116
Modern English Only and If Only
This usage has variously been called a subordinate clause functioning as an
“irregular sentence” (Quirk et al. 1985 : 842),^23 an “isolated if- clause” (Stirling
1999 ), a “free conditional” (Lombardi Vallauri 2004 ), “monoclausal if only ”
(Dancygier and Sweetser 2005 ), or an “independent conditional clause”
(Verstraete , D’Hertefelt , and Van linden 2012 ). Dancygier and Sweetser ( 2005 :
217– 219) argue that these forms (as in If only he would stop drinking! ) have
lost their conditional meaning and are pure expressions of wish; they have
become performatives , expressing the speaker’s strong desire (“positive emo-
tional stance”), along with the belief that the desire is not currently fulfi lled
(“negative epistemic stance”). The wish sense is their “sole conventional
meaning”: i.e., I wish he would stop drinking. The absent apodosis is left “to
the hearer’s contextually prompted construction.” As Lombardi Vallauri notes
( 2004 ), “the meanings [that the free conditional] leaves unexpressed are always
generic enough as to be easily recoverable from the context” (199), with the
main function of the inferred part being “to endow the whole utterance with a
conventional pragmatic value (offer/ request, inhibition of action, reassurance,
challenging/ protest)” (208).
4.4.1 Insubordinated Clauses
Exclamatory if only clauses belong to a larger class of “insubordinated” clauses,
which have been defi ned by Evans ( 2007 : 367) as the “ conventionalized main
clause use of what, on prima facie grounds, appear to be formally subordinate
clauses .” Insubordinated clauses of various kinds – including both if- and that-
clauses – are found in a wide range of languages (see, e.g., Schwenter 1996;
Lombardi Vallauri 2004 ; Evans 2007 ; Heine 2012 ; Verstraete et al. 2012 ). It
has been argued that rather than being interpreted as elliptical or truncated
structures (at least synchronically; see below), these should be seen as a sep-
arate construction type that is “pragmatically, semantically and intonationally
complete and self- suffi cient” (Lombardi Vallauri 2004 : 204). Stirling argues
for isolated if- clauses as a “minor sentence type” because they are prosodically
complete, constitute a separate illocutionary act, can be independent clauses
in complex and compound sentences, and cannot be adequately explained by
ellipsis (1999: 289ff.).
Although the most common function of insubordinated conditionals is to
express polite requests (Lombardi Vallauri 2004 : 196; Evans 2007 : 380, 387,
389– 390), they may have other conventionalized uses. Stirling ( 1999 ) iden-
tifi es two main functions of isolated if- clauses in (Australian) English, a
23 “Irregular sentences” generally have the illocutionary force of exclamations, “the omission of
the matrix clause being mimetic of speechless amazement” (Quirk et al. 1985 : 841).