Conditional use of prepositional phrases in Dutch ; The case of zonder (‘without’)

Abstract Conditionality can be expressed using a variety of grammatical constructions, ranging from the prototypical lexical marker if to other grammatical patterns. This corpus study investigates the expression of conditionality using prepositional phrases introduced by Dutch zonder (‘without’) compared to their non-conditional use and the use of als (‘if’). The conditional use of zonder -phrases is discussed with respect to complement type, modal marking and negation. A regression analysis was performed to analyse the contribution of these factors to a conditional interpretation.