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Abstract Abstract: This article attempts to investigate the interaction between grammar and pragmatics by focusing on the English directive if-conditional construction (DICC), which is a complex construction expressing simultaneously both a conditional meaning and a directive force. In addition to its conditional meaning, a DICC gains a directive force resulting from the pragmatic enrichment of the if-conditional clause by the declarative clause. As a kind of frequently used utterance of indirect speech act in everyday communication, DICC can usually express two types of pragmatic meanings: an illocutionary meaning of threat and an illocutionary meaning of inducement. Such pragmatic meanings result from the joint functioning of the constructional context formed by DICC itself, the mutual interaction between DICC as a whole and its two components, the mutual interaction between the if-conditional clause and the declarative clause, and the pragmatic enrichment of the if-conditional clause by the declarative clause. This reveals a fact that grammar and pragmatics are interlocked with and interactive to each other rather than independent of each other.
Key words: grammar-pragmatics interaction; directive if-conditional construction; illocutionary meaning; motivation; constructional context
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