Summary - Previous Theoretical Studies of Chinese Conditionals

2.2 Previous Theoretical Studies of Chinese Conditionals

2.2.6 Summary

of the hearer. In addition, the consequent clause presents the speaker’s undesirability of the real world. In other words, she considers that the undesirability of the consequent clauses is decisive for the intersubjective nature in terms of hypothetical use associated with the antecedent clause.

She argues that linguistic forms are simply cues to activate our knowledge about the conditional concept while utterance meanings are products emerging from the interaction between what the context gives to the speaker and what is evoked by the form. In addition, Su claims that the interpretation of conditional should be identifiable because the conditional constructions create coherent mental space (Fauconnier 1985) and serve communicative needs. Lastly, her statement shows that language “serves as a powerful means of prompting dynamic online constructions of meaning that go far beyond anything explicitly provided by the lexical and grammatical forms.” (Fauconnier 2003:251).

2.2.6 Summary

The studies on Chinese conditionals reviewed in the section can be grouped into three frameworks. First, Li and Thompson (1981) and Wu (1994) only discuss fundamental markings in conditionals. To them, some conditional adverbials appear in the front or back of an antecedent clause while covert markings may be employed in conditional utterance. Second, scholars like Cheng and Huang (1996) and Chierchia (2000) examine peculiar types of conditionals. Wh-words in bare conditionals cannot be replaced by other segments such as pronouns and definite NPs while those in ruguo conditionals can since they play different syntactic roles. Finally, Su (2005)

presents three kinds of conditional relationships and claims that conditionals establish upon the interlocutor’s beliefs.

In addition, Li and Thompson classify Chinese conditionals into three time

frames in terms of discourse: reality, hypothetical and counterfactual. However, the boundary among these time frames has not been clearly addressed since context may convey more messages than words themselves, which may intensify but not necessarily employ in hypothetical or counterfactual reasoning.

2.3 Pervious Empirical Studies on L1 Acquisition of Conditionals

This section mainly reviews some studies on L1 acquisition of English conditionals since there are no empirical studies on Chinese conditionals to be explored. It is believed that English-speaking children’s development of conditional sentences still can shed light on the present study. Four empirical studies are discussed in the following subsections: Reilly (1986), Harris, German and Mills (1996), Crutchley (2004) and Perner, Sprung and Steinkogler (2004).

2.3.1 Reilly (1986)

In most studies, conditionals are highly related to some complex constructions such as temporal and causal adverbials. Reilly (1986) also probed into interactive factors affecting language acquisition of conditionals, focusing on the interrelationship between temporals and conditionals.

According to Reilly, temporals and conditionals are highly similar since they both describe simultaneous or sequential events in speech. In addition, these constructions can denote causal relation. However, temporal and conditionals are different in that temporals refer to certainty or speakers’ expectations toward the event while conditionals express speakers’ uncertainty and supposition of the speech. These intriguing characteristics of temporals and conditionals may be interrelated to children’s acquisition of temporals and conditionals. Thus, Reilly hypothesized that children might acquire these two constructions concurrently and use them before they

master these constructions.

In her experiment, Reilly collected both naturalistic and experimental data. The naturalistic data were taken from five children in naturalistic play situations or diary speech, ranging in age from 12 months to 3 years 6 months. The experimental data were collected from 28 children, ranging in age from 2½ to 9 years and they were divided into seven age groups, each of which consisted of four children in each group.

The experiment consisted of five tasks: the first three were designed to test children’s acquisition of conditionals while the last two were employed to investigate temporals.

Reilly argued that there were seven stages, with some overlaps, in acquiring temporal and conditionals, as shown in Table 2-3 (Reilly 1986:323):

Table 2-3 The Acquisition of Temporals and Conditionals in Reilly (1986)

Stage Age Functions Forms

I 2½ Sequence Juxtaposed propositions (unmarked) II 2-3 Predictive(future sequence) when

III 2-3 Predictive/Simultaneous (proto-generic)

when

Predictive/Simultaneous/

Present

when and/ or if (individual variation) IV 2-3

Co-temporal past punctual Past fantasy

when

Predictive/ Present / generic when and if Co-temporal past punctual

Predictive/ Generic when and if Past punctual

The children were forward to acquire unmarked forms (juxtaposition) in temporals.

Then, when was used to express predictives and also simultaneous events. At Stage IV (aged from 2;6-3;2 in her study), if was used in conditionals. However, there were individual variations among children. Some children used when and if in protogeneric contexts and predictives while others preferred to use them in specific situations. In addition, when was found to have other functions. First, it was used to describe events in the past, where one clause referred to a punctual event. Second, when was used to introduce fantasy when the children had no world knowledge in comprehending a past stative sentence.

