why no "elsif" construct?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  i just googled on this but didn't see anything immediately relevant.
is there any reason gnu make doesn't implement a simple "elsif"
construct?  i realize this can be emulated with your basic else/if
combination but it doesn't seem a real stretch to have added an
"elsif" to simplify things.

  (and, yes, i'm *positive* that there's a reason for not having it, i
just couldn't find it. :-)

rday