Main content
Processing attenuating NPIs in indicative and counterfactual conditionals
Date created: | Last Updated:
: DOI | ARK
Creating DOI. Please wait...
Category: Project
Description: Both indicative and counterfactual conditionals are known to be licensing contexts for negative polarity items (NPIs). However, recent theoretical work suggests that the licensing of attenuating NPIs like English 'all that' in the conditional antecedent is sensitive to pragmatic differences between various types of conditionals. We conducted three behavioral experiments in order to test key predictions made by that proposal. In Experiment 1, we tested hypothetical indicative and counterfactual conditionals with the English NPI 'all that', finding that the NPI is degraded in the former compared to the latter. In Experiment 2, we compared hypothetical indicative conditionals and premise conditionals with the same NPI, again finding a degradation only for the former. Both results align with the theoretically derived prediction that hypothetical indicative conditionals are degraded due to pragmatic strengthening which is blocked by the presupposition of premise conditionals and deemed irrelevant in counterfactual conditionals due to the co-presence of counterfactual inferences. Lastly, Experiment 3 provides empirical evidence that comprehenders readily strengthen counterfactual conditionals to biconditionals, underscoring both that conditional perfection and counterfactual inferences are compatible with one another, and that the former need not undermine the licensing of attenuating NPIs in the presence of the latter. Overall, our results align with the proposed theoretical analysis of attenuating NPIs. In addition, they provide a novel perspective on the processing of pragmatic inferences in conditionals.