Focus, scales, and concessive conditionals in German

•Distinction between two German “auch/selbst/sogar wenn” patterns.•The first “auch/selbst/sogar wenn” pattern expresses a relationship of conditional sufficiency.•This pattern is characterized by a free and compositional relationship between an additive focus particle, a regular conditional “wenn”-clause, and the matrix clause.•The second “auch/selbst/sogar wenn” pattern expresses a relationship of conditional insufficiency.•This pattern is characterized by a fusion of the focus particle and “wenn” into a complex complementizer with concessive characteristics.•Unlike the first “auch/selbst/sogar wenn” pattern, the second “auch/selbst/sogar wenn” pattern is always scalar, nonrestrictive, and not completely compositional.

Based on examples from spoken talk-in-interaction, this paper deals with German auch/selbst/sogar wenn constructions. It aims to show that two auch/selbst/sogar wenn patterns have to be distinguished. The first pattern - auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional sufficiency - is characterized by a free and compositional relationship between the focus particle (i.e., auch, selbst, or sogar), a regular conditional wenn-clause, and the matrix clause.The second pattern - auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional insufficiency - is only partially compositional: it is characterized by a syntactic and semantic fusion of the focus particle and wenn into a complex complementizer with concessive characteristics. The second pattern has often been discussed under the names “concessive/irrelevance conditional” or “unconditional”.Moreover, it will be shown that auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional insufficiency can be explained in terms of a lexicalized inference foregrounded by regular conditional wenn-clauses preceded by scalar additive focus particles. This argument provides a reasonable diachronic explanation for the synchronic similarities and differences between auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional sufficiency and auch/selbst/sogar wenn as an expression of conditional insufficiency.