Conditionals and the Dual of Presupposition

Abstract

A proposal concerning the status of the semantic relation between the consequent clause of a conditional sentence and the conditional sentence itself is made: this relation corresponds to the dual of presupposition, in the technical sense. It holds not only for conditional declaratives but also for conditional questions, imperatives and exclamatives. Technically this is possible because conditional sentences are considered as categorially polyvalent modifications of the consequent clause by the conditional clause.This partially explains why many non-conditional constructions have conditional readings and gives a new answer to the question of what happens when the antecedent of a conditional is false.