CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter reviews literature on English if-conditionals from an applied linguistic perspective in hopes of providing EFL learners with a more comprehensive way of learning this construction. First, 2.1 will evaluate the traditional EFL understanding about if-conditionals. 2.2 will explore the interpretations of the forms of English if-conditionals from a functional viewpoint. Furthermore, 2.3 will address the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals. 2.4 will account for the differences and similarities between English and Chinese conditionals. Finally, 2.5 will review previous research on EFL learners’ acquisition of if-conditionals.
2.1 Traditional Classification
In traditional EFL instruction, the descriptions of if-conditionals are usually form-focused. Much emphasis has been put on the decoding or analysis of the structures of if-conditionals. Based on the verb tenses in the protasis and the apodosis, most traditional grammar books categorize if-conditionals into three types:
hypothetical, counterfactual with present-time reference or with past-time reference.
Let’s take Liu’s Wen fa bao dian (文法寶典) (1987) for illustration in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1
Traditional Classification of If-conditionals
Types Protasis Apodosis
I. Hypothetical: If I win the lottery, I will buy a house.
(Present)
II. Counterfactual: If I won the lottery, I would buy a house.
(Present-time reference) (Past)
III. Counterfactual: If I had won the lottery, I would have bought a house.
(Past-time reference) (Past perfect)
As shown in Table 2.1, this kind of classification is too arbitrary and emphasizes more on the morphosyntactic features of if-conditionals without taking account of their meanings and possible interpretations in real language use.
However, from a more meaning-oriented perspective, Quirk et al. (1985) classify if-conditionals into two types. One is open conditions and the other is hypothetical conditions. The former refers to those in which the realization of a conditional is unknown. For instance:
(1) If Colin is in London, he is undoubtedly staying at the Hilton. (Quirk et al. 1985: 1091)
In (1), the speaker is not sure if Colin is in London; hence, it is uncertain whether Colin is actually staying at the Hilton. As seen, “uncertainty” is the core meaning of open conditions. Hypothetical conditions, on the other hand, suggest that the conditions were not fulfilled in the past and will never be fulfilled in the present or the future as the following two examples show:
(2) If prices went up, I would sell my car.
(Implicature: It is very possible that the price won’t go up.)
(3) If you had listened to me, you wouldn’t have made so many mistakes.
(Quirk et al. 1985: 1091)
(Implicature: Apparently, you did not listen to me.)
In other words, hypothetical conditions in Quirk’s term are “counterfactual” and include both conditionals II (i.e. counterfactuals with present-time reference) and III (i.e. counterfactuals with past-time reference) in the traditional classification in Table 2.1.
Even though Quirk et al. extend the readings of if-conditionals to the semantic level, the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals are still left undiscussed.
EFL learners who follow the approaches above to study if-conditionals often end up memorizing the formula passively and applying these rules without knowing why. As language is a communicative device in real-life interaction, language learning and teaching should not only center on the analysis of forms. Instead, more spotlight should be cast on the discourse functions of different structures. Therefore, in this study, the structures of if-conditionals are claimed not to be rigidly rule-governed but to be correspondent with their communicative values. Different types of if-conditionals that serve diverse discourse functions will be inspected in accordance with the context where they are situated.
2.2 Functional Accounts
One of the most serious problems that EFL learners encounter in the acquisition of if-conditionals falls on the choice of verbal forms (Norris, 2003, cited in Ke, 2004;
Sun, 2003; Ke, 2004). They seem to lack the knowledge of the correlation between the verb tense/aspect and the meaning of an if-conditional. However, a lot of literature has shown that the form and function of if-conditionals maintain an iconic relationship (Akatsuka, 1985; Comrie, 1986; Dancygier, 1993; Dancygier & Sweetser, 1996;
Werth, 1997; Schwenter, 1998; Dancygier & Sweetser, 2000). The use of different types of if-conditionals or the choice of different verbal forms reflects the degrees of hypotheticality and the speaker’s epistemic stance. In this section, we will probe into the correlation between the verb tense/aspect of an if-conditional and its meaning from two perspectives – a functional perspective and a perspective of “mental spaces”
(Fauconnier, 1985; Fleischman, 1989; Dancygier and Sweetser, 1996; Werth, 1997). It is hoped that, by highlighting the form-function correlation, we will help EFL learners understand how to choose appropriate verbal forms of if-conditionals so as to lessen their difficulty in the production of this construction.
As a matter of fact, the English verb tense/aspect can often be associated with the speaker’s epistemic stance – his/her very personal judgment on the propositions of protasis and apodosis. Usually the speaker would manipulate verb tense/aspect to represent his/her positive or negative commitment to the proposition (Randriamasimanana, 1987; Li, 1996). Most interestingly, the backshift of verb tense/aspect can intensify the impossibility and hypotheticality of the proposition.
Let’s take (4) and (5) for example.
(4) Rod said that the earth is flat.
(5) Rod said that the earth was flat.
(In fact, the earth is not flat.)
The speaker in (4) uses a present-tense verb is to retell Rod’s claim, which implies his/her belief (i.e. positive commitment) in the proposition. Yet, using a past-tense verb was, the speaker in (5) apparently does not believe what Rod believes (i.e.
negative commitment). At the same time, Rod’s claim becomes impossible. As indicated, the English verbal forms not only serve as temporal deictic markers but also have a lot to do with the hypotheticality of the proposition and the speaker’s epistemic stance or perspective (Li, 1996). When it comes to the interpretation of English if-conditionals, the association between verb tense/aspect and the speaker’s personal commitment should never be overlooked.
