Premise conditionals are echoic thematic conditionals

This paper discusses the information structural properties of so-called premise (also factual ) conditionals, conditional sentences whose antecedent repeats previously evoked content. We argue that, semantically, premise conditionals are hypothetical conditionals, with two pragmatic properties: their antecedent is echoic and thematic. We show that some of the differences identified in the literature between hypothetical and premise conditionals follow from the informational status of the antecedent. While the antecedent of a premise conditional is thematic, the antecedent of a hypothetical conditional can also be rhematic. Rhematic conditionals happen to be compatible with all the characteristics that stand out as incompatible with premise conditionals. Additionally, we argue that echoicity is a definitional property of the premise reading of indicative conditionals. (c) 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY -NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).