Conditional interpretations of if‐sentences

Logic and grammar are taught in different departments, and moreover presented as quite different sorts of disciplines, by people of quite different stamps of mind. This essay attempts the ambitious project of engaging readers of both stamps, upon a topic which, when all is said and done, has occupied logicians and grammarians separately for centuries.* It sets out to describe, by slow degrees, one particular kind of message that English speakers communicate by means of «/-sentences. The particular kind of message, easily introduced to intuition, is exemplified by those entirely natural interpretations of

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