[Lingtyp] Terminology for concessive constructions

["Ekkehard König"]

Dear Bastian, dear Bill,

I completely agree with Bill that defintions and terminology for
concessive constructions cannot be based on formal criteria. Given the
great variety of syntactic devices for their encoding, the terminology
must be based on semantic criteria. So the extension of the established
terminology for conditionals to concessives is certainly an option, given
that (simple, irrelevance, concessive) conditionals are a major source for
the interpretation and historical development of concessive constructions.

What I do not agree with is Bill's assumption that "the relationship
between the events in the two clauses is fundamentally causal". One major
source for the development and encoding of concessive relations are
negated causal constructions. (The term 'incausal' has been used for such
cases.) The wide-scope negation of a causal construction can under certain
conditions be equivalent to the same sentence with a concessive marker and
narrow-scope negation of the 'apodosis':

(1) The room is no less comfortable because it dispenses with air
conditioning. (wide-scope negation)
(2) The house in no less comfortable, although it dispenses with
air-conditioning. (narrow scope nagation)

There are, however, other sources for the development and enriched
interpretations of concessives which have nothing to do with (negated)
causality, '(remarkable) simultaneity/concomitance' being one of them.

In my publications on the subject I have been toying with terms like
'inhibiting circumstances + emphatic assertion'. Semantically this makes
sense, what is lacking, however, is terminological elegance.

I attach the part of a recent handout with the list of the relevant
publications.

Very best,

Ekkehard

> 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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