between conditionals and concessives, in dialogal contexts conditionals can also be interpreted as expressing other kinds of adversativity. In these contexts, the speaker presents an objection to some aspect of an interlocutor's prior utterance. This objection is often based on expectations: interlocutor B did not expect interlocutor A to say what he or she said, given the "condition" presented in the protasis of B's conditional. What is often key for the adversative interpretation is that B is presenting the content of this protasis as a "fact" that is in some sense incompatible with interlocutor A's prior utterance. That is, the implicature of "uncertainty" argued for in chapter 3 is, in these cases, canceled by some aspect of the discourse context. So what does an example of a conditional used "adversatively" look like? Let us start with a common strategy for asking a rhetorical question in Spanish, found repeatedly in the Spanish data from Alicante, but which seems to be common to both Peninsular and Latin American dialects of Spanish. This strategy consists of asking a question in the conditional apodosis, while at the same time asserting in the protasis a proposition that acts to "bias" the context for the question in the apodosis. This context-biasing makes a non-rhetorical reading of the question nearly impossible. An example of this strategy is shown in (3):

(3) [Playing a game where players have to guess a word from clues; U is giving clues to his cousin F and his mother A] U: en Cocodrilo Dundee sale el Carl Winslow. 'in Crocodile Dundee Carl Winslow appears.' U: puesquees? 'so what is he?'

Adversative Contexts F: U: ~

F:

U: A:

121

policfa. 'a police officer.' NO [naw::::]. 'NO.' pues si no he visto Cocodrilo Dundee, como quieres que 10 sepa? 'well if I haven't seen Crocodile Dundee how do you expect me to know?' pero tu, mama sf. 'but you mother have (seen it).' sf pero no se ni quien es el Carl [pronuncia mal "Winslow" J ese. 'yes but I don't even know who that Carl [mispronounces "Winslow"] is.' [ALC 5a.0107.306]

Here, the protasis in F's conditional (si no he visto Cocodrilo Dundee) functions pragmatically as an assertion of new information that runs counter to U's expectations. The protasis thus also acts as a denial since it is clear that U thinks F has seen the movie (he is asking F questions about it, assuming that she knows the answer, and even becomes insolent [see U's response NO] after F gives the "wrong" answer). F's rhetorical question (como quieres que 10 sepa?) in the apodosis follows on the heels of the new, factual, information presented in the protasis. Moreover, it is clear that U INTERPRETS F's conditional as an [assertion+rhetorical question] sequence, and therefore the protasis as FACTUAL, not hypotheticalArrealis. Indeed, directly afterwards U shifts attention away from F and to his mother A as a potential respondent, since U knows A has seen the movie. The declarative conditional underlying F's response in (3) can be reconstructed as something like Si no he visto la pelicula, no voy a saber la respuesta 'If I haven't seen the movie, I'm not going to know the answer.' The propositional content of this sort of declarative apodosis represents an implicature that arises from F's utterance in (3), an implicature which effectively refutes U's assumptions that (i) F has seen the movie, and therefore that (ii) F knows the answer to U's question. This implicature of refutation thus gives the conditional an adversative flavor, insofar as it can be interpreted as an objection to U's assumptions and preceding impertinent NO. Once again, then, we see an example of a formally conditional construction being USED to carry out the pragmatic functions typical of another type of adverbial construction, lending further credence to Konig's observation that

122

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

"[u]nder certain contextual conditions, a clause that is formally marked as one type of construction may be interpreted as another" (1986:242). Another example of the rhetorical-question-in-apodosis strategy is given in (4): (4) [S drinking Coca-Cola from a bottle that he just opened for the first time] S: esta desbravada ya. 'it's flat (i.e. lacking fizz) already.' C: como va a estar desbravada? 'how could it be flat?' ~ C: si la acabas de abrir! 'if you just opened it!' (ALC)

Here, the propositional content of C's protasis si fa acabas de abrir 'if you just opened it' reports a witnessed event in the immediate past that is clearly knowledge shared with S, the person who just opened the bottle. When this protasis is presented as a condition on C's preceding question, it lends the question a rhetorical reading: C is not looking for a response to the question, but rather objecting to S's claim that the Coca-Cola is already lacking in carbonation. This objection seems to be based on a general expectation about the relation between the flatness of the pop (=soda) and the newly-openedness of the bottle (e.g. "the newer it is, the LESS flat it must be"), and could be expressed in a fully declarative version of C's conditional: Si fa acabas de abrir, no va a estar desbravada (todavfa) 'If you just opened it (=the bottle), it can't be flat (yet).' The assertion that the pop is already flat thus runs counter to normal expectations about the characteristics of pop from a newlyopened bottle. As illustrated by the last two examples, the use of conditional form to carry out adversative functions is quite possible (and even common) in Spanish and, as the translations show, also in English. The intuitions of speakers of both languages whom I have consulted is that these conditionals have a tendency to appear with non-canonical apodosisprotasis order, i.e. they tend to look like (4) more often than (3). And, in Spanish at least, these clauses can also appear in two different intonation units, e.g. as in (4).3 In this position, the protasis does not display the non-final intonation that it would in a protasis-apodosis structure, but rather has either declarative or exclamatory intonation. In Spanish, however, there is another structure with the morphosyntactic form of a conditional protasis that can be employed to

