Coordination of utterances of different modality: about “desiderative-appellative” utterances with conditional and concessive value

Abstract

This paper deals with constructions constituted by the coordination –with the copulative conjunction y or the disjunctive conjunction o– of two statements: the first one has a desiderative-appellative modality (with a verb in subjunctive or imperative mood) and the second one has a declarative modality: Vete y triunfarás, No digas nada o te acusarán de traidor… The components of these assymetric and not reversible coordinations hold semantic relations of argumentative nature. The prevailing interpretation tends to be conditional (“if you go, you will succeed”…), but sometimes it could be concessive. The main goals of this paper are: 1) to define formal, semantic and pragmatic properties that distinguish these coordinations from others 2) to establish a typology of cases based on their values and interpretation, 3) to show that they constitute an area of confluence of the semantic notions of conditionality and concessivity and 4) to determine the type of unit that appears as result of the coordination of two statements of different modality