(Un)conditionals: An Investigation in the Syntax and Semantics of Conditional Structures

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.