CHAOS VS. ORDER: THE DEGREE OF INDECISION IN CONDITIONAL COMPLEX CLAUSES
CHAOS VS. ORDER: THE DEGREE OF INDECISION IN CONDITIONAL COMPLEX CLAUSES

Summary/Abstract: Chaos vs. Order: the Degree of Indecision in Conditional Complex Clauses. This study examines the temporal and aspectual behaviour of the Romanian conditional mood in complex clauses, using the Davidsonian event variable as a structural foundation. Building on Reichenbach’s temporal architecture and Vendler’s aspectual typology, the analysis investigates how conditional predicates shift between indecision and partial determination once additional events or adverbials intervene. I argue that the culmination point – typically a property of a single event – undergoes systematic reinterpretation in conditional complex clauses, where event dependency and modal subordination reshape aspectual values. To account for these patterns, the paper introduces the representation E(hX), a hidden event variable that preserves the conditional’s inherent uncertainty while allowing dependent events to impose aspectual or temporal constraints. The model captures how the conditional mood becomes less indecisive when interacting with achievement‑type predicates, adverbial scope, or narrator‑induced perspective. Three guiding questions structure the investigation: how delimitation points are established, how the conditional can be represented without eliminating its uncertainty, and how Reference Time and Event Time influence syntactic labelling. The findings suggest that conditional indecision is not a fixed semantic property but an emergent effect shaped by event structure and aspectual hierarchy.

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