If-conditionals have also often been categorized as the “irrealis” modality. Such argument is questioned by Akatsuka5 (1985). She points out that the conceptual domains REALIS and IRREALIS are not discrete categories but form an epistemic scale representing a speaker’s subjective evaluation of the reality of a given situation
5 According to Akatsuka, even though the study mainly focuses on Japanese conditionals, the finding can be extended to the reading of English if-conditionals with a contrastive study of Japanese and English.
(p. 625) and the scale can explain grammatical phenomena like if-conditionals. That is, the change of the morphosyntactic structures of an if-conditional mirrors the speaker’s attitude – his/her epistemic stance. Thus, understanding what is registering in the speaker’s consciousness at the time of speaking becomes a necessity in order to identify an if-conditional. Figure 2.1 depicts out Akatsuka’s epistemic scale of if-conditionals:
Figure 2.1
Akatsuka’s Epistemic Scale of If-conditionals
Realis Irrealis (if-conditionals)
know get to know not know know
(exist X) (exist X) (exist X) (not exist X)
surprise uncertainty negative conviction
The above three epistemic stances in the irrealis domain reflect the speaker’s attitude toward the protasis of a given if-conditional sentence. They are paraphrased as below:
SURPRISE: I didn’t know it is the case until now.
UNCERTAINTY: I don’t know if it is the case.
NEGATIVE CONVICTION: I do know it is not the case.
Traditional EFL teaching of if-conditionals, however, usually focuses on the latter two attitudes (i.e. uncertainty and negative conviction) and their morphosyntactic structures. The emphasis falls mainly on the relationship between the proposition of the protasis and the time of real world6. That is, if-conditionals tend to be dichotomized into either “open” or “hypothetical” (in Quirk’s terms, 1985).
Nevertheless, one common use of if-conditionals in real communication, as in example (6), is seldom valued.
6 Of great concern is whether the protasis is just a hypothetical description for the future, a counterfactual to the present or to the past.
(6) A: I am going to watch Harry Potter.
B: If (*by any chance) you are going, I’m going too.
According to Akatsuka (1985), this use of the if-conditional in example (6) shows B’s surprising attitude toward his/her newly-learned information – A’s going to watch Harry Potter. Since B has heard A’s plan, the information encoded in the protasis has become the shared information between the interlocutors7 (Dancygier 1998). At the same time, B also holds a less uncertain attitude toward this just-heard message, so it would be odd to add the phrase by any chance, which indicates the speaker’s doubt, to the if-conditional. What Akatsuka (1985: 635) tries to stress is that “the two conceptual domains, realis and irrealis, do not stand in clear-cut opposition, but rather are on a continuum.” Her observation of this “surprise” type of if-conditionals challenges the traditional dichotomy of the construction. If-conditionals should be identified on the epistemic scale based on “the speaker’s subjective evaluation of the ontological reality of a given situation” (p. 635).
As for the hypotheticality of an if-conditional, the more complicated its form is, the more marked function (i.e. highly hypothetical) it performs (Comrie, 1986;
Athanasiadou & Diven, 1997). According to Comrie (1986: 88), hypotheticality is a continuum of “the degree of probability of realization of the situations referred to in the conditional.” No matter what kind of forms an if-conditional carries, it is hypothetical to a certain degree. The divergence in verb tense/aspect signals different degrees of hypotheticality. For example, at one end of the continuum are situated counterfactual if-conditionals with higher hypotheticality, where, due to the irreversibility of a past event/state, one tends to use past perfect verbal forms to
7 Dancygier (1998) further elaborates Akatsuka’s idea of newly-learned information, which, she thinks, does not ensure that the speaker necessarily accepts the quoted assumption as true. A better term raised by her is the “shared accessibility” to the information between the interlocutors.
encode the past event as more hypothetical or counterfactual. At the other end of the continuum are if-conditionals like “open” conditionals (in Quirk’s term, 1985) with lower hypotheticality. As Comrie (p. 90) puts it:
One should have greater certainty about past events than about future events, so that a past situation that is non-factual will probably be counterfactual, whereas a future situation that is nonfactual is quite likely be just left open.
In this study, we will consider all if-conditionals on the continuum hypothetical. With the variation of hypotheticality, if-conditionals at the two extremes of the continuum will be named as open and counterfactual if-conditionals.
From the angle of “mental spaces8” (Fauconnier, 1985), the verbal forms can be mapped onto “semantic and functional aspects of conditional constructions”
(Dancygier and Sweetser, 1996: 83). The morphosyntactic variation of if-conditionals has been considered to set up a “space” inside the speaker’s consciousness that is, more or less, distanced from the actual world at the time of speaking. The more markers an if-conditional carries, the more distant its proposition appears to be from the speaker’s point of view (and vice versa). Among all the if-conditional constructions, the prototypical use with the least verbal markings like open if-conditionals can be read as making a possible prediction for the future. And counterfactuals happen to be the one with the most complex grammatical markings which denote propositions of high impossibility (i.e. high hypotheticality). They serve to make an “unlikely prediction” and to express a “rejected scenario” (p. 87).
Counterfactual if-conditionals should not be singled out as the kind with distinct forms. They should be treated like all the other if-conditionals that make prediction on
8 Mental Spaces (Fauconnier 1985) is an extremely general formal theory that provides mechanisms for talking about the ways in which we connect cognitive structures with each other. Dancygier and Sweetser (2000) further elaborates that mental spaces refer not only to very partial cognitive “world” or
“situation” constructions as well as to more complete ones, but also to a variety of non-world-like structures which can be connected and mapped onto other cognitive structures.
reality/actuality SPEAKER’S PRESENT
HERE-AND-NOW non-reality
past
least possible
non-reality future possible
a given condition. The only difference is that the prediction made by a counterfactual is unlikely to be realized.
