(Un)conditionals: An investigation in the syntax and semantics of conditional structures

This dissertation provides a detailed investigation of the syntax and semantic of unconditional sentences, such as "Whether or not Alfonso goes to the party, it will be fun", and "Whoever goes to the party, it will be fun." The guiding theoretical question is how such structures relate to better studied "if"-conditionals, such as "If Alfonso goes to the party, it will be fun." I give an account that unfies the two constructions, and show that they are both species of conditional, broadly construed. Externally, both kinds of structures serve to restrict domains of operators. The differences follow from the fact that unconditionals involve interrogative structure, and consequently the meaning of a question. Where a root question acts to raise an issue in discourse, a question meaning in the content of a conditional clause acts differently---it acts to provide an exhaustive set of mutually exclusive domain restrictions to a main-clause operator.;The dissertation provides extensive syntactic arguments that unconditionals involve interrogative structure, as opposed to any kind of relative structure. "Wh-ever" unconditional adjuncts syntactically are closest to root "wh-ever" questions, such as "Whatever happened to Alfonso?". I provide a semantics for such questions, arguing that "-ever" serves to widen the intensional domain of interpretation---the set of possible worlds used to evaluate the question's meaning. This analysis leads to a unified interpretation for "wh-ever" unconditional adjuncts and root "wh-ever" questions.