Talking about counterfactual worlds

Repiso, Isabel

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.15.1.52

A comparative study of French and Spanish

Repiso, Isabel

Journal of Romance Studies (2015), 15, (1), 52–72.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.15.1.52
Language: English
Pages: 21

Abstract

Counterfactual thinking is a cognitive process in which reality is compared to an imagined view of what might have been. Previous studies in Linguistics have focused on the description of the conditional construction if P (then) Q. Our study aims to compare the grammatical devices used by thirty French native speakers and thirty Spanish native speakers. Participants were presented with a story that led to a particular outcome and were asked to provide alternative scenarios that might have prevented such an outcome from happening. The results showed (i) that counterfactuality is not expressed most frequently by conditional constructions and (ii) that the use of evaluative modal markers within the mutation core is a salient difference between French and Spanish. The minor role of conditional constructions suggests that the boundaries of conditionality as a conceptualization process need to be reconsidered within the realm of irreality. In addition, the frequency of evaluative modals in French suggests a preference for counterfactual scenarios that integrate an overt critical judgement from the speaker.

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