In the same vein, Fleischman (1989) proposes a metaphorical explanation of temporal distance to emphasize the correlation between verb tense/aspect and hypotheticality. In her cross-linguistic research, she indicates that verb tense/aspect is more than a grammatical deictic marker on the axis of time. Rather, the choice of verb tense/aspect can be read as the speaker’s view toward a certain proposition. This argument is based on the human nature that people tend to talk about themselves or about things in the immediate world. As Figure 2.2 pictures, the temporal distance on a time axis can be metaphorically converted into “the modal distance,” which signals
“the speaker’s assessment of the certainty-/reality-/actuality-status of a certain situation” (p. 4). The more likely a situation will be realized (i.e. in Fleischman’s idea, the closer to ‘reality’ the speaker perceives it as being), the closer to “here-and-now”
the tense will be (e.g. the present tense).
Figure 2.2
Conceptual/Cognitive Extensions of Temporal Distance
Werth (1997) further illustrates how the concept of time in language and the epistemic system mimic the notion of space as Figures 2.3-2.5 present.
behind speaker’s close viewpoint
Field of
vision distant
before Now
Speech time after
Future time-zone Reference time
Present time-zone Past time-zone
ACTUAL (ego)
possible futures alternative
pasts
Figure 2.3 Space
Figure 2.4 Time
Figure 2.5 Epistemic System
As demonstrated in these figures, the verb tense/aspect of if-conditionals is associated with the speaker’s viewpoint/attitude toward certain proposition. The proposition may seem “remote” from the speaker’s viewpoint because it is in the past and irreversible or because it is in the future and unreachable. Such proposition tends to receive more markers of verbal forms, such as past tense, pluperfect or future-signaling auxiliaries, to feature its hypotheticality. By cross-examining the interaction between the lexical semantics of English if, since and because with their grammatical surroundings, Dancygier and Sweetser (2000: 126) reaffirm the concept that “the distanced forms
correlate with negative epistemic stance.” The marker if expresses the speaker’s lack of full commitment to the proposition. Counterfactual conditionals go even further by explicitly marking the speaker’s “leaning towards non-belief” in the proposition with backshifted verb tense/aspect (p. 125).
As discussed so far, it may not be appropriate to draw a clear-cut line between open if-conditionals and counterfactuals as the traditional classification did. They should be put on a continuum in accordance with their degree of hypotheticality/possibility and the speaker’s epistemic stance. The forms of if-conditionals are iconically correlated with their functions/meaning. The greater the distance of a speculated situation is from the reality, the more marked verb tense/aspect will be used to represent that epistemic distance (James, 1982;
Klein-Andreu, 1986; Fleischman, 1989). In this study, the term “hypothetical,” as the core meaning of if-conditionals, will refer to all kinds of if-conditionals. The term
“open” refers to the if-conditionals as possible predictions while “counterfactuals” as unlikely predictions with high impossibility. They occupy the two ends of the continuum of hypotheticality9. With the notion of form-and-function mapping as primary principle, the teaching of if-conditionals would hopefully become more comprehensive, so that EFL learners will be able to use the target construction appropriately in real communication.
2.3 Discourse-pragmatic Functions
Since if-conditional constructions are frequently observed in spoken English interaction, much research has been devoted to investigating the communicative values of if-conditionals (Haiman, 1978; Akatsuka, 1986; Ford & Thompson, 1986;
9 Because there is no absolute categorization, it is scarcely possible to name each different type of if-conditionals but it is distinguishable whether an if-conditional is located more closely to the side of open if-conditionals or counterfactuals.
Van der Auwera, 1986; Sweetser, 1990; Ford, 1993, 1997; Dancygier, 1998;
Schwenter, 1998). Due to the hypotheticality of if-conditionals, they usually serve to present alternative worlds with possible outcomes as Ford (1993: 42) states:
At certain points in the unfolding of information in talk, especially, though not exclusively, information that concerns events or actions that have not yet occurred, speakers present options: possible situations, with possible outcomes contingent on particular options being taken.
The protasis of an if-conditional sentence presents an imaginary context while the apodosis makes a comment on the protasis (Werth, 1997). The perfection of the apodosis should be established on the realization of the hypothetical condition of the protasis. With the hypotheticality as the core interpretation of if-conditionals, the core function of this construction is to explore alternatives or possibilities. In real communication, discourse-pragmatic functions extended from the notion of hypotheticality or optionality are observed. In the upcoming part, we will introduce various discourse functions of if-conditionals with particular reference to the model proposed by Ford and Thompson (1986).
In the interpretation of the communicative values of an if-conditional, the overall discourse context where it is situated is nontrivial. Ford and Thompson (1986: 356) elaborate the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals by taking account of the
“relationships which the conditional clause can bear to the preceding discourse.”
From their corpus-based study10, they generalize five basic discourse functions of if-conditionals: exploring of options, assuming, contrasting, exemplification and
10 In Ford and Thompson’s study (1986), they have investigated if-conditionals in both written and spoken English. Their written data came from three books representing different genres. The sources of their data for the spoken English, on the other hand, included two university lectures on different topics, one presentation by a graduate student and transcripts from a set of conversations. They found four discourse functions that if-conditionals perform in written and spoken data even though the distribution of each function differs in the two registers. What is concerned in this study falls on their finding in terms of the spoken English, especially the conversational data.
polite directives as shown in Table 2.2.
