Si et le discours de la condition
« Si » and the condition discourse

Summary/Abstract: Using as point of departure the semantic value of the French conjunction « si » – to express a supposition, the present paper proposes a definition for the conditional meaning of this conjunction. We will make a distinction between the sentences introduced by « si » that express the « eventuality » type of supposition (when « si » means « au cas où ») and the sentences introduced by « si » that express the « condition » type of supposition (when « si » means « à condition que »). This corpus-based study will show that the conditional value can only be defined by considering an implied causal relation, namely as a favorable hypothe¬tical cause that produces a favorable hypothetical consequence. In order to define the particularity of the discourse that expresses condition in descriptive and argumentative texts, the conditional value of the conjunction « si » is analyzed by means of a corpus of examples selected from newspaper articles.

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