Adversative Contexts

123

carry out the "refutational" acts in (3) and (4). This is the structure seen in (1) above, consisting of the conditional marker si plus an independent (i.e. sans apodosis) clause with declarative form, and either declarative or exclamatory intonation. Indeed, much the same effect could have been achieved in (3) and (4) by utilizing one of these independent clauses, and dropping the apodosis containing the rhetorical question completely. Note however that this use of si is not translatable into English as 'if', which could not be used in the initial position of a declarative response like those shown in (5) and (6), the suitably modified versions of (3) and (4).4 In these examples, si is in fact closer to English but (but see sections 4.3 and 4.4 below for further discussion of the relationship between si and other forms with adversative function in Spanish): (5) [S drinking Coca-Cola from a bottle that he just opened for the first time] S: esta desbravada ya. 'it's flat (i.e. without bubbles) already.' ~ C: si fa acabas de abrir! 'SI you just opened it!' (6) [Playing a game where players have to guess a word from clues; U is giving clues] U: en Cocodrilo Dundee sale el Carl Winslow. 'in Crocodile Dundee Carl Winslow appears.' U: puesquees? 'so what is he?' F: policia. 'a police officer.' U: NO [naw::::]. 'NO.' ~ F: si no he visto Cocodrilo Dundee. 'SI I haven't seen Crocodile Dundee.' The objection posed by the si-marked utterances in both examples is one of (non-logical) contradiction or incompatibility. In (5), the proposition "the Coca-Cola is flat" is presented as contradictory to, or incompatible with, the proposition "the bottle was just opened." In (6) there is a similar relation of incompatibility, but here it is between a proposition inferrable from the context "U expects F to know the answer because he believes she has seen Crocodile Dundee", and the proposition in F's response "I (=F) haven't seen Crocodile Dundee."

124

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

The contribution of si here is to flag the incompatibility between propositions, and more specifically, to indicate that the proposition it introduces is the only one that should be considered relevant. In general terms, the function of si in these independent structures is a metatextual one (cf. Dancygier 1992): it helps signal that the utterance in which it occurs is to be considered as a refutation of some aspect of a prior utterance or some other element inferrable from the context (see section 4.2.2 below). This use of si has no truthconditional meaning, and indeed can be removed from either (5) or (6) without changing the propositional content of the response in the least. Nonetheless, as will be shown below, the use of si in examples like these has important implications for utterance interpretation and collocational possibilities, which are both quite constrained when si is present. In addition, as one might expect, the pragmatic effects of utterances with and without si in (5) and (6) are also quite different.

4.1.2 Syntactically Independent or "Dropped" Apodosis? Although the use of si in independent, declarative-form assertions has been treated sparingly in the literature on Spanish, when it has, it has most often been characterized as an instance in which the conditional apodosis has been "dropped." An example of this view can be found in Bello's classic Spanish grammar (1984[1847]:360), where he notes that this use of si is very frequent in colloquial conversation, and that it is realized by "SUPRIMIENDO la ap6dosis, que puede facilmente colegirse del contexto" ['SUPPRESSING the apodosis, which can be easily inferred from the context'; emphasis added]. While this explanation is likely to be the ultimate historical source of the use of si in contexts like that in (1), from a synchronic perspective such an ellipsis-based analysis fails to recognize that this use always has the intonation of an independent utterance, never that of a "suspended';; conditional protasis whose apodosis is missing (cf. Seco 1973: 369). It also fails to notice that si in (1) and all other similar examples can be removed without changing the propositional content in the least, but such removal would be impossible from a conditional protasis whose accompanying apodosis had been suppressed. Further, some syntactic evidence helps differentiate the "refutational" use of si from the use of si in responses in which it retains conditional value (Almela Perez 1985). In each set of responses (Bl and B2 in example (7) below), there is both a si-marked clause with declarative intonation, as well as a similar clause uttered with

Adversative Contexts

125

question intonation. As the example shows, there are clear differences between the acceptability of the responses: (7) A: Juan nos va a pintar la pared. 'Juan is going to paint our wall.' B 1: Si no quiere. 'SI he doesn't want to.' #;,Si no quiere? #'SI he doesn't want to?' (cf. #If he doesn't want to?) B2: ;, Y si no quiere? (( entonces);, que hacemos?) 'And if he doesn't want to?' «then) what'll we do?) #Y si no quiere. #' And if he doesn't want to.'

