Illocutionary conditionals and discourse strategies in aphasia: A corpus-based analysis

This study investigates illocutionary conditionals—conditional constructions that modulate speech acts such as requests, offers, and warnings—in speakers with aphasia. Previous clinical research has mainly focused on the morphosyntactic properties of conditional constructions, largely overlooking illocutionary conditionals and their pragmatic functions. To highlight the importance of this structure in everyday communication and address this research gap, the study is organized into two parts. The first part provides a comprehensive overview of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features of illocutionary conditionals. The second part presents a corpus-based analysis of how speakers with aphasia use these constructions. Preliminary findings indicate that individuals with aphasia are capable of producing illocutionary conditionals using strategies broadly similar to those of neurotypical speakers, though some differences emerge. These results underscore the need to consider the pragmatic dimensions of conditional constructions in clinical research and suggest that more fine-grained theoretical distinctions from linguistics should be integrated into experimental studies.