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Project: Concessive conditionals: A typological study

2020-11-01 – 2024-10-31

Abstract

The present study is concerned with complex sentences called concessive conditionals from a functional-typological perspective. Based on a stratified 50-language variety sample, it investigates the coding strategies used to express concessive conditionality in the languages of the world, distinguishing between three subtypes: scalar concessive conditionals (corresponding to English 'even if'), alternative concessive conditionals (E. 'whether ... or ...'), and universal concessive conditionals (E. 'no matter WH/WH-ever'). Different methods will be combined to collect data on these underdescribed constructions. It will be investigated which other clause types concessive conditionals show formal overlaps with (presumably conditionals, concessives, interrogatives, free relatives, and potentially others), in order to map the position of concessive conditionals in conceptual space. Next, attention will be paid to which factors determine the coding strategy in any given language, using sophisticated statistical methods such as conditional inference trees and random forest. In a final step, a functional explanation will be given for the attested correlation.

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