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SUMMARY:Reconceptualising conditionals - Chi-Hé Elder\, University of Eas
 t Anglia
DTSTART:20160121T163000Z
DTEND:20160121T183000Z
UID:TALK60909@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jamie Douglas
DESCRIPTION:It is well-known that conditional sentences of the form 'if p\
 , q' can be used for a plethora of other purposes than to express a condit
 ional thought. Among other things\, they can be used to hedge ('...if you 
 see what I mean')\, to express relevance ('if you're looking for your keys
 \, they're on the table')\, or to request ('if you could just come here...
 '). Intuitively\, such 'pragmatic' uses of 'if' differ in the extent to wh
 ich they conform to 'standard'\, semantic\, truth-conditional accounts of 
 conditionals. One might be tempted to discard these 'non-conditional thoug
 hts' from the category of conditionals altogether. However\, there is also
  an intuition that while conditional sentences can be used with some other
  intention than to communicate a conditional thought\, there is still a se
 nse in which they are 'conditional'.\n\nTo meet these seemingly conflictin
 g intuitions - conditional sentences with differing truth conditions\, and
  the intrinsic conditionality of conditional sentences - I propose that co
 nditionality should be disassociated from truth-conditional content. I do 
 this by (i) offering pragmatic criteria for inclusion in the category of c
 onditional utterances\, thereby accounting for conditionality regardless o
 f whether it is expressed as the main\, intended meaning of the utterance\
 , and (ii) taking on board a truth-conditional unit that corresponds to th
 e primary intended meaning of the utterance which may\, but need not\, cor
 respond to the syntactic form of the uttered sentence. This solution calls
  for a radical contextualist outlook on the truth conditions of conditiona
 ls\, in which primary intended meanings are recovered by considering the i
 nteraction of the sentence form with other extra-linguistic sources of inf
 ormation.
LOCATION:GR06-7\, English Faculty\, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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