[Lingtyp] Terminology for concessive constructions

[William Croft]

Dear Bastian,

  In Morphosyntax, section 17.3 on conditionals, concessives  and concessive conditionals, I used the terms ‘protasis’ and ‘apodosis’ for the two clauses in all three of those constructions. I follow Comrie (1986) in arguing that the relationship between the events in the two clauses is fundamentally causal (see discussion in that section). The subtypes can be distinguished as ‘conditional protasis’, ‘concessive protasis’, ‘concessive conditional protasis’ etc. if necessary.

  I discuss the fact that the same semantic relation can be expressed in two independent clauses in section 17.5. However, I didn’t discuss terminological usage there. That is mainly because for practical reasons, I did not discuss relations between independent clauses in discourse in Morphosyntax.

Best wishes,
Bill

Comrie, Bernard. 1986. Conditionals: a typology. On conditionals, ed. Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Alice ter Meulen, Judy Snitzer Reilly and Charles A. Ferguson, 77-99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Croft, William. 2022. Morphosyntax: constructions of the world’s languages. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

On Apr 27, 2023, at 9:10 AM, Bastian Persohn <persohn.linguistics at gmail.com<mailto:persohn.linguistics at gmail.com>> wrote:

  [EXTERNAL]
Dear fellow typologist,

I wonder if anyone has ever come up with a terminology for the two clauses that make up a concessive construction, as in (1).

Crucially, I am looking for a terminology that can be employed in cross-linguistic comparisons.

(1) Although Peter studied hard, he still failed the exam.

I try to avoid naming the clause that expresses the clause depicting the opposing circumstance a „concessive clause“, as this is usually associated with syntactic subordination, whereas the same semantic relationship may also be expressed by two clauses of the same structural level, as in (2). What is more, I am not aware of any good, let alone well-established, term for the second clause.

(2) Peter studied hard. Nonetheless, he failed the exam.

I’ve been toying around with „concessive antecedent“ and „concessive consequent“ as labels. This would have the advantage of covering concessive conditionals, as in (3). But then, it is somewhat strange to use these terms outside of the realm of conditionals. What is more, the „antecedent“ may be postponed, as in (4).

(3) Even if Peter studies hard, he will fail the exam.

(4) German
Peter ist sicher in der Prüfung durchgefallen. Obwohl … bei dem Dusel den der zuletzt hat…
‚Peter surely failed the exam. Come to think of it, though, seen how lucky he has been as of late…'

 To cut a long story short, are there any studies out there that have established useful labels for concessives?

Best,
Bastian
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