Parsing if‐sentences and the conditions of sentencehood
V. H. Dudman in a series of papers Dudman 1984a to 1994 to mention some has put forward an account of the grammatical interpretation of ifsentences radically at variance with traditional views. Dudman's critics have addressed his taxonomical thesis which is the immediate corollary of his grammatical analysis, urging that it is out of line with certain semantic and syntactic observations. However, they have not addressed the arguments Dudman marshals for the grammatical analysis itself. In this paper, I examine these arguments. I aim to show that his grammatical analysis is flawed because it rests on a highly dubious criterion for sentencehood. In place of Dudman's analysis, I offer a mood analysis of if-sentence grammar and interpretation and then, in terms of it, reconsider the issue of taxonomy.