At Stage V, the hypothetical use of if appeared. However, Reilly discovered that children had difficulty in responding to what if⁶ questions in the experiment. She argued that the children might be incapable of understanding the complicated scenario or misinterpret adults’ intended speech act. For the subjects, it was easier to produce or manipulate the construction than to clarify the specific linguistic components in speech. At Stage VI, what if questions were acquired. Counterfactuals were also acquired at the stage (age four). During the last period, when was for past statives and past habituals. The children fully understood how to use when and if in appropriate situations. To sum up, the children first acquired when referring to the real world first, gradually moved to the hypothetical and counterfactual uses of if and past habituals for when.

In Reilly’s study, the chaotic situation at Stage V reflected that children readjusted their linguistic knowledge in acquiring language. The children actively used their temporal knowledge to understand and produce conditionals. In addition, Reilly demonstrated that the children started to use conditionals around 2 ½ years old,

6 The sample question is as follows:

Adult: What if you eat three ice cream cones?

Katie: You don’t have three hands.

with a limitation on the hypothetically immediate context and they fully acquired the conditional construction at age 8. As for the acquisition of counterfactual conditionals, 4-year-olds succeeded in the comprehension task and they could produce counterfactual responses in certain situations. Reilly’s findings corresponded to the previous results that age 4 is a crucial stage for acquiring conditionals.

Although Reilly’s findings shed light on the acquisition of English conditionals, her study still demonstrated some limitations. First, her study consisted of a small subject pool, which may influence the analysis of children’s general language development. Therefore, a quantitative study is welcomed for future research. Second, her experiment did not include a control situation. Thus, it may be difficult to infer her findings to other conditional studies.

2.3.2 Harris, German and Mills (1996)

Harris, German and Mills (1996) investigated children’s counterfactual thinking in causal scenarios. In their study, children aged 3 to 5 years participated in three experiments which highly emphasized the relation between causal and counterfactual thinking.

In the first experiment, 26 children, divided into two groups, were observed in a play with a causal situation and were told to answer two control questions⁷ and one test question⁸, which was contrary to the fact, after watching the play.

Table 2-4 shows the correct responses of Experiment 1 (Harris, German and Mills 1996:239):

7 The two control questions were Now and Before questions: (1) Now: Is the floor dirty now? (2) Before: Was the floor dirty before?

8 The test question was: What if Carol had taken her shoes off – would the floor be dirty?

Table 2-4 Mean Scores of Correct Replies as a Function of Age and Question Control

The result showed that children almost responded correctly to the control questions.

In the test questions (what-if questions), they made few errors or even no errors, indicating that the children, even though they were three years old, could demonstrate counterfactual thinking. Furthermore, the accurate responses also manifested that children’s causal thinking preceded their responses and helped them respond to counterfactual situations.

In Experiment 2, 3-year-old children’s counterfactual thinking were further explored. Similarly, they were divided into two groups and were given control and test questions to answer. However, they were asked two versions of counterfactual scenarios, in one of which A would not have caused B, while in the other of which A would also have caused B. After they heard these situations, two test questions (preserve and change questions⁹) were designed in the experiment to evaluate how they differentiated these situations.

The results showed that they successfully differentiated the two scenarios, and they performed better on before than now questions. In addition, more correct responses were found to preserve than change questions. Even though they showed preferences for certain questions, they still performed equally well on the two scenarios, indicating that they employed the causal scenario to anticipate contrary-to-fact situations. In other words, causal conditions helped them think

9 A sample preserve question is like this: If Teddy hadn’t painted the floor with his brush, would the floor be clean now? Change question is as follows: If Teddy had painted the floor with his fingers instead , would the floor be clean now?

counterfactually.

In Experiment 3, the children were told stories in which the protagonist chose an action resulting in a minor mishap¹⁰ or an action led to the identical result¹¹. After hearing stories, they were asked two questions (why and prevention questions¹²) and they had to make references according to the situations, involving making references to the rejected option or references to other alternatives. Table 2-5 shows the references to the rejected option:

Table 2-5 Mean Scores of References per Child to the Rejected Option Experimental question Control question

Group Why Prevent Why Prevent

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

Younger 0.88 1 2.0 0.8 0.13 0.5 0.25 0.6 Older 0.81 0.6 1.75 0.8 0.19 0.4 0.38 0.6

As shown in Table 2-6, the two age groups showed no significant differences.

