ABSTRACT

This paper deals with conditional sentences which are not related to the propositional content of the sentence but rather to various aspects of the utterance that is performed. The main goal is to develop a typology of the functions of these conditionals. It is shown that in German there are no uniform rules for the positioning of these conditional sentences, but the possible positions vary according to the function of the conditionals. The main types of these sentences are (1) relevance conditionals, (2) conditionals modifying the illocutionary force, (3) conditionals characterizing the attitude of the speaker, (4) conditionals commenting on the formulation, (5) conditionals which indicate discourse-coherence and direct the attention of the hearer.