117directive function (e.g., If you’d like to get dressed now. [spoken by a doctor to
a patient]) or an optative function (e.g., If I’d somewhere to go, some friend’s
room. or If only Miss Hawkins would get a job! ). She points out that the differ-
ence between if and if only optatives is that while both express the meaning
“P is not the case” and “S[peaker] desires that P be the case,” only the if only
expresses the meaning “S believes it unlikely that P will come about” and “S
believes neither S or H[earer] can bring P about” (1999: 287). This can lead to
the “sense of frustration” expressed by the if only clauses.^24
Like as if (see Brinton 2014a ), if only can occur completely on its own to
express a hypothetical wish, without the remainder of the protasis clause.
While independent as if often occurs in the context of a previous full as if -
clause, this is not always the case with if only :
(23) a. So I keep thinking, if only. If only. (1994 Paris Review [COCA])
b. If he hadn’t been so intent on his own career. If only, if only ...” (2005 Black
Issues Book Review [COCA])
c. If only , she thought; but it was no good wishing, especially when she didn’t
even know what she was wishing for. (1985– 94 Rush, Adam’s paradise
[BYU- BNC ( British national corpus )])
d. I had permitted you free access to every room in the house save one: my
study, which contained not the head of my previous wife ( if only! Sorry,
I know she’s your mother), (2002 Fantasy & Science Fiction [COCA])
A further pragmatic development of independent if only is the meaning of
negation seen in the uses given in (24). That is, rather than expressing the
speaker’s “positive interest” in the expressed situation coming about (e.g., ‘I
wish it were the case that’), the speaker seems to be asserting the fact or belief
that the situation does or could not obtain, or has not obtained. In this usage, if
only approximates the use of exclamatory as if , which denies an expressed or
implied state of affairs (e.g., He thinks you’ll be impressed. As if. [see Brinton
2014a ]). Note the co- occurrence of as if and if only in (24c). This negative
meaning is an inferential development from the hypothetical conditional mean-
ing of negative epistemicity ; that is, if a speaker says that the fulfi lling of a
condition is impossible, the hearer can infer that it does not exist (i.e., ‘if only
it did, but it doesn’t’). I see this usage of if only as a fully developed pragmatic
marker.
24 While these forms typically express “closed” or “remote” conditionals, they may occasionally
express “open” conditionals (see Huddleston and Pullum 2002 : 751):
(i) If only the programmers will continue to neglect us! (1999 October [COCA])
(ii) It may be broken too, but perhaps I can fi x it. If onl y I can fi nd it. (1992 Piers, Factal mode
[COCA])
Dancygier and Sweetser ( 2005 : 233– 234) consider “positive if only ” to be “still marginal.”
4.4 If Only