Focus Influences the Presence of Conditional Perfection: Experimental Evidence

Abstract

This contribution tests whether focus has a determining influence on the occurrence of Conditional Perfection. Two off-line experiments support this hypothesis. Conditional Perfection occurs significantly more often if the antecedent of the conditional is focused compared to the non-focused case. Additionally, in contrast to the scalar implicature associated with or (Zondervan 2009), Conditional Perfection occurs only infrequent if the antecedent is not focused. The second experiment suggests that this distinct behavior is due to different properties of the scalar implicature and the implicature associated with Conditional Perfection.