Pragmatics in the last quarter century: The case of conditional perfection

The paper surveys twenty-five years of work on so-called 'conditional perfection', the phenomenon that if is often understood to mean only if. The author shows that contrary to what is commonly believed, the phenomenon was not introduced into Western linguistics by Gels and Zwicky (1971), but by Ducrot (1969) or even Bolinger (1952). He further argues that the correct analysis first appeared in the seventies, to be rediscovered once more in that decade, then in the eighties and once more in the nineties, and that it was neglected by those that proposed an alternative account. He tries to explain this succession of these events and non-events.