Schwenter (2001) proposed that Spanish como-conditionals convey a scalar “anti-concessive” meaning, such that a condition typically considered insufficient for the expressed consequent is asserted as sufficient in a given situation. These invert the meaning of concessive conditionals (cf. König 1986), which pose a condition typically considered sufficient for the negation of the consequent, but despite this the consequent obtains (Even if it rains, we’ll have a barbecue). Consider (1), where touching the speaker’s brother is interpreted as a condition that would normally be insufficient for killing someone (como-conditionals require a subjunctive verb, here 2SG present subjunctive toques, in the antecedent):

 

(1)                       Como toques     a            mi          hermanito,                       te                              mato.

                             As                        touch    to           my         little:brother      you              kill:1SG

       ‘If you touch my little brother, I’ll kill you.’

 

Such examples are infelicitous with consequents that are not interpretable as “extreme” with respect to the condition (1’), which to be felicitous must receive the reading that the speaker’s giving a present is a threat to her interlocutor:

 

(1’)                      #Como toques  a            mi          hermanito,         te                         doy                      un          regalo

                              As                                      touch    to           my         little:brother              you        give:1SG             a            present

                            ‘If you touch my little brother, I’ll give you a present.’

 

              The notion “anti-concessive” has not caught on more generally in discussion of concessive conditionals, possibly because a similar class has not been identified for English. To redress this situation, in this presentation I compare the Spanish construction with what I take to be its English counterpart: the If you so much as conditional (cf. Gast and van der Auwera 2011) as in (2).

 

(2)         If you so much as touch my little brother, I’ll kill you.

 

Just like the Spanish como-conditional, the English construction is also infelicitous (absent similar bizarre assumptions in the common ground) when the consequent is not interpretable as one that is extreme with respect to the antecedent:

 

(2’)        #If you so much as touch my little brother, I’ll give you a present.

 

              The English construction transparently expresses an antecedent that is normally considered insufficient for the consequent via the scalar operator so much as, and shows semantic/pragmatic restrictions similar to those of the Spanish como-conditional. In addition, elliptical versions of these conditionals in both languages are interpreted as conveying an extreme implicit consequent (If you so much as touch my brother…). I propose therefore that anti-concessive conditionals are more fully grammaticalized and opaque in some languages (Spanish) but more lexically compositional and transparent in expression in others (English). More generally, this research shows that the notion of anti-concessive meaning has cross-linguistic applicability.

 

References

Gast, Volker, and Johan van der Auwera. 2011. Scalar additive operators in the languages of Europe. Language 87.2-54.

König, Ekkehard. 1986. Conditionals, concessive conditionals and concessives: areas of contrast, overlap and neutralization. On conditionals, ed. by Elizabeth Closs Traugott et al., 229-46. Cambridge: CUP.

Schwenter, Scott A. 2001. Expectations and (in)sufficiency: como-conditionals in Spanish. Linguistics 39.733-60.