The Study Of Counterfactual Hypothetical Sentence In Mandarin

Chinese is the language lacks of morphological changes, unlike the Indo-Europeanlanguages have the clear counterfactual markers. Because of that, some foreign scholars eveninfer that Chinese people are not good at thinking in abstract field of congnitive course. In fact,Chinese also have some ways to express counterfactual thinking, but there is no system ofgrammatical markers. This article focused on the study of Chinese counterfactual hypotheticalsentence, hopes make some advances about it.The paper is divided into six chapters:Chapter one begins with some foreign scholars’ prejudice that they thought Chinesepeople do not have counterfactual thinking. In fact, Chinese exist the counterfactualhypothetical sentence, however, Chinese is lack of morphological changes, unlike Westernlanguages mark forms. Hypothetical sentence has complexity, the discussions about it do nothave a aggressed conclusion. The counterfactual hypothetical sentence as a important part ofthe hypothetical sentence, its devoted discussions are obviously weak. The paper tries tocompensate the shortcoming.Chapter two describes the mark counterfactual hypothetical sentence in Chinese, such as“如果不是”、”若不是”、”要不是” and rarely used “若非”, they are the apparent markers toexpress counterfactual thinking. After calculating the language database,”要不是” is the mosttypical marker to express counterfactual meaning, and it has coagulability. This chapterdetailedly introduces”要不是” from its nature, sentence structure, semantics, pragmatics. Inaddition, the time words,“如果…就好了” Sentence also can be marked as the counterfactualmarkers. Of course, some scholar also believe “早”、”了” can be marked as counterfactualmarkers, but there will be many restrictions, therefore, there is no consensus.Chapter three: Except for counterfactual markers, there is a large part of “如果”Sentence to express counterfactual meaning. Because “如果” Sentence also guide the possiblehypothetical sentence, so “如果” is not the counterfactual marker. We classify “如果” Sentence based on its content, divided into two types: the antecedent is obviously false, thenthe consequent realize counterfactual meaning; the consequent is obviously false, then theantecedent realize counterfactual meaning.The realizing of no marker “如果” Sentence is based on the semantic reasoning. In fact,the process is that when the new information enter in our brain, it compares with the commonsense and experience already exist in our brain, at last, the process produce a judged result.Chapter four describes the extent of hypothetical sentence, it can help us understandhypothetical sentence clearly. And we have a introduction of the concept of传信值，it is aquantitative view to realize the counterfactual hypothetical sentence.Chapter five: After contrasting, we focused on the differences between thenon-counterfactual hypothetical sentence and negative sentence in expressing negationmeaning. If the sentence and sentence can express identical meaning, but there is nodifference between them, then the complex sentence will become the existence of no meaning.So, we know the special point about the counterfactual hypothetical sentence from pragmaticsand the dependent of context.Chapter six serves to conclude the whole thesis, and it also points out the drawbacks ofthe present research.