However, they tended to make references to how to prevent a mishap especially in response to experimental questions. This result implied that children, with the ability to imagine contrary-to-fact situations, could answer a relatively open question (prevent question).

However, the children’s references with alternatives showed differences, as shown in Table 2-6:

10 In the experimental version: the protagonist had an inky finger because he chose a black pen, not a pencil in painting.

11 In the control version: the protagonist used a blue pen and got inking fingers.

12 A sample Why question was: Why did Sally’s fingers get all inky?

A sample Prevention question was: What should Sally have done instead so that her fingers wouldn’t get all inky?

Table 2-6 Mean Scores of References per Child to Alternatives Experimental question Control question

Group Why Prevent Why Prevent

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Younger 0.25 0.6 0.44 0.6 0.75 1 2.19 0.7 Older 0.75 0.8 1.25 0.8 0.94 1 2.5 0.6

Different from the results presented in Table 2-6, the age effect was significant in response to alternatives, implying that the older groups, with much world knowledge, could produce more alternatives than the younger groups. However, both groups had more references to prevent questions.

To sum up, Harris et al.’s study indicated that the 3-year-olds were capable of thinking counterfactually and that age 4 represented a crucial age of relatively mature counterfactual reasoning. Furthermore, it was found that the children could differentiate different situations (i.e., one that A would not have caused B while the other that A would also have caused B). The most important of all, their study demonstrated that causal thinking was related to counterfactual reasoning.

2.3.3 Crutchley (2004)

Different from Reilly’s longitudinal study of all types of conditionals, Crutchley (2004) only targeted the production of one type of conditionals, past counterfactuals, in children’s acquisition.

In the study, an elicitation task was designed in which 799 children aged 6-11 years divided into seven age groups. Before the elicitation task, the children were trained with a practice task where the experimenter pointed to a picture and said a counterfactual sentence. After the experimenter said the sentence, the children were told to repeat it. Then, the elicitation task started and they had to say a counterfactual sentence according to two test pictures. The children’s responses to the test items were

coded into syntactic forms. Table 2-7 shows the top five patterns found in the experiment:

Table 2-7 Most Commonly-occurring Conditional Types in Crutchley (2004) Type (if clause- would clause)¹³ Frequency Percentage

PsPerf-PrPerf 651 40.7

The results showed that the target pattern (PsPerf-PrPerf) occupied the largest proportion. Moreover, the children’s responses to past counterfactuals increased with age, implying that the counterfactual structure, as the most complex conditional structure, may still be acquiring in elementary school students. In addition, one another syntactic pattern displayed a reverse trend. The structure of PsSim-WdBase was less produced with their increases of age. It indicated that the older children were aware of the need of the experiment and were able to produce the target pattern. There were no significant differences to two other patterns (PsSim-PrPerf and WdHv-PrPerf) among all age groups, showing that the children almost acquire them.

Even though the top five patterns occupied almost 75%, there were 36 patterns in total in the study. Among them, non-conditional types, with 16.3%, were found but they tended be produced by the younger groups. Other irregular conditional patterns, occupying 9.5% of total, were also produced. The situation not only happened to the younger age groups but also to other age groups.

Given that non-target patterns were found in a higher percentage in the study,

13 The full forms of abbreviations are as follows: PsPerf (past perfect), PsSim (past simple), PrPerf (present perfect), PrSim (present simple), HdHv (had + have +past participle), WdHv( would+ have+

past participle), WdBase (would + base form).

Crutchley further analyzed the degree of adult-likeliness from seven adult raters’

evaluation among these patterns to see whether the children had fully acquired adult-like patterns. Table 2-8 shows the frequency and percentages of non-adult-like responses:

Table 2-8 Frequency and Percentage of Non-adult like Responses

Age groups 6 7 8 9 10 11 Total

responses 484 544 544 532 580 512 1598

Non-adult like frequency 165 135 118 90 110 66 684

Percentage 34.1 24.8 21.7 16.9 18.95 12.9 43

As shown in Table 2-8, the percentages of non-adult-like patterns decreased when the subjects’ ages increased. The older children gradually produced more adult-like patterns. However, non-adult likeliness, occupying 43%, suggested that the children had not fully acquired adult-like conditionals in elementary school. Their conditional reasoning might not be fully developed until adolescence.

Nonetheless, Crutchley thought that the rationale to examine adult-likeliness needed to be carefully examined. Although the target pattern (PsPerf-PrPerf) was rated as adult-like by all the raters, the other adult-like patterns were not prototypical conditional types in grammar books, such as PsPerf-WdBase, PsPerf-Wdlng¹⁴, and PPProg¹⁵-PrPerf. This showed that even adult raters’ conception about conditional sentences was different from the grammarians’ classification. Adults’ utterances, according to Crutchley, not violating the syntactic rules of conditionals, might be the negotiation of events in speech. Therefore, the children’s non-adult-like utterances might also be considered as a signal of negotiation in context.

