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In English, the meaning of concessivity in conditionals is usually expressed by using the focus particle even with the antecedent of the conditional which is headed by if, as shown in (1): (1) Even if John is a doctor, I will not trust him. Guerzoni and Lim (2007) claim that even in conditionals, which is responsible for concessivity, is the same even that we can find in examples like (2): that is, even in even if is a focus particle (Rooth 1985, a.o.) which is associated with a focus and introduces projective content (Tonhauser et al. 2013, a.o.) which I will call presuppositions just for simplicity. Furthermore, Guerzoni and Lim show that we can explain the difference in meaning between two types of concessive conditionals, standing-if (3a) and introduced-if (3b) (which are distinguished with respect to whether the factivity of the consequent is guaranteed or not, as indicated below: see Pollock 1976 and Bennett 1982, a.o.) in a compositional way, depending on the position of focus associated with even. (2) Even [John]f can lift the table. (3) a. Standing-if: Even if John drank [one ounce]f of whiskey, she would fire him. ~> If John did not drink whiskey at all she would not fire him. b. Introduced-if: Even if the bridge were standing I wouldn’t cross. ~> I wouldn’t cross the bridge, anyway. Based on this, in this presentation I first show that, in English, there are conditionals which express concessivity even though there is no overt even. To do so, I use Sejong English-Korean Parallel Corpus, from which I find some examples of English conditionals whose Korean counterparts can be understood as expressing concessivity, as in (4), given that Korean tends to express concessivity more explicitly: (4) a. If not considered to be good manners in Korea, individualism is frowned upon in Russia as well. b. 한국처럼 심하지는 않지만 러시아에도 개인주의가 좋지 않은 시선을 받는다. (RB0421) After showing that in English there are concessive conditionals without even, I try to generalize the notion of concessivity in conditionals in terms of the unlikelihood of the causal relation between the antecedent and the consequent (cf. see König 1986), and explain this kind of conditionals in a compositional way by assuming a covert focus particle corresponding to overt even (see also Heim 1984 and Guerzoni 2004, where minimizers such as lift a finger are analyzed in terms of covert even).

저자

• Dongsik Lim [ Hongik University ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  한국언어과학회 학술대회

• 간기

  반년간

• 수록기간

  2001~2026

• 십진분류

  KDC 705 DDC 405