Lecture | Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
Counterfactuality in typological perspective: Irrealis markers, blocking effects, and theoretical implications
- Date
- Thursday 12 September 2024
- Time
- Series
- Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 0.01
Abstract
There are languages in which the irrealis domain is split up into situations that may potentially occur and situations that did not occur (Roberts 1990: 398; van Gijn & Gipper 2009; Van Linden & Verstraete 2008). In these languages, one marker is only used for expressing potential situations (weak irrealis) and another marker is only used for expressing situations that did not occur (strong irrealis). Moreover, there are languages that only have either weak or strong irrealis markers. For languages containing both weak and strong irrealis markers, it has been recently demonstrated, based on a sample of Oceanic languages, that the use of weak irrealis markers in counterfactual conditionals (e.g., if you had gone, you would have seen her) is blocked by strong irrealis markers (von Prince et al. 2022: 236).
Based on a sample of 50 languages spoken in different parts of the world, the present study lends support to this theoretical claim. However, it is also shown that there are other blocking effects that have been traditionally neglected. First, there are languages in which the use of strong irrealis markers in counterfactual conditionals is blocked by specialized clause-linking devices (e.g., devices only used for expressing counterfactual conditional relations). Second, as for languages that only contain weak irrealis markers, it is shown that the use of weak irrealis markers in counterfactual conditionals is blocked by a specialized clause-linking device.
The paper further investigates whether the analysis advanced for counterfactual conditionals can be generalized to other counterfactual constructions: counterfactual manner constructions (e.g., he ate as if he had not eaten in years; Olguín-Martínez 2021).
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