The syntactic side of Conditional Conjunction

•If & 0s are regular syntactic heads, one should expect movement to their specifiers.•The Conditional Conjunction construction in English exhibits such a case.•The analysis argues for movement of an vP-adjunct to Spec&P.•It derives all the data (i.a. Binding, Extraction, QR) of the construction.•It provides a deeper insight into the nature of (Asymmetric) Coordination.

In Culicover and Jackendoff (1997), the Conditional Conjunction construction is cited as one example of a literal mismatch between syntax and semantics because it seems to exhibit syntactic properties of coordinate structures and semantic properties of subordinate structures at the same time. Hence, as they conclude, this construction cannot be derived in frameworks such as Minimalism where the semantics is derived from some syntactic level of representation such as LF. I want to argue that it is possible to derive the specific properties of this construction under Minimalist assumptions if one adheres to a strictly derivational model of Minimalism and subscribes to the assumption that a clause can be base-generated as an adjunct low in the tree and then be moved to the specifier of a coordination phrase as the regular first conjunct of a coordination.