Showing papers on "Counterfactual conditional published in 1986"
01 Nov 1986
TL;DR: The authors traces the two-thousand-year history of conditional sentence types from Latin to the modern Romance languages and relates to those of Konig, Bowerman and Reilly in its dynamic approach, and to ter Meulen's and Reilly's in its focus on temporality.
Abstract: Editors' note . This paper traces the two-thousand-year history of conditional sentence types from Latin to the modern Romance languages. The rich documentation of these languages allows detailed consideration of the thoroughgoing changes in the tense/aspect/ mood systems of the verb. In spite of successive shifts and new formations, the system of conditionals remains fundamentally the same in terms of basic semantic parameters of hypotheticality (real, potential, unreal) and time (past, nonpast). However, the boundary between potential and unreal conditionals is less clear-cut than between real and either of them, and the time parameter is less clear-cut in potential and unreal than in real conditions. This paper relates to those of Konig, Bowerman and Reilly in its dynamic approach, and to ter Meulen's and Reilly's in its focus on temporality. INTRODUCTION The historical study of conditional sentences in a particular language or language family is a complex and difficult task. One of the major reasons for this is the nondiscrete nature of the category involved, in that the meaning of conditional sentences seems to shade off imperceptibly into adjacent semantic areas, in particular those of concession, cause and time. Equally, even where, as in the case of Romance, there is one favoured structure for conditional sentences (a biclausal sentence incorporating a protasis introduced by the conjunction si ), this will not always carry the relevant value, while conversely there will be other structures with diverse functions which can and do in certain circumstances serve to mark a hypothetical antecedent–consequent relation.
15 citations
6 citations
01 Jan 1986
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that the virtues of positivism emerge only in the detail of particular versions, not in summaries of its most general philosophical theses, and that a condition for recognizing what we have to learn from positivism is that we understand that there were many positivisms and not just one or even two.
Abstract: The time has perhaps come at last when it is possible to evaluate positivism’s contribution to the social sciences in a way that does justice to its real achievements while recognizing its philosophical defects. Too many antipositivist writers have been content with cataloguing mistakes when they ought to have learned from Hegel that any sufficiently important error is always a way-station and even perhaps a necessary way-station on the road to some truth. But a condition for recognizing what we have to learn from positivism, in the social sciences as elsewhere, is that we understand that there were many positivisms and not just one or even two. The virtues of positivism emerge only in the detail of particular versions, not in summaries of its most general philosophical theses.
1 citations