Revisiting Conditional Typology for Bangla

Abstract

The paper presents new data on two strategies of forming Conditionals in the Eastern Indo-Aryan language Bangla: Correlative Conditionals and Participial Conditionals. It further shows that there is a subtle division of labor between the two kinds of constructions. It is proposed that the distributional difference between these two provides evidence in favor of the theories of conditionals that classify Hypothetical Conditionals and Biscuit Conditionals as having the same underlying semantics. Furthermore, it is shown that the distinction extends to the then-word tahole in the language. This leads to a pragmatic account of the conditional participle -le in different types of participial conditionals. The paper ends with discussing how a pragmatic account leads to an unresolved question regarding the syntactic classification of the conditionals.