When uttered with a declarative intonation contour, a clause with si in absolute initial position is perfectly acceptable as an objection to some aspect derivable from A's prior utterance (here, the assumption that Juan actually WANTS to paint the wall). However, this same clause in B 1, when uttered with the intonation contour typical of questions, is not possible, since si in this case is not acceptable in initial position. By contrast, the question intonation is possible only when si is prefaced by the coordinate conjunction y 'and', as in response B2. As the translation shows, the same can be said of English, where and must precede initial if in a question with conditional value (i.e. imposing a new condition on some prior propositional content: "What will we do in the case that Juan doesn't want to paint the wall?"). Nevertheless, the y si sequence is completely unacceptable if uttered with declarative intonation, as the second response in B2 illustrates. Any synchronic analysis that classifies these independent s iclauses as conditional protases that have merely "dropped" or "suppressed" their apodoses could not account for the very distinct behavior seen in (7). When an interrogative is introduced by si, it frames the interlocutor's prior utterance VI with a condition in V2, and asks how that condition, if at all, will affect VI. In this use, si must be preceded minimally by y, and one can easily reconstruct a dropped apodosis like ;,que hacemos?, as in the parenthesized portion of B2, whose interrogative character has been transferred to the protasis (Almela Perez 1985: 12).6 Conversely, independent clauses headed by si, like BI's iSi no quiere! above, ASSERT a proposition in V2 that strives to deny some aspect of the validity of VI. The example in (7) shows that from a syntactic (and intonational) point of view, it is reasonable to call "refutational" uses like that in (1) above

126

Pragmatics a/Conditional Marking

"independent." However, as Almela Perez (1985: l3) points out, they are not truly "independent" within their discourse context, since they are always responses to some prior utterance (or some other nonlinguistic element in the context), i.e. they cannot initiate a conversation.

4.2 Si in Adversative Contexts

4.2.1 Contrast and Adversativity

To this point, I have kept the notion of adversativity at an intuitive level. But while it may be clear that the examples in 4.1 have an adversative "feel", a more precise definition of the notion, as well as of its subdivisions, will be useful for the discussion to come. For instance, the distinction proposed below between inclusive and exclusive adversativity will be crucial for seeing the connection (especially the connection in Spanish) between conditionality and adversativity later on in 4.3 and 4.4. In this section and the next, therefore, I will outline my views on adversativity and related notions such as contrast and refutation. Providing a definition of adversativity is difficult because of its closeness to, and frequent confusion with, another more general concept, viz. CONTRAST. In the linguistic literature, these notions are often difficult to tease apart: contrast is commonly left undefined (cf. Fraser and Malamud-Makowski 1996), and sometimes used nearly interchangeably with adversativity (cf. Cuenca Ordinyana 1991; Rudolph 1996). I would like to avoid this confusion from the start by classifying contrast as a general cognitive concept, but adversativity as a purely linguistic notion. First of all, CONTRAST is: The perception of difference, at some level and by any means possible, between two entities comparable on some other dimension. As this definition implies, contrast is not restricted to linguistic (or discourse) entities, but is also perceivable through other senses, e.g. touch, smell, taste, etc. Consider an apple and an orange: these entities are comparable as "fruit", yet contrast in shape, odor, and flavor (and it is the CONTRAST that is highlighted in the English phrase COMPARING apples and oranges). Of course, contrast CAN be explicitly encoded by linguistic items (cf. connectives like in/by contrast), but typically

Adversative Contexts

127

contrast in language use arises as a result of conversational implicature (Lambrecht 1994:291). On the other hand, adversativity is a strictly linguistic notion that involves contrast of a particular sort. As I define it, ADVERSA TIVITY is: Contrast between different points of view as these are constructed IN These points of view may correspond to those of the interlocutors in the actual discourse situation, or may correspond to other points of view, e.g. general assumptions about "how the world works." LANGUAGE USE.

This definition allows for considerable flexibility, as there are a number of different ways in which contrast can arise between competing points of view; I will illustrate some of these ways briefly below. Note too that the definition does not apply only to connectives like pero 'but', aunque 'although', por el contra rio 'on the contrary' , (or their counterparts in other languages), which are often characterized as semantically "adversative" (or "contrastive") by scholars (Echaide 1974-5; Foolen 1991; Fraser and Malamud-Makowski 1996; Lakoff 1971; Lang 1984), but also to pragmatic contexts of adversativity. The definitions of contrast and adversativity just given provide a clear basis for distinguishing between pragmatic effects of contrast and conventionalized adversativity. For example, there are conjunctions and other types of connectives that can be used in contexts of contrast-words for 'and' across languages are perhaps the best example-but which do not make explicit two (or more) contrasting points of view, i.e. they are not adversative. For example, in Spanish the coordinate conjunction y 'and' can link attributes that one might not expect to apply to the same person: (8) Juan es bajo y buen jugador de baloncesto. 'Juan is short and a good basketball player.'