Table 2.2
Frequency of the Discourse-pragmatic Functions of If-conditionals in Spoken English
Discourse-pragmatic functions Percentage in conversational data
Exploring of options 30%
Assuming 25%
Contrasting 21%
Exemplification 15%
Polite directives 9%
As presented in Table 2.2, the most frequently-observed usage of if-conditionals and probably their most prototypical pragmatic function is to provide an option for the talk (30%). The second to the fourth discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals are respectively assuming, contrasting and exemplification with an interval of approximately 5%. Now we are going to probe into these functions one by one.
The first discourse-pragmatic function, “exploring of options,” refers to if-conditionals that have no direct relationship with the preceding discourse but rather explore different consequences of possibilities. The formula appears like “X. If Option Y, then Z” as the following example exhibits.
(7) (Discussing ‘borrowing an employee’)
M: … I want him for his professional knowledge of finance and banking.
O: Yes.
M: And if I say to you that I want him for a year and you say, ‘Now , please don’t come to me in December and beg me to make it another year’ – why I won’t do it, that’s all. (Ford and Thompson, 1986:
364).
Here in (7), M establishes an alternative situation with an if-conditional, based on
which a probable outcome is suggested. What he intends to convey is to explore one alternative condition in the pool of possibilities. This directly echoes with the essence of if-conditionals – hypotheticality and optionality.
Second, “assuming” is the case where an if-conditional “repeats an earlier claim”
to provide “shared knowledge” for the subsequent discourse (p. 356). A schematic formula looks like “X. Assuming X, then Y.” For example:
(8) D: Well, didn’t you tell me last night at supper that you were disturbed about it [a letter] going out?
M: I’m very much disturbed and … D: Well, that’s what I thought.
M: Well, I …
D: You were – if you were disturbed, you needn’t announce to the Press that – express surprised that we didn’t like it. (Ford and Thompson, 1986: 363)
The protasis of the if-conditional in (8) assumes what has been repetitively mentioned in the previous discourse; most crucially, it functions as a frame for the following talk.
The speaker uses an if-conditional to indicate the relatedness between what s/he has said and what s/he is going to say. The if-conditional clause works as a bridge to
“display[ing] the relevance of a current turn to prior talk” (Ford, 1997: 391).
Unlike the second function of assuming, which is used to resume what has been mentioned in the prior discourse, if-conditionals can also maintain a relation with the preceding discourse by offering a contrast – “to present an assertion that is the opposite of, or is an option competing with, some assertion or set of assertions from the prior discourse” (Ford, 1993: 56). The formula for this function is “X. (But) if not X, then Y.” Example (9) below displays how an if-conditional performs the function of “contrasting.”
(9) A: Mmm B: So, A: (.hhh)
B: That’s too bad, A: hhhh
(0.5)
B: (So anyway) .hh Hey do you see v- (0.3) fat ol’ Vivian anymore?
A: No, hardly. An’ if we do, y’know, I just say hello quick’n, .hh y’know, just pass each other in the hall. (Ford, 1993: 57)
In this case, B starts a new topic by asking if A sees Vivian anymore. A’s negative response to that question is followed by a contrasting if-conditional to establish a hypothetical situation (i.e. encounter with Vivian) with an undesired outcome (i.e.
greeting Vivian quickly). Without explicit formal markings for the counterfactuality of the if-conditional in (9), what suggests its contrastive reading lies in the discourse context. The if-conditional depicts an opposite condition from A’s prior response;
hence, the contrastive effect stands out. Furthermore, due to the fact that if-conditionals infer alternatives or options, they are “useful for encoding delicate moves in a hedged or provisional manner” (Ford 1997: 395). What A is doing here is a commonly-used strategy to soften the dispreferred answer and to mitigate the disagreement in real communication.
Among the various types of if-conditionals, a counterfactual is the most apparent evidence to verify the function of contrasting. The counterfactual negates a previous claim and infers an unrealized possibility on which “the speaker’s stance of desirability” exerts influence (Akatsuka & Strauss, 2000: 209). According to Akatsuka and Strauss (2000), a counterfactual if-conditional tends to encode the speaker’s line of reasoning as in (10) and (11):
(10) It was desirable that p (=fact) happened. If ‘not p’ (=counter to fact) had happened, it would have led to undesirable consequences (=’not q’).
(11) It was undesirable that p (=fact) happened. If ‘not p’ (=counter to fact) had happened, it would have led to desirable consequences (=’not q’).
These two ways of appreciating the communicative values of if-conditionals indicate that a counterfactual when uttered is endowed with the degree of the speaker’s desirability. In the speaker’s line of counterfactual thinking, s/he not only presents an opposite option to contrast what has happened but also implies whether s/he is satisfied with the reality or not.
The subsequent examples are taken from Akatuska and Strauss (2000) to demonstrate what the speaker intends to convey based on his/her subjective evaluation of the reality.
(12) The fire did not cross the highway. If it had, my house would have been destroyed. (p. 210)
(13) Unfortunately, Lucky did not win. If he had won, I would be rich. If I were rich, I would have moved to Tahiti. (p. 211)
In (12), the underlying meaning the speaker tries to express is that s/he feels lucky and satisfied about the fact that the fire has not affected his/her house. With respect to (13), the speaker grumbles out his/her discontent with the reality. The phenomenon that counterfactuality interrelates with the speaker’s stance of desirability suggests that to know the core meaning of a counterfactual is not enough in real communication. To understand its pragmatic-level function assists in the mutual understanding among parties in natural interaction. In terms of EFL teaching and learning, the learners’
recognition of this phenomenon will facilitate their perception and production of counterfactual if-conditionals.
The fourth discourse-pragmatic function of if-conditionals proposed by Ford and
Thompson (1986) is “exemplification,” in which an if-conditional introduces a specific case to explain a generalized claim mentioned in the preceding discourse.
