Paratactic conditionals. A Romance perspective

Abstract

The main focus of the present article is to show how conditional meaning can arise in constructions other than the prototypical clauses introduced by ‘if’ or other conditional conjunctions, namely in coordinate constructions. We discuss the properties of these constructions against all the main elements of prototypical conditionality. In order to illustrate how these constructions invite a conditional interpretation we use examples from some Romance languages (Romanian, Spanish, French) attempting to see if our observations have cross-linguistic value.