To sum up, the children’s performance on the elicitation task was improved with

14 Wdlng refers to the ‘would + -ing form.’

15 PPProg refers to past perfect progress ‘had been + -ing form.’

age. The older children were highly aware of the researcher’s biased sentences and were capable of producing a relatively higher percentage of past counterfactuals.

Since there are still some undesirable (non-adult-like) responses found in the task, it is not sure if the children’s counterfactual reasoning ability was fully acquired at the age of 11.

2.3.4 Perner, Sprung and Steinkogler (2004)

Perner, Sprung and Steinkogler (2004) investigated factors affecting the difficulty of counterfactual reasoning of Austria children and probed into the correlation between counterfactual conditionals and false belief. They designed a travel scenario and asked their subjects some questions after listening to the stories.

Based on the previous studies, they listed five possible factors affecting the children’s difficulty in counterfactual reasoning: (1) counterfactual versus future-hypotheticals, (2) complexity of scenarios¹⁶, (3) amount of counterfactuality¹⁷, (4) alternative means of transport versus alternative points of departure and (5) linguistic expression:

indicative and subjunctive.

In Experiment 1, 48 children (27 boys and 21 girls) aged from 2;10 to 5;1 participated in tasks which consisted of false belief, hypothetical and counterfactual conditional reasoning tasks. The result was shown in Figure 2-1 (Perner, Sprung and Steinkogler 2004: 189):

16 A simple scenario: The departure points led to one destination.

A complex scenario: The departure points were cross-connected to more than one destination.

17 A partial-counterfactual conditional: The antecedent is counterfactual while the consequent is future hypothetical.

A complete-counterfactual conditional: Both the antecedent and the consequent are counterfactuals.

Figure 2-1 Percentages of Correct Answers in Experiment 1

Although 96% percent of the children in the false-belief task answered the control questions accurately, their performance on test questions did not show a high percentage of correctness. Moreover, the correct responses were 50% for age 4, and the children’s performance improved with age.

As for the counterfactual reasoning task, there was a significant contrast in different scenarios. Simple scenarios, as expected, showed a higher percentage of correct responses by each age group than the complex scenario. The explanation might be that the children had a great “demand on precision of memory to avoid ambiguity of reference” (Perner, Sprung and Steinkogler 2004:196). Nevertheless, it showed that the children had mastered the basic level of counterfactual reasoning at age 3 and that they gradually employed the counterfactual knowledge when they got older.

When analyzing the linguistic expression (indicative versus subjunctive) factors, Perner et al. found that there were no significant differences in partial-counterfactual conditionals when the second part of the test question was stated in the indicative or subjunctive (p > 0.84). Similarly, the amount of counterfactuality (partial versus complete counterfactual) had no detectable variance in the task.

In addition, Perner et al. analyzed the relationship between false belief and other subtypes of conditional reasoning tasks. They found that only one subtype of

conditional tasks, complex alternative transport counterfactual task, showed a significant result. However, the coefficient was not significant after they took age and verbal intelligence into consideration. Thus, it was not convincing that false belief and counterfactuals were highly related in the children’s reasoning.

Given that scenario complexity influenced the children’s counterfactual reasoning, Perner et al. further explored the scenario differences in false-belief tasks and analyzed the relation between false belief and counterfactual reasoning. The result is displayed in Figure 2-2:

Figure 2-2 Percentages of Correct Answers in Experiment 2

Like the result in Experiment 1, the hypothetical task displayed the high rate of correctness. The counterfactual reasoning task still demonstrated a significant difference in different scenarios. In the false belief task, interestingly, there was no discernible difference between scenarios. Nevertheless, the figure displayed that counterfactual questions can be responded correctly much earlier than false belief questions, indicating that the cognitive ability for counterfactuals and false beliefs were diverse. In other words, counterfactuals and false beliefs might represent a dissociative relationship.

To sum up, Perner et al.’s study (2004) demonstrated that some factors such as the amount of counterfactuality, alternative means of transport versus alternative

points of departure and linguistic expression (indicative or subjunctive) were not crucial. However, the children had less difficulty in acquiring hypotheticals than counterfactuals. Furthermore, it was found that children had acquired rudimentary counterfactual reasoning at age 3; in addition, one factor, scenario complexity, influenced their children’s reasoning of counterfactuals. The most important of all,

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