I see, thanks for the reply. So, what would you call this grammar construct in English? I was posed this question today, and I'm not sure.
[b][Even if you stop me, I won't change my mind.][/b]
"An even if states a challenging or negative condition. The speaker is saying that no condition will stop the outcome. Even if emphasizes the speakers intent to achieve the outcome or goal without regard for a difficult or negative condition."
[i](http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/9-7.html#whether)[/i]
To me, this sounds at its most basic level like a question of modality:
"In linguistics, modality is what allows speakers to evaluate a proposition relative to a set of other propositions."
([i]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_modality[/i]
This of course is exactly what the [Even if] structure does in the sentence above - it defines the [I won't change my mind] proposition relative to another. It just happens to rule out the effect of all other propositions on the outcome by means of excluding them entirely.
So, if this structure is a type of modality, the next question I'm wondering is what mood it best fits under.
At first, I was thinking that [even if] expressed the subjunctive mood, since that mood is used "to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred." As you said, 「たとえ・・・ても」 describes a condition which may or may not actually be true, so this seemed to fit as a state of "unreality." But, the subjunctive almost always occurs in dependent clauses (usually following a subordinate conjunction), and that's not what we have in our sentence. Also, all examples I can find of the subjunctive mood used in [if] clauses that suggest doubt or statements counter to reality use a past participle form of the verb, for example: [If I were you, i would be happy] (past subjunctive) or [If I were to go to the store, I'd see him] (future subjunctive). So for these reasons I don't believe that [even if] represents the subjunctive mood.
([i]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_subjunctive[/i])
Which basically leaves the conditional mood, which is an "inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances."
([i]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_mood[/i])
This sounds promising, and seems to somewhat match our sentence. In the first chart on the above Wiki page, there is a sentence listed under the conditional "predictive type" that reads:
[If I feel well, I will sing.]
These are two independent clauses, just like our original sentence. [I feel well] is the condition necessary for the main clause [I will sing] to come true. But we can make a small change:
[[b]Even[/b] if I feel well, I will sing.]
Now, we have created a situation in which "no condition will stop the outcome," as previously defined. But can we call this an expression of the conditional mood? In fact, it seems that this is the strongest expression possible of the conditional mood, because what we are really implying is that [u]any[/u] condition, no matter what it is (including doing nothing), will cause the clause [I will sing] to come true. This is even more apparent if you nix the first clause and write the sentence in this way: [No matter what, I will sing.]
The problem with this theory is that English doesn't have a true conditional mood - it uses the modal auxiliary verb [would] to express true conditional modality (look on the chart under "speculative" conditional). So, while sentences using the [even if] construct are surely conditional (in a special case way), they apparently aren't technically in the "conditional mood."
Looking back at the original sentence:
[b][Even if you stop me, I won't change my mind.][/b]
The proposition [I won't change my mind] will be satisfied in any case. [if you stop me] may or may not end up being true, but the matter is largely irrelevant, as far as the fruition of the main clause is concerned.
So at the end of looking at all of this, I'm still not really sure what to call the [even if] structure (and by association, the 「たとえ・・・ても」 form). If anyone has any further insight into how to categorize it, I'd really appreciate hearing it. For now, I suppose that I will have to settle for calling it a special case of a predictive conditional statement.