The wenn / ob / oder triangle

Abstract

In many languages across families, the connectives for conditionals, questions, and disjunctions partially converge: the language’s conditional connective and its question particle are the same, or the question particle and the disjunction are. This article explores the patterns of lexical convergence in terms of the denotations of assertions, questions, and denials. It is argued that neither the partial convergence between the three connectives nor the lack of convergence between conditionals and disjunctions is accidental. To account for this, questioning is constructed as the pivot in a triangle of algebraic relations without a specified connection between disjunction and conditionalization.