The Ballad of If and Since: Never the Twain Shall Meet?
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper investigates the processing of conditional sentences and sentences with ‘since’ in two respects. Firstly, we investigate the clausal implicature originating from the scale . Secondly, we investigate how modals can affect the interpretation of these sentences. A reading time experiment is reported which involved these two factors. It appears that ‘since’ is processed fastest in a context in which the antecedent has been affirmed, whereas ‘if’ is processed fastest in a context with an uncertain antecedent. The use of modals can speed up or slow down the reading process. Modals help to speed up processing of sentences involving ‘if’ in a certain context and ‘since’ in an uncertain context. However, when modals are used with ‘if’ in an uncertain context or with ‘since’ in a certain context, they slow down processing of the relevant sentences. The results will be situated in two accounts of implicatures, neo-Gricean and Relevance Theoretic.
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تاریخ انتشار 2006