Usually through this process, an abstract discussion turns to be more concrete. The formula would be “Generalization. (For example) if X, then Y.” For instance:
(14) Any solution, if it is acid, base, or salt, can be used as an electrolyte if it will act chemically more readily on one electrode than it will on the other. For example, if electrodes are placed into an orange, a potential difference will appear between the electrodes. (p. 358)
As indicated in this case, the if-conditional embodies a particular instance to exemplify or to substantiate the chemical phenomenon described previously. The if-clause is selected from a pool of possible cases as a representative. The speaker can further explore other possibilities by quoting more examples. In this way, it is self-evident that the function of exemplification overlaps the prototypical function of if-conditionals as option-exploring. Also, this proves that most discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditional construction are developed from its core interpretation, that is, to encode a hypothetical situation.
What is worth noticing so far is that the prior four discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals share a commonality. That is, if-conditionals can mark the topic for the subsequent discourse (Haiman, 1978) even if they display different relations with the previous discourse. According to Haiman (1978), the proposition of an if-conditional tends to be regarded as old and given so as to be easily accessed by the interlocutors. With an if-conditional marking the old information, the speaker is able to resume the prior claim as the topic of the following talk. This is commonly observed in the if-conditionals with the discourse-pragmatic function of assuming like example (8). Yet, that does not mean that if-conditionals can only mark an old/given topic because the information status of the topic is not always old/given.
If-conditionals can sometimes signal new information as a “contrastive topic”
(Akatsuka, 1986: 347). Consider the following example:
(15) (Speaker A notices that Speaker B is looking for someone) A to B: If it’s Maria you want to know about, she’s washing the
dishes./ *Speaking of Maria, she’s washing the dishes.
(Akatsuka, 1986: 348)
In (15), the contrastive topic reading is obtained when the speaker is “uncertain about the intention of the interlocutor” (p. 347). A imagines a possible situation where Maria is the person that B is looking for. The if-conditional in this case is used to explore an alternative rather than to repeat what has been mentioned in the previous discourse (otherwise, using the phrase “speaking of” here will not sound inappropriate). Even so, A topicalizes his/her supposition in the if-clause, paving the path for his/her following talk. In this kind of if-conditionals, the information encoded in the protasis is not highly accessible. It is new and usually signals the start of the forthcoming discourse.
By cross-referencing this use with the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals, we find that those which mark the new information are more associated with the functions like exploring of options (i.e. example (7)), contrasting (i.e. example (9)) or exemplification (i.e. example (14)). Generally speaking, whether if-conditionals introduce given or new information, it is usually used as a “framing mechanism,”
providing a framework for the upcoming discourse (McCarthy, 1991: 20).
The last discourse function of if-conditionals proposed by Ford and Thompson (1986) is “polite directives.” This function can only be observed in spoken English, so the frequency of its occurrence is the lowest (9%). If-conditionals as polite directives emerge from the fact that if-conditionals often encode alternative worlds with the softening effect of hypotheticality. To illustrate, let’s look at example (16).
(16) M: But if you’ll call Irey over and get together with him on Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever you fellows are ready I’m ready.
J: Yes, all right, that’s fine. (Ford and Thompson 1986: 365)
In (16), M tries to impose the responsibility of calling Irey on J. By means of an if-conditional construction, M softens his proposition so that J would not feel dominated. This instance brings out an important issue about the association between the hypotheticality/optionality of if-conditionals and interpersonal relationship.
Much research has observed that if-conditionals serve as an expressive device that people use in face-to-face interaction to show indirectness or politeness (Ford, 1997; Reiter, Rainey, & Fulgher, 2005). Usually when a social action involves potential intrusion on others’ sense of independence or personal choice, special maneuvering in conversational interaction will be expected (Brown & Levinson, 1987;
Yule, 2000). In their cross-linguistic analysis of politeness, Brown and Levinson (1987) also point out the use of hypotheticality in “avoiding coercion.” Using if-conditionals enables the speaker to show respect for the listener’s “claim of territory and self-determination (p. 70);” most important of all, the correlation between if-conditionals and hypotheticality/optionality allows the speaker to avoid interfering the listener’s freedom of action.
In response to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) viewpoints, Ford (1997: 387) elaborates, “the hypotheticality and optionality associated with if-clauses make them likely vehicles for interpersonal functions in conversation where issues of ‘face’ must be attended to.” If-conditionals can be understood as options/alternatives “in order to mitigate or hedge and thereby avoid the potential rudeness of certain interactional moves” (p. 408). For example, we can encode a face-threatening move such as command or suggestion in an if-conditional to make it sound like an option only. Or we can make use of the hypotheticality of if-conditionals to display a contrastive or
divergent viewpoint from others so as not to offend their face. In addition, Su (2004) observes evidence in her Chinese spoken data, which suggests that conditionals used for mitigation are triggered by the speaker’s concern over the hearer’s negative face and enable him/her to soften the impact of what may have been a face-threatening act.
The pragmatic usage of if-conditionals as polite directives seems to be a cross-linguistic phenomenon and can be considered as “a linguistic strategy to avoid direct speech act” and “to decrease the assertibility of a statement” (p. 304).
However, the polite use of if-conditionals observed in the above research is only one of the expressive uses of this construction. There are other expressive uses such as the desirability or undesirability in the counterfactual if-conditionals in (12) and (13). They not only perform the textual function of contrasting but also display expressive meanings like a sense of luckiness in (12) or disappointment in (13).
Another example for the expressive use of if-conditionals is illustrated in (17).
(17) Pope to a telephone operator in a small Swiss village: I’m the Pope.
