Attenuating NPIs in indicative and counterfactual conditionals

Abstract

The antecedent of conditionals is well-established as a licenser of weak negative polarity items (NPIs), but comparatively less attention has been paid to potential differences between indicative and counterfactual conditionals in this regard. Here, we argue that attenuating NPIs like English all that and German sonderlich (‘particularly’) are systematically degraded in indicative conditionals. We support this observation with experimental evidence from a naturalness rating task and attribute the degradation in indicative conditionals to an interaction between the licensing condition of attenuating NPIs, on the one hand, and the pragmatics of indicative and counterfactual conditionals, on the other.