Chen, Rinelle: From if only to I wish: Rebound Events, Projection Links, and Node Fixation in the Formation of Wish Structures

This paper examines three English expressions associated with wish and non-current states—if only, I wish, and the noun wish—and suggests that their differences should not be understood merely in terms of semantic content or emotional intensity, but rather in terms of how wishes are formed in understanding through different structural modes. In existing analyses, these expressions are often grouped under categories such as wish, counterfactuality, regret, or preference. While such classification