Operator: If you’re the Pope, I’m the Empress of China! (Akatsuka, 1986: 334)
By means of an if-conditional, the operator in (17) converts the Pope’s claim to a hypothetical situation. The hypotheticality helps the operator distance his/her belief from the reality so as to express a sarcastic attitude. In other words, an if-conditional can be used to highlight our ironic attitude toward whoever believes the proposition of the protasis in communication. As discussed so far, if-conditionals display various expressive uses in interpersonal interaction. This expressive type of use plays a significant role in real communication but is assumed to be the most unfamiliar part to EFL learners.
To sum up, the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditional constructions
discussed above are highly associated with the core interpretations of hypotheticality and optionality. If-conditionals provide us with a channel to imagine all kinds of alternative worlds, which are distant from the reality at different degrees. With the sense of hypotheticality, if-conditionals are applied to perform diverse functions in real communication – to make open speculations for option-exploring or exemplification, to mold counterfactual situations for contrasting or to distance one’s assertion of a statement for the sake of politeness in interpersonal interaction, etc. If we attempt to appreciate the diversity of the discourse-pragmatic functions in if-conditionals, all that matters is the context, either linguistic or non-linguistic, where they are located.
Nevertheless, the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals are often overlooked in traditional EFL grammar instruction, particularly the expressive uses of if-conditionals. It is hoped that language teachers can highlight these pragmatic-level features of if-conditionals rather than analyzing their syntactic structures alone. With a larger picture of the context where if-conditionals are situated, EFL learners are to benefit more in terms of their acquisition of when and how to use the target construction. In this study, to investigate Taiwanese EFL learners’ use of if-conditionals in the face-to-face interaction, we will adopt Ford and Thompson’s framework with modification made to fit our data if more discourse-pragmatic functions of this construction are observed. Of the greatest interest is to find out to what extent the learners can use if-conditionals to fulfill different communicative purposes.
2.4 Comparison of Chinese and English Conditionals
Previous research has noticed that the difference between Chinese and English conditionals is akin to a stumbling stone in Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of
English if-conditional constructions (Bloom, 1981; Sun, 2003; Wu, 2003; Chang, 2004). It is a well-known fact that Chinese is a non-inflectional language. Unlike their English counterparts, Chinese conditionals do not need to fulfill any morphosyntactic requirements; instead, the reading of Chinese conditionals depends on word order and the overall discourse context to be properly interpreted. In this section, the differences and similarities between Chinese and English conditional constructions will be discussed from two perspectives – one is morphosyntactic and the other is discourse-pragmatic.
2.4.1 Linguistic representations
English and Chinese adopt different morphosyntactic representations for conditionals. The most common marker for the construction of an English conditional is the word if. To distinguish its degree of hypotheticality, an if-conditional will make use of the verb tense/aspect and auxiliaries. For instance, a counterfactual conditional requires more verbal markers to highlight its hypotheticality while a conditional for future prediction does not. The form of an English if-conditional can suggest its meaning to some extent. However, more than one conditional connector can be observed in Chinese, such as ruguo, dehua, yaoshi, jiashi, etc. The interpretation of Chinese conditionals does not depend on the morphosyntactic distinctions (i.e. verb tense/aspect markers) as much as their English counterparts. Although there are no overt grammatical markings in Chinese conditionals, the proper inference can be achieved based on other linguistic elements such as the temporal adverbials. For example:
(18)
要是 昨天 沒 下雨
yaoshi zuotian mei xiayu
if yesterday not rain
我 就 不會 淋濕 了
wo jiu buhui linshi le
I would not get wet CRS11
If it had not rained yesterday, I would have not got wet.
It is indicated in (18) that though the verb phrases “xiayu” and “linshi” carry no tense/aspect markers, the temporal adverbial “zuotian” still suggests the counterfactuality of this conditional sentence.
Aside from depending on the temporal adverbials, the message conveyed in a Chinese conditional can be “inferred by the hearer from the proposition in the second clause and from his/her knowledge of the world and of the context in which the sentence is being used” (Li & Thompson, 1982: 647). On the basis of this observation, they classify Chinese conditionals into two major categories. First, the “reality”
conditionals “express a relationship between two propositions in the real world” (p.
648). The second type is called “imaginative conditionals.” This kind of conditionals can have either an open or a counterfactual interpretation. It is the context where the conditional is situated that determines its interpretation.
The following instance can illustrate how a Chinese conditional, without grammatical distinctions, is interpreted differently:
11 “CRS” stands for currently relevant state (le).
(19)
如果 你 看 到 我 妹妹
ruguo ni kan dao wo meimei
if you see arrive I younger sister
你 一定 知道 她 懷孕 了
ni yiding zhidao ta huaiyun le
you certainly know 3sg pregnant CRS
Reality: If you see my younger sister, you’ll certainly know that she is pregnant.
Imaginative hypothetical: If you saw my younger sister, you’d know she was pregnant (I could imagine your seeing her).
Imaginative counterfactual: If you had seen my younger sister, you would have know that she was pregnant (you didn’t see her). (Li &
Thompson, 1982: 647)
As seen in (19), the Chinese conditional is only marked with a connector ruguo and three interpretations are derived because of the lack of grammatical distinctions. As long as the overall discourse context is given, it can be determined which message this Chinese conditional really conveys.
So far, it has been shown that the most significant difference between Chinese and English conditionals lies in their linguistic representations. The subsequent section will explore their similarities in terms of discourse-pragmatic functions.
