pragmatics of conditional marking , scott a . schwenter schwenter , scott a . ; pragmatics of conditional marking : implicature , scalarity , and exclusivity ; 0-8153 - 3309 - 9 , cloth ; pages 275 , $ 63 ; garland publishing ; outstanding dissertations in linguistics this study examines the meaning of prototypical conditional-sentence markers like english if and spanish si from a primarily pragmatic perspective . it argues that the sense of " hypotheticality " often associated with the encoded semantics of such markers is actually a pragmatic conversational implicature that is cancelable in certain discourse contexts . the analysis therefore redraws in radical fashion the semantics-pragmatics boundary as it applies to the meaning of conditional markers . a number of key implications are presented in detail . first , it is shown that " factual " if-clauses , typically considered anomalous despite their frequent occurrence in many types of discourse , fall out from the predictions made by the pragmatic view of conditional marker meaning . second , it is demonstrated that the " hypotheticality " implicature interacts with the well-known implicature of conditional perfection , and that this interaction allows one to predict when " biconditional " readings of simple conditionals will and will not arise . more generally , the model of meaning developed in this book permits clear links to be made between conditionality and other conceptual domains , such as adversativity and scalarity . these links are examined in chapters 4 and 5 using declarative-sentence uses of spanish si as the empirical testing ground . this book will be of interest to linguists working in semantics and pragmatics , discourse analysis , and hispanic linguistics . it will also appeal to scholars interested in the interface between communication and cognition . e - mail : info @ garland . com