In this example, the conjunction makes no explicit mention of the contrast between bajo 'short' and buen jugador de baloncesto 'good basketball player.' Rather, the contrast that is perceived is drawn strictly from our encyclopedic knowledge about correlations between height and basketball-playing ability. When y is replaced by pero in the same sentence, the speaker makes the contrast between the two attributes explicit and highlights this contrast:

128

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

(9) Juan es bajo pero es un buen jugador de baloncesto. 'Juan is short but he's a good basketball player.'

Here, pero externalizes the speaker's assessment that, in the particular context of utterance, there is a contrast between two different points of view: one that holds that the attributes bajo and buen jugador de baloncesto are not typically applicable to the same person (this point of view may be the "general expectation"), and another point of view, that of the speaker, which holds that, despite the expectation, Juan is BOTH short AND a good basketball player. Now, a common objection to this analysis is that not everyone has expectations about the link between a person's height and his or her basketball-playing ability. While this may be true, the relevant point is that the speaker in (9) actually CREATES the contrast by using pero: the adversativity is at least partly encoded by the conjunction itself. The hearer, of course, is free to object to the contrasting points of view that the speaker has set up. This does not mean, however, that the conjunction alone contributes all of the sense of adversativity. The use of a conjunction like pero in a sentence like (10) below-in the vast majority of discourse contexts-will result in anomaly, because of the nearimpossibility of construing a contrast between alto 'tall' and buen jugador de baloncesto, two qualities that are closely related in our encyclopedic knowledge store. (lO)#Juan es alto pero es un buenjugador de baloncesto. '#Juan is tall but he's a good basketball player.'

In order for this sentence to be acceptable, then, there must be a context in which the speaker (and addressee) does NOT expect tallness and basketball-playing ability to correlate. These contrasting points of view (or, from the addressee's point of view, the ability of reconstructing them via inference) is therefore a necessary element for a felicitous use of pero. Though the adversative sense is the "salient" one for many forms, these forms also often have polysemies that are not interpretable in adversative terms. To take one example, not all uses of pero or some other so-called "adversative" conjunction are adversative under the definition given above. For instance, pero can collocate with additive focus particles like ademas 'also, in addition' that append a proposition to one that has already been presented explicitly or is implicit in the context. This appended proposition can CONTRAST with the preceding

Adversative Contexts

129

one, but it is difficult to construe their contents as adverse or "opposed" in any way (Portoles 1997a:3; see also Acin Villa 1993; Van de Voorde 1992): (11) La infancia recuperada sigue siendo un libro lleno de encanto, de talento, de amenidad y de intenci6n, pero en su tiempo jue ademas un libro emblematico. 'The Recovered Infancy continues to be a book full of charm, talent, amenity, and intention, but in its time it was also emblematical' (El Pais Babelia, 12-10-94, p. 15) The contrast in (11) is clearly specified lexically: the first clause with sigue siendo 'continues to be' is understood as referring to "now", which contrasts with the past reference of the temporal PP en su tiempo 'in its time' and the past tense verb fue 'was.' However, while there is contrast there is no ADVERSA TIVITY between the book's qualities now versus its being emblematical in the past, a point corroborated by the appearance of additive ademas, which is acceptable in contrastive, but not adversative, contexts (Portoles 1997a; for more on additive markers see Blakemore 1987; Konig 1991). This point is further supported by the fact that pero could be replaced by y in (11) and even removed completely with little alteration of meaning, i.e. no coordinate conjunction at all is necessary in (11). And while pero can be used both adversatively and to indicate "pure" contrast, there are other connectives that are relegated to the latter function only. In Spanish, one of these is en cambio 'in/by contrast', which contrasts two entities that are comparable on some dimension (Portoles 1997b): (12a)

Ana tiene los ojos marrones y, en cambio, el pelo rubio. 'Ana has brown eyes and, in contrast, blond hair.'

(12b)

#Ana tiene los ojos marrones y, en cambio, el pelo largo. '#Ana has brown eyes and, in contrast, long hair.'

In (12a) en cambio flags the contrast in color between Ana's eyes and hair, based on the expectation (common in Spain, at least) that people with dark eyes tend to have dark hair. Eye color and hair LENGTH, however, are more difficult to contrast, because we tend not to have expectations about the length of a person's hair based on their eye color. Hence, the explicit indication of contrast that en cambio carries is

130

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

anomalous in (l2b), a sentence that, lacking en cambia, would be perfectly felicitous. The foregoing examples of adversative and contrastive connectives illustrate that there must be compatibility between the meaning of these connectives and the contexts in which they appear. The semantics of the connectives require particular pragmatic conditions in order to be acceptable. Thus, in order to study contrast or adversativity (Cuenca Ordinyana 1991 :260), cal adoptar principalment el punt de vista de la construcci6i no pas el punt de vista del nexe, ates que aquest darrer ens pot fer arribar a conclusions excessivament generals 0 simplistes. 7

