On necessary conditional marking and proposition suspension: The meaning of the Spanish construction si es que

Abstract

Abstract This paper offers a unified analysis of the coded meaning of Spanish conditional marker si es que: it conventionally conveys conditionality and the speaker’s lack of commitment to the proposition. This second meaning differentiates si es que from the general conditional marker si. It is also argued that si es que has two values: suspending a proposition and expressing a necessary condition, and established that these two share the conventional meaning but differ in the discourse status of the proposition: suspension takes place when the proposition was explicitly evoked in previous discourse, while the marking of necessary conditionals takes place when the proposition is not evoked, but typically new information. The analysis of Spanish si es que contributes to determining the relationship between the operation of suspending a content and the expression of conditionality.