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Γιάννης Κωστόπουλος: Πες το και θα γίνει. Υποθετικοί λόγοι με το και

Modern Greek και is generally considered a conjunctive coordinator that can give rise to a wide range of interpretations. In certain contexts, connections with και seem to behave like subordinating structures, communicating a conditional meaning of the form “if P, then Q”. These paratactic conditionals challenge the view that και is a semantic coordinator and seem to call for an analysis in terms of polysemy. Rejecting both the polysemy and the truth-functional approach, the account presented in this paper maintains that conditional interpretations of και-utterances are pragmatically motivated and can be treated without any extension of the semantics of και. Drawing on Sperber & Wilson’s Relevance Theory, I argue that paratactic conditionals express causal sequences of potential events. As in ordinary και-utterances, και in paratactic conditionals contributes a non-truth functional inferential constraint that guarantees the relevance of the interpretation grasped by the hearer.