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Article: Chinese and English counterfactuals: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis revisited

TitleChinese and English counterfactuals: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis revisited
Authors
Issue Date1983
PublisherElsevier BV. The Journal's web site is located at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/cognit
Citation
Cognition, 1983, v. 15 n. 1-3, p. 155-187 How to Cite?
AbstractBloom (1981) found that Chinese speakers were less likely than English speakers to give counterfactual interpretations to a counterfactual story. These findings, together with the presence of a distinct counterfactual marker (the subjunctive) in English, but not in Chinese, were interpreted as evidence for the weak form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. A series of five studies was designed to replicate these findings, using both Chinese and English versions of a new counterfactual story as well as the story used by Bloom. In these studies, bilingual Chinese showed little difficulty in understanding either story in either language, insofar as the English and Chinese were idiomatic. For one story, the Chinese bilinguals performed better in Chinese than American subjects did in English. Nearly monolingual Chinese who did not know the English subjunctive also gave mostly counterfactual responses. These findings suggest that the mastery of the English subjunctive is probably quite tangenital to counterfactual reasoning in Chinese. In short, the present research yielded no support for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. © 1983.
Persistent Identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/10722/132017
ISSN
2023 Impact Factor: 2.8
2023 SCImago Journal Rankings: 1.590
ISI Accession Number ID

 

DC FieldValueLanguage
dc.contributor.authorAu, TKFen_HK
dc.date.accessioned2011-03-04T07:55:03Z-
dc.date.available2011-03-04T07:55:03Z-
dc.date.issued1983en_HK
dc.identifier.citationCognition, 1983, v. 15 n. 1-3, p. 155-187en_HK
dc.identifier.issn0010-0277en_HK
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10722/132017-
dc.description.abstractBloom (1981) found that Chinese speakers were less likely than English speakers to give counterfactual interpretations to a counterfactual story. These findings, together with the presence of a distinct counterfactual marker (the subjunctive) in English, but not in Chinese, were interpreted as evidence for the weak form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. A series of five studies was designed to replicate these findings, using both Chinese and English versions of a new counterfactual story as well as the story used by Bloom. In these studies, bilingual Chinese showed little difficulty in understanding either story in either language, insofar as the English and Chinese were idiomatic. For one story, the Chinese bilinguals performed better in Chinese than American subjects did in English. Nearly monolingual Chinese who did not know the English subjunctive also gave mostly counterfactual responses. These findings suggest that the mastery of the English subjunctive is probably quite tangenital to counterfactual reasoning in Chinese. In short, the present research yielded no support for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. © 1983.en_HK
dc.languageeng-
dc.publisherElsevier BV. The Journal's web site is located at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/cogniten_HK
dc.relation.ispartofCognitionen_HK
dc.titleChinese and English counterfactuals: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis revisiteden_HK
dc.typeArticleen_HK
dc.identifier.openurlhttp://library.hku.hk:4550/resserv?sid=HKU:IR&issn=0010-0277&volume=15&issue=1-3&spage=155&epage=187&date=1983&atitle=CHINESE+AND+ENGLISH+COUNTERFACTUALS+-+THE+SAPIR-WHORF+HYPOTHESIS+REVISITED-
dc.identifier.emailAu, TKF:terryau@hkucc.hku.hken_HK
dc.identifier.authorityAu, TKF=rp00580en_HK
dc.description.naturelink_to_subscribed_fulltext-
dc.identifier.doi10.1016/0010-0277(83)90038-0-
dc.identifier.pmid6686507-
dc.identifier.scopuseid_2-s2.0-0020987479en_HK
dc.identifier.volume15en_HK
dc.identifier.issue1-3en_HK
dc.identifier.spage155en_HK
dc.identifier.epage187en_HK
dc.identifier.isiWOS:A1983RY84800007-
dc.publisher.placeNetherlandsen_HK
dc.identifier.scopusauthoridAu, TKF=9435174900en_HK
dc.identifier.issnl0010-0277-

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