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id	eprints-30368
recordtype	eprints
institution	SOAS, University of London
collection	SOAS Research Online
language	English
language_search	English
description	This paper discusses the ways in which Mandarin Chinese expresses counterfactual conditionals, and endeavours to motivate and theorize the use of such strategies. I aim to give an overall picture of Mandarin Chinese counterfactual conditionals, a topic which has hitherto not been covered in the Chinese linguistic literature. The strategies identified are the use of special lexicalized chunks to directly encode counterfactual meaning; the creation of tense mismatch and the accompanying counterfactual meaning, either through the use of relative tense pointing toward a hypothetical past event, or through the use of some special time adverbs; and the use of pure inference over conditionals with impossible or absurd antecedents. Overlaying these strategies is the presence of context-dependent simplifications, which may prompt the language user to omit the defining features of a given strategy.
format	Journal Article
author	Jiang, Yan
author_facet	Jiang, Yan
authorStr	Jiang, Yan
author_letter	Jiang, Yan
title	Ways for expressing counterfactual conditionals in Mandarin Chinese
publisher	De Gruyter
publishDate	2019
url	https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/30368/