Non-Prototypical Structurally Separate Conditional Constructions in Catalan (In Comparison with Spanish and French)

The article is devoted to non-prototypical structurally separate conditional constructions (NSCC) in Catalan in comparison with Spanish and French. These represent two (or more) separate sentences, one of which expresses condition and the other – consequence without conditional conjunctions. The relevance and novelty of this study follows from the fact that NSCCs have not received sufficient attention yet which is particularly true for Catalan. There is no consensus in specialist literature as regards the terms used to describe this kind of constructions or define their scope. The list of terms for NSCCs in Russian linguistics is too long, and includes the following: “non-prototypical constructions”, “conditional constructions formed as a “syntactic unity”, “supraphrasal unity”, among others. The paper states that it’s necessary to distinguish prototypical conditional constructions from the constructions with conditional con-junction “si”, on one hand, and non-prototypical constructions, on the other. And integral conditional constructions should be distinguished from structurally separate constructions (also referred to as formally separate). There are also non-prototypical structurally separate conditional constructions with interrogative words expressing condition in the protasis and imperatives constructions expressing consequence in the apodosis, constructions with imperatives (verbs like ‘suppose’) expressing condition in the protasis and interrogative sentences expressing consequence in the apodosis. NSCCs can use different moods: imperative, indicative, subjunctive, and conditional. Imperative forms are compatible both with semantics of conditions and consequences. There are also NSCCs without imperatives. And besides that, between the first sentence expressing the condition and the second sentence expressing the consequence filler utterances can occur. As typically in prototypical conditional constructions, in NSCC the condition and the consequence expressed also belong to the same subject of speech (speaker), though in some rare cases may be inserted, as a link be-tween the first and the second sentences of the construction, an interrogative sentence asked by another subject. NSCCs don’t allow the use of subordinating conjunctions, the opposite being a clear sign of prototypical constructions, but the consequence can be introduced with markers meaning ‘then’. The study is based on the texts by Catalan authors, excerpts from Catalan journals and their translations into Spanish and French; texts generated by the author’s informers, native speakers have also been used.

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