On a particular usage of 會

[stapler]

From 活著:

 

家珍去城裡打聽過我不知多少次，竟會沒人告訴他我被抓了壯丁，我娘才這麼說

 

I don't understand the use or function of this 會. If it wasn't there it seems like the sentence would still be fine. I asked some native speakers and they gave me the usual "it just is" response. Anyone able to explain what's going on here?

[dwq]

會 indicates possibility.

It is similar to saying "I'm surprised this could happen" vs. "I'm surprised this happened".

[Guest123]

One of uses of 會 is to express probability, expectation, somethig thas is likely to happen.

Like in these sentences:

 

今天會下雨嗎?

他是不會騙我的.

 

Or in exclamation: 不會吧! - Oh no! This is impossible!! 

 

So I suppose that in your sentence 會 is used to express the astonishement of the speaker: "how is it possible that no one told him.."

[stapler]

I get that 會 means possibility, particularly in the sense of having a learnt ability or that you can or will do something in the future, etc. But it doesn't seem quite right in this sentence. In the sense you guys talk about it, it seems more like it should be 怎麼

 

Perhaps what you say Edita is correct, that it expresses some kind of astonishment - but I've never seen 會 used in that way before (though it does make sense)

[Guest123]

Well , then it would be 怎么会没有人告诉他…

In fact, it is quite a frequent use of 会。

[Altair]

I think in this case 会 means something like "happen to be."  The sentence translates as something like:

 

家珍去城裡打聽過我不知多少次，竟會沒人告訴他我被抓了壯丁

While Jiazhen went into town to find out about me time and again, no one actually ended up telling her I had been press-ganged.

 

Consider this example I find in one of my Pleco dictionaries:

 

他很呆，竟会相信这个广告。

It is foolish of her to believe the commercial.

She is foolish in that she actually happens to believe the commercial.

[stapler]

Thanks Altair, its starting to make a lot more sense. The usage of 會 is more subtle than I originally imagined!

[L-F-J]

I think dwq is on the money. It's difficult to give it an exact word-for-word translation, but that's exactly what it means.

 

Btw, how'd you (dwq) get to make a username with only three letters? I had to put these stupid dashes in mine... 

[Altair]

Different people learn languages differently.  For my method, I rigidly distinguish between the words I am likely to use in translating a Chinese word and the words I try to remember to elucidate its meaning.  I also often have a word I use as a short hook to bring these various things to mind.

 

For　会，　I think of "coming together."  From that, I derive translations not only such as "meet," but also "probably," "likely,"  and "will/would" (="thinks are coming together so that...."  In between the word I use as a hook and the ultimate translation, I keep a fluid meaning in my head.

 

In the case at hand, the long phrase 家珍去城裡打聽過我不知多少次 acts as a topic in a topic-comment structure, and what follows is the comment.  Topic-comment structures are integral to Chinese grammar and to how discourse is regulated in Chinese.  English, on the other hand, relies on coordination and subordination.  This difference in approaches means that clauses are joined together differently in the two languages based on different considerations and different default understandings.

 

In my translation, I inserted the word "while" to show that the first clause could only be interpreted in light of what follows.  Without this, we tend to interpret the two clauses as stand-alone coordinated clauses and then wonder why words like 竟 and 会 are really so necessary or why Chinese does not use words like "but" or "and yet" between the clauses.  Chinese can, of course, reproduce such structures, but the frequency of their use is not the same as in English.

 

In this case,  竟 clarifies the nature of the time flow between the clauses, and 会 clarifies that the second clause is highlighting that what follows was only one of many possible outcomes.  In English, we might have organized this thought completely differently, using a specific type of subordination and saying something like: "Even though Jiazhen went to town over and over again, no one actually ended up telling her that I had been press-ganged."  In Chinese, you tend to just simply state the background--i.e., Jiazhen's repeated trips--, and then state the surprising conclusion--i.e., no one actually ended up telling her what had happened.  You then add little words to the second clause to clarify the relationship of the comment to the topic.

[Messidor]

"家珍去城裡打聽過我不知多少次，竟會沒人告訴他我被抓了壯丁((I can't believe) no one told him that I was illigally drafted)"

会 means either "will" or "can".

We can assume the full version of the sentence is 竟会发生“没有人告诉他我被抓了”这件事((I can't believe)it would happen that no one told him I was illigally drafted). 发生...这种事(it happened that) was spared. 

Of course chinese is a little different from english, so the 会 left in the sentense but "will" disappeared in the translation.

My point is that the sentense is elliptical.

If 会 wasn't there the meaning would remain the same; but there may be aesthetic difference between them：竟没人 sounds too formal and old-fashioned; 竟会没人 sounds a little more colloquial (though also some old-fashioned but notice that the novel depicts things that happened half century ago). Also, 竟然没人 sound rather colloquial and I think it's optional here by the way.