Hypothetical Sentences

[charmedboi82]

Does anyone have any links or a summary of how to write hypothetical sentences in Chinese? I'm referring more than to just sentences such as (When I have the money, then I'll...). I'm also referring to sentences such as "If he hadn't gone there at that time, he wouldn't have gotten caught up in such a mess." I'm not referring to this sentence specifically, just how the ideas are expressed in Mandarin in general, thanks!

[atitarev]

I asked this question before and was told there is no difference between real and unreal condition in Chinese. Only the context will tell you, which one it is.

However, wait for native speakers to see what they say.

[yingguoguy]

I'm not an expert on this point, but a while ago I came across this PDF which discusses how the lack of a specific counterfactual structure affects or does not affect Chinese speakers, which I think is interesting from a philosphical perspective of how our language might affect the way we think.

[Lugubert]

Sites of real linguists, like www.languagehat.com and www.languagelog.com, regularily demolish claims from psychologists regarding societal phenomena and language structure.

Wonder what Freud would have said. This is the second time this week that my fingers first wrote "psycholigists"!

One problem with counterfactual [CF] expressions (which I admit I did'nt find during a cursory glance of the linked document) is that test sentences often are so ridiculous that rational Asians don't understand how anybody could think them up, but "westerners" try their utmost to make some sense out of nonsense and answer the way the westerners posing the questions assumed when constructing the test.

From one page discussing counterfactuality:

CF thoughts are almostly exclusively surfaced as subjunctive mood in English, while they are expressed in many different (unmarked) ways in Chinese.

One link at the bottom of that very technical page leads to a paper mentioning a difference between 要不是 and 如果:

yaobushi can never be used in a non-CF environment, in which a rugou-type conditional is used.

References provided. And it is obvious (at least to me) that every language has the capacity to express any thought.

[yingguoguy]

I was really just throwing this out there to see what people thought of it. I'm probably well out of my depth in any discussion involving the science of linguistics. Having posted it, I suppose I should have a go at defending it though.

And it is obvious (at least to me) that every language has the capacity to express any thought.

I don't think anyone would disagree that all languages are adequate for everyday purposes. Any language which was broken, in that didn't allow some type of thoughts to be expressed, would either be fixed or replaced by another language pretty quickly.

I don't think this is quite the same as saying that all languages are on all matters exactly equivalent. Different languages do communicate the same thoughts in different ways, and I don't see why it wouldn't be the case that some languages might be more efficient for communicating some specific types of thoughts, either in terms of speed or clarity.

For example Chinese has a legion of terms for relatives so you might suppose that Chinese speakers would do better on a comprehension passage involving a mass family gathering. Japanese is famous for it's many politeness levels, so Japanese might do better on a comprehension test which involved identifying the social status of the characters. English has different pronouns for different genders (he/she) so you could construct a comprehension passage where the sex of the characters is not clear in the other languages but very obvious to the English reader.

Part of my point is that it's perfectly possible to say "Father's younger brothers wife" instead of "Aunt" in English, but it would be unnatural and unweildy to do so unless there was specific reason to, for example to distinuish her from your mothers older sister. In Chinese you get this information for free, so to speak.

The conclusion of the paper seemed to be that, while both Chinese and English can reason counterfactually perfectly okay, in situations where the counterfactual is not clear, English speakers may have a slight advantage, as in any of the situations above. I don't know if this is indeed the case but it doesn't seem inherently unreasonable to me.

Sites of real linguists, like www.languagehat.com and www.languagelog.com, regularily demolish claims from psychologists regarding societal phenomena and language structure.

Could you point me in the direction of some these articals, I tried to search the sites using 'psycologists' as a keyword, but couldn't find anything relating to this topic? Who are these people anyway, as their blogs very irritatingly don't seem to contain any biographical information?

[Lugubert]

Could you point me in the direction of some these articals, I tried to search the sites using 'psycologists' as a keyword, but couldn't find anything relating to this topic? Who are these people anyway, as their blogs very irritatingly don't seem to contain any biographical information?

Keywords like the names Sapir and/or Whorf, or "The Pirahã language" might give you some starting points.

The languagelog people are often professors of linguistics or similarily qualified, like the frequent contributors Geoffrey Pullum (prof. of linguistics at the University of California at Santa Cruz), Bill Poser (Adjunct Professor of Linguistics at the University of British Columbia), Mark Liberman (Trustee Professor of Phonetics, Professor Department of Computer and Information Science, UPenn) etc. The site is hosted by U of Pennylvania (Phialdelphia). I don't know much about the Hat, but he has deep insights into frightfully many languages, and as he now and then is quoted by languagelog in a positive way, I think I'm right in accepting him as well qualified.