2.4.2 Patterns of language use
When it comes to the discourse-pragmatic functions or communicative values of conditionals, Chinese and English share a lot of similarities (Wu, 1994, 1997; Wang, 1996, 1999). Wu (1997) has sampled the Chinese newspapers for the exploration of the counterfactual conditionals in real language use. In her study, Chinese
counterfactuals were found highly frequent. Additionally, there were three major language uses of Chinese counterfactual conditionals: for analysis and persuasion, for emotional outlet and for exercise of imagination (p. 106). Around 96% of the counterfactual conditionals in her study belonged to the first type. Wu’s findings validated that the functions of Chinese counterfactuals are congruous with their English counterparts – to “contrast” and to “make difficult moves hypothetical” (Ford
& Thompson, 1986; Ford, 1993, 1997).
Wu’s (1997) study only examined the language use of conditionals in written Chinese. Wang (1996), on the other hand, investigates the interactional use of conditionals in spoken Chinese by adopting Ford and Thompson’s framework (1986).
Her corpus12 provides rich evidence to justify that Chinese and English conditionals resemble each other in terms of their discourse functions in real communication. Table 2.3 reveals the frequency of the discourse functions of Chinese conditionals.
Table 2.3
Frequency of Discourse Functions of Conditionals
in Spoken Chinese (Wang, 1996) and in English (Ford and Thompson, 1986)
Types Chinese conditionals
(Wang, 1996)
English conditionals (Ford and Thompson, 1986)
Exploring of options 46% (n=44) 30%
Contrasting 17% (n=16) 21%
Assuming 14% (n=13) 25%
Exemplification 13% (n=12) 15%
Polite directives 10% (n= 9) 9%
Total 100% (n=94) 100%
Table 2.3 suggests that Chinese conditionals naturally fall into the five types of discourse functions proposed by Ford and Thompson (1986). The function of
12 Wang’s corpus (1996) comprises two sets of talk: one from naturally occurring face-to-face, two-party and multi-party conversations and the other from interviews and a call-in on radio. The overall span of the time of her spoken data lasts for almost four hours.
option-exploration occupies the largest proportion, indicating that the core meaning of Chinese conditionals coincide with their English equivalents. They are mostly used to express the sense of optionality.
Wang (1999) expands her study to investigate the information sequences of adverbial clauses in spoken Chinese. In her study, Chinese conditionals are found to occur more often before the main clause. To compare the tendency in the placement of conditionals in English and in Chinese, the distributions are juxtaposed in Table 2.4.
Table 2.4
Tendency in the Placement of Conditionals in English and in Chinese
Position English
(Ford, 1993)
Chinese (Wang, 1999)
Initial 59.1% 87%
Final 40.9% 13%
Total 100% 100%
From Table 2.4, around 60% of English conditionals appear preposed and 40%
postposed. However, Chinese conditionals have a greater tendency to appear in the initial position at the rate of 87%, exceeding their English counterparts by almost 20%.
Usually, a preposed adverbial clause can represent a limitation of focus, signaling an orientation with which the following proposition is to be understood; a postposed one, in contrast, adds something to the assertion or modifies what is stated (Chafe, 1984).
In other words, an initial if-conditional tends to be used to encode highly accessible information – the topic of a discourse (Chafe, 1987). This tendency is compatible to the “topic-prominent” feature of Chinese (Chao, 1968). Thus, more Chinese conditionals occur initially than English ones.
Generally speaking, even though Chinese and English have distinct linguistic representations for conditional constructions, they share many similarities in terms of
discourse-pragmatic functions. The functions of English if-conditionals are revealed to be mostly compatible to those of Chinese conditionals except that the placement of English and Chinese conditionals differs, which seems to originate from their typological differences.
In the next section, we are going to review previous literature on EFL learners’
acquisition of if-conditionals in order to find out the difficulty encountered by the learners.
2.5 Previous Research on EFL Learners’ Acquisition of If-conditionals
If-conditionals have long been considered a weighty topic in the field of EFL teaching and learning. Studies have been conducted to investigate the acquisition or instruction of if-conditionals (Bloom, 1981; Berent, 1985; Sun, 2003; Wu, 2003;
Chang, 2004; Ke, 2004). Berent (1985), for instance, conducted a large-scale experiment to evaluate adult EFL learners’ production and comprehension13 of conditional sentences. He divided if-conditionals into three types: real, unreal and past unreal14. The results indicated that the real conditionals were the easiest to produce but the hardest to comprehend. It was speculated that different levels of difficulty of if-conditionals could be attributed to the different degrees of “markedness” assigned to the structures. For the real conditionals, they were the least marked in structures but the most marked in interpretations15. Berent, hence, concluded that if an EFL learner could produce the form of a conditional accurately but was not able to assign appropriate meaning to that conditional, they were “not acquiring a related form and
13 In Berent’s (1985) study, the production task required the participants to complete conditional sentences by supplying appropriate verb forms and the comprehension task required them to make judgments about the meanings of conditional sentences.
14 The three categories can be notionally related to hypothetical/open conditionals, counterfactuals with present-time reference and counterfactuals with past-time reference.
15 The real conditionals usually imply “uncertainty” toward the outcome of the propositions while unreal conditionals imply “disbelief.” Berent (1985: 365) considered the meaning of a real conditional more marked because to interpret one was more “cognitively complex.”
function simultaneously” (p. 369). This study justifies the necessity to construct a systematic way of teaching if-conditionals for EFL learners to associate proper forms with appropriate functions. This need seems more urgent with respect to the EFL learners whose mother tongue (e.g. Chinese) is morphosyntactically different from their L2. In what follows, our attention will center on the studies on Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of if-conditionals.
From a cross-linguistic perspective, Bloom (1981) made a survey to examine whether Chinese speakers were able to do counterfactual reasoning by asking:
(20) If all circles were large and this small triangle ‘U’ were a circle, would it be large?
