Conditionals in dynamic syntax

The topic of this thesis is to propose a general framework for the processing of expressions whose interpretation involves quantification over entities commonly referred to as situations or eventualities. The account is based on the formal apparatus defined in the framework of Dynamic Syntax (DS, Kempson et al. 2001, Cann et at. 2005) for the processing of nominal relative clauses. As a case study for this type of analysis, we concentrate on natural language conditionals. One of the characteristic features of DS is its modelling of anaphoric phenomena by means of re-employing previously constructed terms as replacements for the underspecified content provided by anaphoric expressions. In the present account, this feature is exploited in order to explain the semantic representational effects associated with the processing of conditional sentences: a newly introduced term constructed by processing the protasis is copied into the structure induced by the processing of the apodosis in order to serve as a component of its parameters of evaluation. A few consequences follow from this analysis. It is shown that the rules developed for the handling of left-dislocation phenomena in DS can adequately account for the variable linear positions occupied by if-clauses. Therefore several phenomena which previous accounts attribute to properties of multiple structural representations can now be reanalysed as the effects of the time-linear process of deriving an interpretation incrementally from a natural language string. The reanalysis of the data has also led to the conclusion that the effects explained by Binding Theory in other frameworks should be expressed in different terms accommodating gradual availability of information at different parsing stages. The DS time-linear account of anaphora faces the challenge posed by the existence of cataphoric phenomena and conditionals are an important testing ground for the analytical resources of the framework in this domain. It is argued here that