Reasoning counterfactually in Chinese: Are there any obstacles?

Abstract

The fact that English, but not Chinese, has a distinct marker for counterfactual statements, the subjunctive mood, led Bloom (1981) to hypothesize that Chinese speakers would be less likely than English speakers to correctly interpret a counterfactual story and problem. His findings support his hypothesis and are interpreted by Bloom to be evidence for the Whorfian hypothesis. In contrast, Au's (1983, 1984) findings indicate that acquisition of the subjunctive is not essential to reason counterfactually in Chinese among bilingual Chinese-English speakers from Hong Kong as long as the test materials are controlled for idiomaticness. Two experiments were designed to replicate Au's findings using Chinese speakers with minimal or no previous exposure to English as a Foreign Language instruction. Two versions of two counterfactual stories and a set of eighteen counterfactual problems presented in two formats were used. The results indicate that grade of the subject, content of the story or problem and presentation format are significant factors in determining performance on the tasks, not necessarily a linguistic construction that distinctly marks counterfactuals. These findings agree with Au's results, yielding no support for Bloom's hypothesis.