Krzyzanowska, Karolina, Collins, Peter J. ORCID: 0000-0003-4831-2524 and Hahn, Ulrike (2017) The puzzle of conditionals with true clauses: against the Gricean account. In: Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society, Austin, TX, USA, pp. 2476-2481. ISBN 978-0991196760

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Abstract

Indicative conditionals, that is sentences of the form “If p, then q,” belong to the most puzzling phenomena of language. On the majority of accounts of indicative conditionals, the truth of p and q suffices for “If p, then q” to be true or highly acceptable. Yet, many conditionals with true clauses, even if there is a meaningful connection between them, sound odd. The most common reaction to this phenomenon is to attribute the oddity of conditionals with true clauses to natural language pragmat- ics. We present an experimental study investigating how the presence or absence of a connection between the clauses af- fects the assertability of conditionals and conjunction express- ing generic and specific kind of content. The results refute the standard pragmatic explanation.

Item Type:	Conference Proceedings
Title of Proceedings:	Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Uncontrolled Keywords:	indicative conditionals, conjunctions, relevance, specific content, generic content, assertability
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > School of Human Sciences (HUM)
Related URLs:	Publisher
Last Modified:	25 Aug 2020 15:46
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/28099

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