A Second Look at the Hypothetical and Counterfactual Conditionals 71

With regard to the results that the hypotheticals were not significantly easier than counterfactuals presented as in Section 4.2.1, it is important to see if there were some exceptional cases in the two tasks. After examining the raw data and voice recordings, some problematic cases in the imitation task (the IM task) were found, as shown in (1), (2) and (3):

‘If I were a little pig, I would like to build a solid house in the forest.’

(Q13⁴)        

2  Q1, one of the hypothetical target sentences (Type1), refers the first question of the imitation task.

3 Q6, one of the counterfactual target sentences (Type 4), refers the sixth question in the imitation task.

4 Q13, one of the hypothetical target sentences (Type 3), refers the thirteenth question in the imitation task.

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The above test items yielded the subjects’ inconsistent performances compared with the other items. Example (1), one of the hypothetical Type 1 sentences, consisted of much semantic loading (gaoxingde ‘happily’ and pao-lai-pao-qu ‘run around’);

therefore, most of the subjects did not perform well on this question while they performed much better than other target sentences of Type 1. Example (2), one of the counterfactual Type 4 sentences, made the subjects add ruguo ‘if’ or dehua ‘if’ but they did not show the tendency for other Type 4 sentences. Example (3), one of Type 3 target sentences including a relatively difficult word jiangu ‘solid,’ resulted in most of the young children’s partial production in the consequent clause on account of unfamiliarity but their production of other Type 3 sentences did not show the same trend. Figure 4-4 presents the results after removing these three test items:

Figure 4-4 A Revised Comparison between Hypothetical and Counterfactual

The difference in responding to the hypothetical and counterfactual conditionals, as shown in Figure 4-4, was clear (G1: 0.56 vs. 0.51; G2: 0.58 vs. 0.52; G3: 0.79 vs.

0.75; G4: 0.93vs. 0.89; G5: 0.87 vs.0.85; the control group: 0.97 vs. 0.99).

Nonetheless, the within-group comparison in the paired sample t-test demonstrated that these two scenarios still did not reach a statistically significant level ( p >.05) except for the control group (p =0.04 <.05) but there was a tendency in general as addressed before: hypotheticals > counterfactuals (excluding the performance of the

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control group). G5 responded to the two scenarios similarly while the control group still performed better on the counterfactuals than on the hypotheticals.

As for the between-group analysis of the hypothetical conditionals, one-way ANOVA showed a significant difference (F (5, 102)= 35.696, p < .05). G1 and G2 were at a similar performance level according to the post hoc analysis. G4, who performed the best, showed no significances to G5 and both groups did not show significant differences with the control group.

Regarding the between-group comparison of the counterfactual conditionals, the results revealed a significant difference as well (F (5, 102)= 42.389, p < .05). G1 and G2 performed alike. In addition, G4 and G5 performed quite similarly compared to the control group.

4.2.3 General Discussion

In this section, some major findings addressed in Sections 4.2.1 and 4.2.2 are discussed as follows.

First, the results showed that the differences between the hypothetical and counterfactual conditionals were not significant. This result, however, still showed a trend that the hypotheticals proceeded the counterfactuals in L1 acquisition of Mandarin Chinese conditionals, corresponding to the findings of the superiority of the hypotheticals over the counterfactuals in L1 acquisition of English conditionals. In the literature, it was consistently found that the subjects’ performance on the hypothetical scenario was better than on the counterfactual scenario because such ability was in accord with their cognitive development. Hypothetical reasoning employed the ability of creating imaginative state of affairs, like children’s competence in the play that a brick is a car or a house to a certain extent, arose at around age 2 or 3 (Riggs and Peterson 2000). Moreover, the previous research argued that the children’s imagined

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reasoning might not be in conflict with their realistic state (Beck et al. 2006). Most of the results, obviously, showed that their children were more prone to answer correctly on the hypothetical conditionals than on the counterfactuals, which required them to imagine an alternative situation replacing what was known to be false (Mitchell and Lacohee 1991, Russell 1996, Taylor and Mitchell 1997, Robinson and Beck 2000).

Furthermore, there was no doubt that our young children were ready for the hypothetical conditionals since other studies even found that many three-year-olds could distinguish future hypothetical questions more easily (Riggs et al. 1998, Beck et al. 2006) than counterfactuals. Though the present study did not show a significant difference between the two scenarios, the tendency still supports a common statement that the counterfactual reasoning intervened in children’s current view of reality (i.e., the prepotent response) when asked to think counterfactually (Riggs and Peterson 2000, Robinson and Beck 2000). In other words, in counterfactual reasoning, young children’s current knowledge base has to identify two possibilities at a time, one of which happens and the other of which could have happened. Furthermore, the results found in G1 and G2 on the counterfactuals showed that the preschoolers’ less control over the counterfactual conditionals, exhibiting that our young children could not suppress the salience of their own knowledge base (Russell 1996).

The reason why the differences of the hypothetical and counterfactual conditionals among the experimental groups were not significant is addressed as follows. A close scrutiny of the two scenarios showed that there was a crucial procedural factor found in the present study. In Kavanaugh et al. (1995) and Harris et al. (1996), as well as in the present study, an ordinary state of affairs was changed into a negative state by some accidents or mishap. Owing to these negative outcomes, children might be inclined to think of a means in which the misfortune might have been avoided and it prompted their counterfactual reasoning (Harris and Leevers

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2000).

Regarding the situation that the control group performed slightly worse on the hypothetical conditionals, the inspection of raw data, nonetheless, showed their adept linguistic competence to avoid ambiguity. Some participants of the control group got lower scores in the hypothetical production task especially for Type 5 (i.e. wh-word conditionals) because the antecedent clause was ambiguous in that shei shi ‘whoever was,’ implying two possible readings, one of which is interrogative ‘who is’ and the other of which is conditional ‘if whoever was’. On the contrary, the sequence of the antecedent clauses for Type 5 in the counterfactual scenario was not ambiguous, such as Shei dai gushi shu,… ‘If whoever had brought a story book, …’ suggesting a much stronger conditional reading in processing. To anchor the conditional meaning of the hypothetical wh-word conditionals, the adults, thus, employed a clause-final adverbial dehua ‘if’ to avoid ambiguity of the antecedent clause while the addition made them

disobey the rules. Such a strategy demonstrated that our adults were apt to modify their mental representation and capable of differentiating two possible interpretations of the target sentences. Furthermore, their production data demonstrated their subjective evaluation to the actuality of the proposition (Akatsuka 1986), suggesting adults’ conversational concern and discourse susceptibility. However, our children were still at the threshold stage of differentiating hypothetical and counterfactual readings as possibilities through the actual events (Beck et al. 2006, Robinson and Beck 2000).

With regard to the mature level of scenario differentiation, the performance of G4 and G5 almost reached maturity. Such statement corresponded to the argument that children around 5 or 6 years old could acknowledge possibilities from things that did not happen or could have happened and genuinely employed an alternative to resolve hypothetical and counterfactual conditionals (Beck et al. 2006). In addition,

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the 5-or-6-year-olds’ mature quality of scenario was consistent with the argument for adult grammar on the five types of Mandarin Chinese conditionals stated in Section 4.1.3.