The Basic Analysis of Conditionals

All of us use conditional constructions all the time. We use them to ask questions, to give commands, to make assertions, to make promises, and to do many other things. It seems perfectly obvious that we must each of us know a great deal about how conditional constructions function, about what constitutes an adequate answer to a question phrased using a conditional construction, about what must be done to obey a command made with a conditional construction, about what must be the case for a conditional assertion to be true, about what must be done to fulfill a conditional promise, and so on. Language is conventional and the function of conditional constructions must be determined by the way that we normally use them. So we can’t fail to use them correctly most of the time. Of course someone might try to use a conditional construction in a way in which it is not normally used. When this happens, something goes wrong, some kind of mistake has been made. But in a certain sense every speaker of English knows how to use conditional constructions. What I want to do in this chapter is to begin to make precise and explicit and to explain this knowledge which we all share.