The Chinese counterfactual
汉语中违反事实的假设
Halvor Eifring 艾皓德

Abstract 摘要
In English and other Western languages, conditional sentences are normally either counterfactual (if he were …) or non-counterfactual (if he is…). Chinese conditionals usually do not distinguish these two types, and many linguists believe that the language never marks counterfactuality at all. It turns out, however, that using the negator bu shi instead of mei(you) or bu in a conditional clause often turns it into a counterfactual. Thus, although Chinese normally does not make the counterfactuality distinction, it is not true that it never does. This article discusses the use of the counterfactual construction in Modern Chinese, with some glimpses into Early Mandarin and Classical Chinese. Finally, it points out several important differences between the Chinese counterfactual and the English one.

英语中的“If he is ….” 和“If he were …” 两个句型是有所分别的，后者表示所谓“违反事实的假设”。在汉语中，“If he is …” 和 “If he were …” 都是用一个句型来代表的，即“如果他是 …..”。因此，有许多语言学家以为，汉语没有“违反事实的假设”标记，在大部分的情况之下，汉语确实没有这样的标记。然而，若用‘不是’来否定假设从句，这常常表示违反事实的假设。本文讨论现代汉语中违反事实的假设，也提到其在早期白话和古汉语中的用法，最后分析违反事实的假设在汉语与英语中所扮演角色的一些重要差别。

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