Most Chinese speakers interviewed had doubts about the validity of this question because in their mind, a triangle would never be a circle; hence, they processed the counterfactual “less naturally” than English speakers (p. 22). Bloom claimed that Chinese language had no distinct lexical, grammatical, or intonational device to signal entry into the counterfactual realm and therefore the Chinese did not have prepared schemas for interpreting information in a counterfactual way. However, Bloom’s view that the presence/absence of a specific grammatical construction (i.e. counterfactuals) was correlated with the cognitive development (i.e. counterfactual thought) encountered great criticism (Au, 1983, 1984; Liu, 1985; Lardiere, 1992).
Lardiere (1992) tried to replicate Bloom’s study by selecting other oriental participants (Arabians) whose language does contain overt counterfactual markers and found that the participants, like the Chinese speakers16 in Bloom’s study, resisted
16 One of Bloom’s respondents commented (1981: 31), “I know what you Westerners want me to do, you always want me to assume things even when they don’t make sense. But we Chinese don’t do that.”
answering that question17. The results were attributed to a few reasons. First, one’s academic knowledge might differ from his/her personal belief in some cultures (e.g.
Chinese or Arabian) (p. 238). It would be more difficult for those people to answer a question in which their professional logical reasoning contradicted with their daily-life reasoning. Second, the culture-specific values might exert influence on a community’s educational or testing conventions. The participants who received different literacy training might appear in different degrees of familiarity with the task genre; thus, those who were less familiar with the task genre like question (20) would appear less natural and responsive. Due to many other non-linguistic factors, Lardiere (1992) pointed out that Bloom’s research cannot serve as an ideal explanation for why Chinese EFL learners tend to have difficulty learning English if-conditionals, especially counterfactuals. Rather, it only displayed that speakers of different languages may have distinct patterns/habits of counterfactual thinking.
No matter how Chinese speakers’ patterns of counterfactual reasoning and those of English speakers seem to differ, the structural difference between the two languages is undeniably an obstacle to Chinese EFL learners. Sun (2003) adopts a written test to elicit the production of English conditionals from 10 Taiwanese EFL learners in order to examine how the syntactic complexity and L1 transfer may affect their acquisition of if-conditionals. The results indicate that the backshifting system of verb tense/aspect forms in English if-conditionals does give the learners’ a hard time.
Thus, Sun concludes that the difference of morphological marking on verbal tense/aspect is of a crucial role in the acquisition of if-conditionals.
Furthermore, to test EFL learners’ understanding of if-conditionals, Chang (2004)
17 One of the interviewees in Lardiere’s study (1992: 243) reflected, “When you learn something, you learn it as it is – a circle is a circle, get what I mean? and a triangle could never be a circle … If I agree with this, it means that I’m disagreeing with everything I did in math, it’s like, how could an orange be an apple? Well, I don’t think it’s possible.”
samples 82 students from a senior high school in Taiwan and gives them three kinds of tests: Situation Task, Grammaticality Task and Elicited Translation Task. The prior two evaluate the learners’ perception of if-conditionals and the last one aims to analyze their written production. It has been found that counterfactuals are the most difficult type of conditionals for the students. The most frequently-made error is the lack of backshifted verb tense/aspect or the unfamiliarity of English past perfect modals (e.g. would have been, would have done, etc.). Chang, from a formal syntactic point of view, asserts that the syntactic complexity increases the weight of conditionals-learning.
Aside from the morphosyntactic perspective, some researchers have attributed EFL learners’ difficulty in the acquisition of if-conditionals to their unawareness of form-and-function mappings. For instance, Ke (2004) employs an error analysis on EFL learners’ writings sampled from Chinese Learner English Corpus18, revealing that the learners tend to complicate simple conditionals but simplify complex ones.
Thereby, she points out that the major challenge for EFL learners to acquire if-conditionals lies in “the interaction of forms (verb form changes) and meanings (temporality and hypotheticality)” (p.206).
Instead of conducting error analysis or comprehension test to evaluate EFL learners’ acquisition of if-conditionals, Wu (2003) pays more attention to the solution in order to ease their pain of conditionals-learning. She designs an experiment to compare the effectiveness of an output-based instruction with that of an input-based one. The findings show that an input-based instruction benefits the learners more, suggesting enough comprehensible input is the key to the efficient and effective learning of if-conditionals.
18 Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) consists of over 1,000,000 words and was compiled and computerized by Professor Gui shi-chun and Yang Hui-zhong in Mainland China.
Previous research has shown that the L1’s interference is one of the primary factors in EFL learners’ ineffective acquisition of English if-conditionals, so that much stress has been put on the formal differences between Chinese and English conditionals in traditional grammar instruction. Yet, the traditional instruction neglects the close link between forms and functions of English if-conditionals. It is argued that the notion of the form-and-function iconicity of if-conditionals should be fundamental to EFL learners’ acquisition of this construction. Furthermore, the data in previous research mostly came from EFL learners’ written interlanguage. Few studies explored the if-conditionals in the learners’ spoken interlanguage, so that little has been revealed about the learners’ using the discourse-pragmatic functions of this construction. Thereby, it is also of our great concern to explore how well EFL learners can perform the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals.
All in all, since the structural complexity of if-conditionals is considered a great barrier for EFL learners, to establish the notion of form-and-function mapping will be significant in the development of their grammatical competence. What is even more crucial is to investigate to what extent EFL learners can perform the discourse-pragmatic functions of if-conditionals in real communication so as to pinpoint the deficiency and to improve their communicative competence. Therefore, the goal of this study is to assess EFL learners’ use of if-conditionals in their spoken interlanguage in hopes of providing a more comprehensive way of teaching and learning this construction.
