An exceptive account of unless clauses: corpus-evidence

Abstract

This paper provides a corpus evidence to prove that unless clauses act like exceptive constructions (ECs). Adopting Galal et al (2019) categorization of ECs: paradigmatic ECs (connected/regular exceptive) and hypotactic ECs (free exceptives). The current analysis tries to apply this classification on unless clause to examine its behavior. Corpus evidence shows that unless clauses always display a fixed position in relation to its antecedent just like paradigmatic ECs, however the two constructions differ in that: unless occurs before the antecedent regardless the position of the consequence ( q statement), whereas paradigmatic ECs occur after the antecedent. In addition to that, unless allows universal and non-universal quantifiers, but universal quantifiers are more commonly used. Regarding coordinating sequences, unless accepts coordinating like hypotactic ECs. Some statistical analyses of use of unless conditionals in two native corpora: Contemporary Corpus of American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC), are presented showing that unless is more commonly used in BNC assuming that it is a characteristic of British English. Results demonstrated that this construction is more frequently used in the written proportions of COCA, whereas they are more commonly used in the spoken proportion of BNC.