Talking about counterfactual worlds

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. Th e 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 diff erence between French and Spanish. Th e 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.