3.5.1. Conditional clauses
A semantic subclass of adverbial clauses is the conditional clause. A conditional clause is composed of an antecedent (ant), which expresses a condition, and of a consequence (cons), which shows the result. Conditional clauses can be divided into two categories: factual conditionals and counterfactual conditionals. In factual conditionals, the condition expressed by this clause can be fulfilled or not fulfilled in reality (a). In counterfactual conditionals this clause construction conveys a fulfilment, which is impossible to reverse (b). Examples of factual and counterfactual conditionals in DGS are the following:
ant cons
re,hn
a. if weather tomorrow good ix1 outside walk
‘If the weather tomorrow is good, I will take a walk outside.’
ant cons
re, hn, sq
b. if weather yesterday good ix1 outside walk
‘If the weather was good yesterday, I would have taken a walk outside.’