INTRODUCTION

What I want to show in this chapter is that conditionals do not belong to the static domain of mathematical logic, but to the dynamic domain of discourse where individuals with different belief systems confront each other now.

I will demonstrate that we must consider discourse factors in (i) the preceding context and (ii) the speaker's attitude; and also that there is a connection between p and q, that is, every construction with the meaning ‘if p, q’ shares an abstract, grammatical meaning similar to ‘correlation/correspondence between p and q’. The evidence will be developed as follows: section 2 will examine two types of English conditionals, both of which have generally been regarded as counterexamples to the ‘connection’ theory; section 3 will show that consideration of factors in (i) and (ii) leads us to distinguish information and knowledge; section 4 will show that this distinction leads us to reject Haiman's (1978) view that conditionals are givens; section 5 is a conclusion.