Here, I take "construction" to refer to the configuration of form and meaning (including pragmatic meaning) made up by the connective (nexe) and the elements linked by the connective (propositions, contexts, points of view, etc.). The distinction between contrast and adversativity has now been firmly established. For the discussion to follow it will also be necessary to distinguish between two broad classes of adversativity: INCLUSIVE and EXCLUSIVE. 8 INCLUSIVE ADVERSA TlVITY refers to points of view that are in contrast at some level, yet do not exclude each other. Typical examples of inclusive adversativity are the pero examples presented above in (9, 11), and also concessives like those introduced by aunque 'although, even though' in Spanish,

(13)Aunque es baja, es buenajugadora de baloncesto. 'Although she is short, she is a good basketball player.' where both "she is short" and "she is a good basketball player" are entailed propositions, i.e. one does not exclude the other. What aunque signals is the speaker's awareness of the potential conflict between baja and buena jugadora de baloncesto: "normal" or default assumptions would not lead us to expect these two qualities to apply to the same person. By contrast, EXCLUSIVE ADVERSATIVITY, as the name implies, results in the exclusion of one of the points of view salient in the discourse. Exclusive adversativity is thus closely tied to negation, which often functions in discourse to deny the validity of some competing point of view. Common examples in Spanish are sentences containing the conjunction sino (que) 'but rather (that)'9 (13a) and

Adversative Contexts

131

discourses with the connective por el contra rio 'on the contrary' (Portoles 1997b: 18): (13a)

Maria no vende caramelos sino que los regala. 'Marfa doesn't sell candy but (rather) she gives it away.'

(13b)

Maria no vende caramelos. Por el contrario, los regala. 'Marfa doesn't sell candy. On the contrary, she gives it away.'

In both examples, the speaker's point of view holds that Marfa gives away candy, and is opposed to a point of view that holds that Marfa sells candy. It is this latter point of view that is denied by the explicit negation in the first clause/sentence, and "corrected" by the clause introduced by the conjunction/connective. That some opposing point of view is being denied becomes even clearer in dialogal examples like (13c), where there is no explicit negation of A's point of view: (13c)

A: Maria vende caramelos. 'Marfa sells candy.' B: Por el contrario, los regala. 'On the contrary, she gives it away.'

Despite the lack of explicit negation, by using por el contrario B makes it clear that the segment that follows represents a point of view deemed "contrary" to that of A. Therefore, according to B, A's point of view cannot be correct: in this situation Marfa cannot both sell candy and give it away, rather Marfa does the latter EXCLUSIVELY. Before moving on, I should point out that there is likely to be at least some disagreement with the view of adversativity I am espousing here, due to broad differences between linguistic traditions in different parts of the world. To take but one example, the German linguist Rudolph (1996) draws a clear distinction between "adversativity" and "concessivity", instead of following the view, more prevalent in the English-speaking world, that considers the latter to be a subtype of the former (Quirk et al. 1985; Michaelis 1996). Likewise, Hispanic (and Catalan) linguists have mainly restricted their attention to adversativity as manifested at the level of sentence coordination, opposing "restricti ve adversative conjunctions" like pe ro to "exclusive adversative conjunctions" like sino (cf. Echaide 1974-5). Constructions that I am treating as a sub-type of (inclusive) adversatives, such as

132

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

concessives, are again kept completely separate from adversatives as these are conceptualized in the Hispanic tradition. The diagram in (14) below summarizes the classification argued for in this section. The terms "C-Contrast" and "L-Contrast" refer to contrast at the cognitive and linguistic levels, respectively:lO (14) Classification of Types of Contrast C-Contrast

COGNITIVE:

~ L-Contrast

Adversati vity

LINGUISTIC:

Inclusive

Exclusive

"concession" pero

"refutation" sino

I

en cambio pero

I

What this diagram illustrates is that the basic cognitive concept known as "contrast" can be found in language in (at least) two different forms: adversativity and non-adversative contrast. Adversativity can furthermore be divided into two broad subgroups: inclusive and exclusive. ll With this necessary background in place, I now move to a discussion of adversative uses of si as exemplified in (1) above. Again, a common thread running through these uses is their exclusive nature. In the rest of this chapter, then, my goal is to explore further the synchronic connections between conditionality and adversativity, and specifically the class I call "exclusive" adversativity. While Konig (1986, inter alia) has elucidated the link between conditionality and concession (a type of inclusive adversativity), as discussed briefly in chapter 1.2.3 and in 4.1.1 above, to my knowledge the association between conditionality and exclusive adversativity has not been made explicit before. This is true despite the fact that, in Spanish at least, there is clear formal similarity among conditional si and some types of exclusive adversative marking, viz. the pragmatic "refutational" uses of si and the "corrective" sentence conjunction sino, as will be shown below.

