Based on the new experimental evidence, we argue that a link between a conditional antecedent and the consequent is semantically expressed rather than pragmatically conveyed. In our paper, we focus on particular kinds of links which conditionals may convey in a context. For instance, a conditional ‘If p, q’ may convey a thought equivalent to ‘p will cause q’, ‘p is the best explanation for q’, ‘q follows from p’, etcetera. The traditional theoretical literature on conditionals seems to imply that these specific links are generated pragmatically and are akin to conversational implicatures. In order to test this hypothesis, we used a well-recognized linguistic test from ‘reinforceability’ (i.e., susceptibility to a non-redundant affirmation), which serves to distinguish between a semantic and pragmatic level of meaning, and we designed an experimental study based on that test. The outcome of our study is that specific links conveyed by conditionals exhibit features of semantic entailments rather than conversational implicatures. This result accords with some of the recent findings in empirical investigations on conditionals. In the final part of our paper, we discuss various accounts of conditionals which can accommodate the results of our study.

根据新的实验证据，我们认为条件先决条件与结果之间的联系是语义表达的，而不是语用表达的。在我们的论文中，我们关注条件可能在上下文中传达的特定类型的链接。例如，条件'如果p，q '可能传达与' p等效的思想将导致q '，' p是对q '的最好解释，' q源自p'等。关于条件的传统理论文献似乎暗示这些特定的联系是务实地产生的，类似于会话暗示。为了检验这个假设，我们使用了公认的“可强化性”（即对非冗余肯定性的易感性）的语言测试，以区分语义和语用意义，并设计了实验研究根据该测试。我们研究的结果是，条件句所传达的特定链接表现出语义蕴含的特征，而不是对话含意。这一结果与条件研究的最新研究结果相吻合。在本文的最后一部分，我们讨论了可以适应我们研究结果的各种条件说明。