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Decomposing relevance in conditionals
Author(s) -
Lassiter Daniel
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/mila.12418
Subject(s) - antecedent (behavioral psychology) , relevance (law) , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , meaning (existential) , relevance theory , epistemology , psychology , process (computing) , linguistics , cognitive psychology , computer science , cognition , philosophy , mathematics , social psychology , statistics , neuroscience , political science , law , operating system
Conditionals frequently convey that the antecedent is relevant to the consequent. Recently many authors have argued that this relevance is part of the conventional meaning of conditionals, but this approach fails to account for many examples where a conditional is used to convey ir relevance of antecedent to consequent. Both types of conditionals are best explained by a conventional meaning with no relevance requirement, and a separate process of coherence establishment among successive clauses in discourse. This account is supported by the distribution of discourse particles and is able to account for experimental studies used to support the conventionalist position.