International Conference on Tense and Aspect in Conditionals

It is a well-known fact that hypothetical conditional constructions – of the form “If A then B” – do not express factuality in the same way as do assertions: neither the antecedent nor the consequent in a hypothetical statement can be thought to be true in real world. In truth, hypothetical conditional statements are concerned with the speaker’s “ability to reason about alternatives, uncertainties and unrealized contingencies” (Traugott et al. 1986). But, what grammatical tools do the natural languages employ to express hypothetical uncertainties and unrealized contingencies? Are there cross-linguistic linguistic patterns that can account for different ways of expressing hypotheticality in natural languages? As is known, some languages make use of their sophisticated and grammaticalized tense-aspect systems to mark the distinction between two, three or even more categories of hypothetical constructions whereas others have recourse to some simple morphological devices or clause order in a conditional statement. The conference eagerly seeks to provide a forum for fruitful discussion among academic researchers working on specific topics such as the use of tense and aspect in conditionals, time-branching model in counterfactuals, fake tenses, truth-conditional account of tense and aspect in conditionals and some recent proposals such as X-theory (Iatridou and Van Fintel 2022). We welcome abstracts for 20-minute oral presentations (plus 10 minutes for discussion). Submissions from any linguistic framework or logical approach are welcome. Abstracts should be anonymous and clearly state the research question(s), approach, method, data, and (expected) results. Further, they should not exceed 500 words and should be sent to paris.conditionals@gmail.com by August 31, 2022. All submissions will be reviewed anonymously and a decision on acceptance will be communicated by September 10.