The Semantics of ‘unless’ Conditionals: Evidence from ‘unless’ and Disjunctive Inferences

Author:

García-Madruga Juan A.,Carriedo Nuria,Moreno-Ríos Sergio

Abstract

We report the results of an experiment investigating conditional inferences from conditional assertions such as ‘Juan won't go to León unless Nuria goes to Madrid’ and ‘Either Nuria goes to Madrid or Juan won't go to León’. This experiment addresses Dancygier's claims about the semantics of ‘unless’ by examining inferential endorsements of ‘not-A unless B’ and ‘Either B or not-A’ in the canonical order, presenting the categorical premise after the conditional assertions, and in the inverse order, presenting the categorical premise before the conditional assertions. The results of the experiment confirm that the representation of ‘unless’ includes two possibilities, although as Dancygier holds one of the possibilities may not be complete. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the strategic nature of conditional reasoning and recent convergent theories of linguistic processing.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Subject

Linguistics and Language,General Psychology,Language and Linguistics

Cited by 2 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Priming effect in affirmative complex conditional connectives;Journal of Cognitive Psychology;2016-06

2. Priming effect on the exceptive conditional ‘except if’;Journal of Cognitive Psychology;2013-12

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