Adversative Contexts

133

4.2.2 Refutation with Si

In this section, I turn my focus to a specific type of exclusive adversativity: REFUTATION. The uses of si of interest in this chapter, uses like that seen in (1) or (4) above, are ones in which the marker typically prefaces an utterance that functions to object to (some aspect of) an interlocutor's prior utterance. I have used the term "refutation" above to refer to this function because, as it has been used in the linguistic literature (Cuenca Ordinyana 1991; Moeschler 1982), refutation is an assertive speech act (cf. Searle 1979) whose aim is to invalidate-in a broad sense of the term-a previous representation that has been either explicitly or contextually evoked. This invalidation normally consists of a two step process (d. Cuenca Ordinyana 1991:220): 1. 2.

The speaker denies some aspect X of an utterance that can be attributed to an interlocutor or some other point of view. The speaker rectifies or "corrects" this X by uttering Y, which is deemed incompatible with X.

While prior work on refutations has focused on instances in which there is syntactic negation 12 of X in the first step (e.g. Moeschler 1982), this is not a necessary criterion, since the full refutational effect (including the denial of X) can often be ascertained from the second step only, especially if X and Yare judged to exclude each other mutually. It has been noted several times now that a speaker's act of refutation can object to SOME ASPECT OF an interlocutor's prior utterance, and above I said that the aim of this act was to invalidate a REPRESENT ATION. The point of this wording was to highlight the fact that this "aspect" must be construed in broad terms, since it may include not only propositional content, but also potential conversational implicatures emerging from the utterance, and even the use of language in the utterance, e.g. pronunciation or lexical choice. All of these make up aspects of the prior discourse, but clearly not all of them are propositional. They are all, however, "representations" in Carston's (1996:309) sense of the term, for they illustrate speakers' "general capacity to use language either to represent states of affairs or to represent other representations, including [parts of] other utterances." The idea of a "representation" is helpful for surveying the two broad types of refutation found in the literature, both of which can be marked by si in Spanish, and which show up often in the data from Alicante. The first broad type is propositional refutation, where the aim

134

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

is to establish the falsity of some prior PROPOSITION, either explicit or implicit (Cuenca Ordinyana 1991; Moeschler 1982). Propositional refutation is illustrated by the examples in (15) and (16): (15) [M recounting a telephone incident between Q and Q's boyfriend T] M: y resulta que se cab reo. 'and it turns out that she (Q) got mad.' M: y Ie colgo! 'and she hung up on him!' ~ G: si Ie colgo el a ella. 'SI he hung up on her.' M: ah, Ie colgo el a ella? 'ah, he hung up on her?' M: pues ahora me entero. 'well now I find out.' (ALC lOa.0123.689) (16) [A and R are preparing dinner in the kitchen] A: dame una cebolla. 'give me an onion.' ~ R: si no hay. 'SI there aren't (any).' A: como que no? 'what do you mean "no"?, R: no estaban todas podri( d )as ? 'weren't they all rotten?' A: pero tu trajiste una bolsa. 'but you brought a bag.' (ALC: 3b.0104.581) In (15), the refutation is of an explicit proposition. M states that T hung up on Q, but is corrected by G, who asserts that, in fact, Q hung up on T. The si-marking indicates the incompatibility of the two propositions-representing the speakers' opposing points of view-and the "correctness" of the claim to follow. By contrast, in (16) the refuted proposition is inferrable from A's initial request that R give her an onion. A's expectation was clearly that there were onions in the kitchen, i.e. she presupposed the availability of onions before making her request. R's si-marked response is a refutation not of the request, but rather of A's (pragmatic) presupposition that there were onions on hand.

Adversative Contexts

135

The second broad type of refutation is "metalinguistic" refutation-closely related to Horn's (1985, 1989) "metalinguistic" negation (see also McCawley 1991)-the aim of which is to object an utterance "on any grounds whatever" (Horn 1985: 121), i.e. it constitutes a comment on how language itself is being used. These utterances introduce a RECTIFICATION of some offending linguistic item in the interlocutor's prior utterance. In both (17) and (18) below, the speakers correct what they evaluate as "incorrect" pronunciations of particular words. However, these metalinguistic objections need not be limited to pronunciations; indeed, they might also refer to word choice or perceived violations of register level. (17) A: Manana tengo que dar clase, sobre La geneoLogia 'Tomorrow I have to teach a class, about geneology.' ~ R: Si se pronuncia GENEALOGiA. i Cuantas veces te Lo tengo que decir? 'SI it's pronounced genealogy. How many times do I have to tell you?' (ALC) (18)B: No encuentro mi medicina [mede6ina]. 'I can't find my medicine ["incorrectly" pronounced].' ~ L: Si es medicina [mediBina]. 'SI it's medicine ["correctly" pronounced].' (ALC) In his discussion of metalinguistic negation, Horn also includes examples like (19) and (20) below, where the speaker's objection is to Q-based scalar implicatures that are evoked by particular utterances in context, commenting on their lack of informativeness. These are however better classified as "metapragmatic" instead of "metalinguistic", since it is not a mispronunciation or poor lexical choice that constitutes the offense to be rectified, but rather what an interlocutor has implicated: (19) [H and M are talking about their son, whose math teacher has just sent home a note about his poor performance in the class.] H: Pues, parece que va a suspender matematicas. 'Well, it looks like he's going to fail math.' ~ M: Si va a suspenderlas todas. 'SI he's going to fail all ofthem.' (ALC)

