As J notes, there is a lot of empirical linguistics going on here. Professors tend to be polysyllabic. They, at least, often complain that STUDENTS are not ('you are a monosyllabic utterer', 'one monosyllabic utterer').
In general, there must be a ratio of explicatum/implicatum. Suppose the explicatum is
p & q
the implicatum (let's assume)
p AND THEN q
So there's the ratio
p and then q
--------------
p and q
In general, there must be a balance. If you are going to IMPLICATE, you don't HAVE to say 'then' -- you say, "p and q". Some people prefer to be overexplicit and say "p and THEN q"
But this comes out as gratuitous given the maxim, 'be orderly'.
In fact, the Gricean scheme would predict that you only care to make it explicit if the link is "q" AND THEN "p".
As in Jennifer Lopez's new film,
"Love and Lust"
"What's a girl to do?"
"Fall in love -- marry -- get pregnant -- but not necessarily in that order" runs the catchy billboard.
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well, that would be empirical too, part of that exciting potboiler, "Everything you ever wanted to know about Conditionals." So, the logic of "if, then" statements would be only part of it. As you have pointed out, many speakers use "if" as a type of causal thing. Then so do detectives, or reporters or scientists. So "if" works, sort of inductively AND deductively (but most academic logicians want to use -> or modus ponens, etc in strictly formal deductions...). No sh*t you say.
ReplyDeletePlebes just use "if" as a type of informal sequence usually--if he's late, he's been drinkin'; that is assuming Gott's willin and the creek don't rise, etc. It's like part of the vernacular. Herd-speak (idiomatic as well, usually. spanish has all sorts of strange phrases that don't go over in anglo).
Any formal conditional (if x is prime number, x is divisible by itself and 1,...or legalese, etc) would show a register of ..education. Or one would suspect it of the speaker, ala Bierce.
So again I'd say any "register" issues applied to humans from difference socio-economic groups, etc do hinge on empirical research, ie data, looking at many, many syntactical instances (and across languages as well). Not quite as jazzy as ..philosophastry.
Yes -- but still. How did "I" learn to use 'if'? Surely not from my mother (mother tongue) or father for that matter ('father tongue') for THEY use 'if' causally. I possibly learned it, for good or bad, from Grice!
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