Monday, May 26, 2014

If and even if

A biscuit conditional with parenthetical even-if clause from the Guardian’s coverage of European elections in the UK:
if you didn't stay up late into the night to follow the results of voting for the European parliament (and even if you did), here are the highlights and key results.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

"European elections in the UK." I know what you mean (you're using Europe to mean the EU), but the phrase sounds tautological. Any election in the UK - anything that happens in that country - is European.

Unknown said...

I wonder if the American radio interviewer Terry Gross holds the record for the highest number of publicly recorded biscuit conditionals. Several times a show, she comes back from a brief interruption with the catchphrase "if you're just joining me, my guest tonight is - ." Of course, the identity of the guest doesn't really depend on when I turned on my radio.

nick said...

Hi Dave, and thanks for these. Sorry that it took so long to approve them: I didn't realise/remember that the blog was set up to require approval.

nick said...

Of course you are right that everything that is in the UK is also in Europe.
Still, it's pretty clear that we can use the phrase 'European elections' to pick out elections for EU institutions. In another context it might have been intended (and understood) as meaning 'elections that take place in Europe' or 'elections carried out in a European style' (whether they take place in Europe or not) or ...

nick said...

And thanks for the biscuit conditional example. A born linguist is someone who notices that that is not what is meant, but that it could have been.