136

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking (20) [B (age 6) looks strangely at a glass of purple Kool-Aid] B: t:Que es eso? 'What is that?' A: Es el que te gusta a ti. 'It's the one that you like.' ~ Q: Si a ella Ie gustan todos los sabores. 'SI she likes all of the flavors.' (ALC)

The example in (19) illustrates the metapragmatic nature of such examples: H's claim that his son appears likely to fail math potentially implicates, via the Q-principle, an upper bound, i.e. that the son will fail math and ONLY math. M has apparently inferred that this is what H intends to convey, and objects to the implicated upper bound. M's response simultaneously denies and issues a correction to this upper bound: the son is not going to fail math only, but rather all of his classes. Likewise, in (20), the potential upper bound implicated by A's utterance is that B likes this and only this flavor of Kool-Aid, an implicature reinforced by the cleft construction A utilizes. Q's objection transcends this implicated upper bound, and asserts that B likes all the flavors, not only the purple one. While the three types of refutation exemplified above have been mentioned in previous research, these do not exhaust the uses of si found in utterances with refutational function in the Alicante data. For instance, the refutation involved may be relevance-based: the option introduced by si is being presented as the only one relevant in the discourse situation: (21) [M is watching T drink orange juice] M: T, no te bebas el zumo tan rapido, que te va a doler la barriga. 'T, don't drink the juice so fast, because your stomach is going to hurt.' ~ T: si tengo sed. 'SI I'm thirsty.' M: bueno, pues 10 que te de la gana. 'fine, then (do) whatever you want.' (ALe 7b.0115.338) T rejects M's suggestion that T stop drinking the juice so fast by offering an assertion that purports to justify her rate of drinking. That

Adversative Contexts

137

is, M tells T not to drink so fast, since this could cause T to have a stomachache-a rather reasonable observation. In response, T denies the relevance of M's suggestion, pointing out that she (T) is thirsty, and in conjunction that (i) this thirst justifies drinking fast and (ii) the thirst is the only relevant issue to the situation at hand. What is refuted here is therefore not a propOSItIOn, but rather M's particular ARGUMENTATION (see Anscombre and Ducrot 1983, 1994), which is "corrected" (and therefore superseded) by T's argumentation. Thus, it is clear that the utterer of the si-marked turn is not disputing the "truth" of some propositional content in (21). Another example where argumentation, and not truth validity, seems to be at issue is (22). The segments of principal interest are indicated by the P and Q arrows: (22) [K and her mother A talking about some shirts that A bought for K and her sister G] K: pero de interiores? 'but they're undershirts?' A: sf. 'yes.' K: por que compras camisetas interiores? 'why do you buy undershirts?' P---'! A: PORQUE LA G SIEMPRE EST!.. D!..NDOME EL CONAZO! 'because G is always bugging me to!' Q---'! K: SI HA Y MIL, camisetas illteriores. 'SI there are a thousand, undershirts.' K: all[ ell casa, MIL. 'there at home, a thousand.' (ALC 6a.011 1.76) In order to understand fully the refutation in (22), it is first necessary to know a bit more background about the situation. K was well aware that G was constantly bugging their mother A to buy undershirts. Thus, it does not seem that K disagreed with the validity of the PROPOSITION in P. What she DOES object to is the sufficiency of P as an argument for an implicit contextual conclusion (R). This conclusion constitutes A's presumed point of view, "there is/was a need to buy undershirts." This objection is especially evident in the light of Q, which states that they already have "a thousand" undershirts at home. Q thus constitutes an argument for another implicit conclusion (-R), i.e. K's point of view that "there is/was no need to buy undershirts." The claim underlying K's si-marked response is that Q is a better argument for -R than P is

138

Pragmatics o/Conditional Marking

for R. This does not imply, however, that K did not recognize P as a potentially valid argument for R, but rather that, in this particular case, Q was a "stronger" argument for NOT buying the undershirts. It might appear, then, that (21) is an example in which si expresses an adversative sense, but no sense of exclusivity. Q was not necessarily the ONLY argument under consideration by K, P was also a possibility. Nonetheless, one can also conceive of the strongest argument as the EXCLUSIVE one under consideration, i.e. the only one with sufficient relevance to be applied to the situation in question. The reasoning would be as follows: given a scale linking arguments and conclusions, if one knows the strongest argument for some conclusion R, then there is no need to know weaker arguments that support R to some lesser degree than the strongest argument (see chapter 5 for more ideas along these lines). 13 But in (22) the situation is somewhat different. There are two arguments P (abbreviated as G da COllazo 'G is bugging') and Q (Hay mil camisetas 'There are a thousand undershirts') for (implicit) OPPOSING conclusions R (Comprar 'Buy') and -R (No comprar 'Not buy'). In this case, we could imagine scales (see Ducrot 1980a) linking arguments and conclusions as in (23a) and (23b): (23a) Comprar (R)

