Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.8, 2015

Counterfactual Expressions in Chinese and the Distinctive Thinking They Reflect

(Abstract)

Yuan Yulin

Scholars abroad disagree about an experiment that seemingly shows that it is hard for native speakers of Chinese to make or understand counterfactual statements or make corresponding inferences. In fact, both ancient and modern Chinese have a lot of syntactic counterfactual conditional structures, but scholars researching the Chinese language have not been sensitive to their counterfactual semantic traits. The reason is that counterfactual sentences usually show a strongly emotional character (expressing congratulations or regrets), which strengthens the mechanism for comparing consequences in counterfactual thinking and weakens that of causal inference. This conceals the logical strength of counterfactual thinking with regard to causal inference, obscuring to a certain extent the counterfactual nature of its conditionality. Counterfactual expressions in Chinese and the thinking that underlies them reflect the interaction between language and thought in a process of mutual shaping and progression.