Presentation_of_mitigation

A Mitigating_situation is presented as occurring against the backdrop of a more preferable situation and a less preferable situation that, while expected, feared, or hoped for, did not or will not occur; the Mitigating_situation is thus, so to speak, sandwiched between a better and a worse situation, both of which are relevant in the discourse. Understanding the Mitigating_situation is therefore dependent on understanding the better and the worse situations, one or the other or both of which normally have already been mentioned or strongly evoked in the discourse. The relation of the Mitigating_situation to these situations may be filled in by discourse-level inference, as in the first example below, or implied by contrastive intonation, as in the second example. At least I don’t have to go to school. Ava, anyway, knew who he was. When the Mitigating_situation clause involves a negation, like in the first example above, the non-negated form is generally taken to be the worse situation - potentially also in combination with previous discourse context. (i.e. Perhaps there's been a blizzard. The better situation is that a blizzard did not occur. The mitigating situation is that a blizzard occurred, but I don't have to go to school. The worse situation would be that a blizzard occurred, and I also have to go to school.) Targets in this frame frequently occur in constructions that obscure the full Mitigating_situation: There will be no exceptions -- not for you, at any rate. In this example, there is a fragment ellipsis construction that depends on the semantics of the immediately preceding context. Lexical Units of this frame also frequently occur with the use of or that conveys a speaker self-correction or hedge. The function of this sort of or is to introduce contradictory possibilities without endorsing any of them. In combination with targets of the Presentation_of_mitigation frame, or joins a clause that represents the better situation to a second clause (or fragment) marked with an LU of this frame, with the overall intent of saying that even the less preferable alternative is still suitable to carry forward the point that the speaker wishes to express: She traveled, and now she is back here to transform our drab little lives, or at any rate, our drab furniture. The humorous point in this example is that, even if their drab lives are not transformed (the better situation), at least their drab furniture will be, while the worse situation is that everything simply remains drab. Note that this example, and most examples involving or, occur with the Shared_completion construction, meaning that two parts of the sentence have to be annotated: the shared part of the first clause and a fragment directly marked with a Presentation_of_mitigation LU. This frame is to be distinguished from two related frames, Concessive and Conditional_scenario. In Concessive and its daughter frames, either a Main_assertion or a Conceded_state_of_affairs FE (or both) are present, and both FEs, even though seemingly contradictory, are simulateously true. Here, however, only the Mitigating_situation actually occurs. Targets in this frame may be embedded in larger Concessive constructions, such as the below with although, where the better situation is made explicit (in negated form): Although she’s not my favorite, a new actress has won this time in any case. In Conditional_scenario, a Profiled_possibility and its Consequence, as well as an Opposite_possibility and its Anti_consequence, can be presented. Neither of the possibilities is asserted as true, nor is a desirability scale with better and worse ends evoked. If it rains, the ceremony will be under the tent. Unless you read carefully, you won't understand what I said.