-G da cofiazo (P)

(23b) No comprar (-R) -Hay mil camisetas (P)

The diagrams illustrate that Q is relatively closer to its conclusion -R on scale (23b) than P is to its conclusion R on scale (23a). This relative closeness reflects the fact that (according to K in (22) above) argument Q in (23b) supports the conclusion -R to a greater degree than the argument P in (23a) supports the conclusion R. The function of si is to

Adversative Contexts

139

mark the greater argumentative strength of Q as opposed to P with regard to their respective conclusions, and thus to signal that Q is the only argument (and therefore -R the only conclusion) "strong enough" to be employed in a situation in which these two scales are in competition. As the foregoing examples show, the types of objection that refutational uses of si-marked utterances can raise are quite varied. Four types of refutation have been presented here: propositional, metalinguistic, metapragmatic, and argumentation-based. Though these types can surely be divided into smaller sub-types, such a task is not of prime interest. 14 Rather, what is important here are the similarities they display, especially the sense of exclusivity that si conveys across all types. But a question now arises: Why mark these refutational and clearly "factual" assertions with the same form as the canonical conditional marker si? A partial answer lies in the pragmatic effects regularly associated with these refutational uses: the speaker is not only seen as refuting what the interlocutor has said in a prior turn, but also often implying that the interlocutor should have known or taken into consideration the content of the s i-clause beforehand. This is made explicit, for example, in (17) above, where R's follow-up question implies that A should have already know the correct pronunciation of the word genealogfa. The source of this effect derives at least partially from a particular characteristic of conditional protases: even if the state of affairs that a protasis marker introduces is hypothetical in the "real world", this protasis must be assumed to be valid before any consideration of the apodosis content can take place (Sweetser 1990). In other words, the protasis condition is PRESUPPOSED for the purpose of interpreting the apodosis. Thus, the si-marking in utterances with a refutational function lends the content a sense of common, obvious, or assumed knowledge (Schwenter 1996a).

4.3 Four Tests to Distinguish Si and Pero 15 in Dialogues The reader may have noted that I have not translated si into English in the examples presented so far. It seems clear, however, that si can at times be translated by but. Conversely, there are many uses of but that cannot be translated by si and, likewise in Spanish, there are many uses of the adversative connective pero-the Spanish "contrastive discourse marker par excellence" (Fraser and Malamud-Makowski 1996:875)-that are not replaceable by si without critical alteration of

140

Pragmatics of Conditional Marking

(non-propositional) meaning. Hence, in this section, my goal will be to examine in much more detail the refutational use of si in a contrastive light, vis-a-vis pero. The dialogal, refutational use of si appears similar in meaning and function to pero, when the latter is employed in dialogal contexts, i.e. not as a sentence conjunction. Indeed, what one often finds is that either si or pero can preface a refutational response like that in (24) below, where two speakers are involved in an exchange about Alberto's chances of passing an exam (Portoles 1995:259): (24) [A and B are discussing how Alberto will do on an exam] A: Alberto es inteligente. 'Alberto is intelligent.' ~ B: SilPero nunca estudia. 'But he never studies.' While little has been said about the function of si in dialogal contexts like (24), analyses of conjunctions like pero, but or French mais (each of which can also be used as a dialogal discourse marker/connective) when used in monologues abound in the literature. A standard analysis of pero or but in adversative contexts, along the lines of Grice (1975), is that it encodes a conventional implicature that cancels or "undoes" a potential conversational implicature of the prior conjunct. For instance, in a possible Spanish (or English) utterance like (25), (25) Max es pobre pero contento. 'Max is poor but happy.' the "cancelled" implicature is one that might potentially arise out of the first conjunct Max es pobre. Given the propositional content of this conjunct, and our general (but perhaps flawed) understanding of the relationship between wealth and well-being, one might expect Max to be sad. What pero (or but) does is introduce another conjunct that denies that expectation (cf. Foolen 1991). The result is that Max is both poor and happy, and this state of affairs hold regardless of how we assess the likelihood of someone possessing both characteristics. However, as pointed out by Ducrot (1996), this kind of analysis cannot account for common examples like the one in (26), where pero (and but) actually seems to elaborate on the generalized quantity implicature arising from the first conjunct:

Adversative Contexts

141

(26) Juan conoce algunos vinos, pero no conoce todos. 'John knows some wines, but he doesn't know all of them.'

Following the classic work of Horn (1972; see also Horn 1989; Levinson 1983), it is well known that a modifier like algunos 'some' in the first conjunct of (26) induces a quantity implicature to "no todos" ("not all"), based on the quantifier scale formed by