The differential impact of the timing of form-focused instruction on the acquisition of the past counterfactual conditional and framing expressions for English questions

This study compared the effect of the timing of form-focused instruction (FFI) on the acquisition of the past counterfactual conditional (PCC) and framing expressions (FEs) for English questions. Sixty-three EFL adult learners received a total of six hours of isolated or integrated FFI on the target features. Acquisition was measured by means of cloze tests and interviews. The results obtained from a mixed-design ANOVA indicated that the learners in the two experimental groups made significant gains on the two language measures. A dependent t-test revealed that the two target structures responded differentially to the timing of form-focused instruction. We discuss some of the theoretical and pedagogical implications of these findings.

Why It Matters What Might Have Been

Genuinely counterfactual thought concerns situations that typically both are, and are known, not to exist. This raises a puzzle about the point of counterfactual thinking, and in particular in connection with the counterfactual conditional. It is unclear why a conditional whose truth turns on what happens in imaginary situations should occupy the central role that counterfactuals do have in our serious intellectual practices, in particular in connection with decision-making. This paper sets out the ways in which thinking about the non- actual constrain deliberation about the actual, and locates the value of these constraints in their effect on (a) risk-aversion and (b) future discounting.

Counterfactual and non-counterfactual conditional constructions in Kuikuro (Upper Xingu Carib)

Kuikuro is one of the varieties of the Upper Xingu Carib Language, of the Southern Xinguan Branch of the Carib family, which is spoken by approximately 600 people, in the region known as the Upper Xingu, at the southern edge of the Brazilian Amazon. This article focuses on counterfactual and non-counterfactual conditional constructions in Kuikuro. After an introduction containing the relevant information on methodology, theoretical background and the main questions that arise from the Kuikuro data, the article is further organized into two sections. The first one offers a brief introduction to the Kuikuro people and a sketch of the Kuikuro morphosyntactic typology and the relevant grammatical facts. The second section describes counterfactual and non-counterfactual conditional constructions. The results of this preliminary study show that Kuikuro speakers have multiple morphosyntactic resources available to realize utterances expressing conceptual and pragmatic domains of possibility, whether these are asserted, assumed, or denied.

Pragmatics Analysis of Presupposition as Found in The Tagline of Horror Movie Posters

This research is about pragmatics analysis of presupposition as found in the tagline of horror movie posters. This research aimed to discover presupposition triggers and type of presupposition in the tagline of horror movie posters. In this research, the data were collected by downloading 14 taglines in horror movie posters. Then, the data downloaded were divided according to the presupposition triggers and the types of presuppositions. The data were analyzed using two theories, presupposition triggers by Kartunnen (1973) and Yule’s presupposition types (1996). The result of the analysis shows an argument and a table. The results show that from 42 presupposition triggers found in the tagline of horror movie posters, definite descriptions are the most dominant presupposition triggers. Other presupposition triggers are the change of state verbs, factive verb, and counterfactual conditional. Meanwhile, out of 6 types of presuppositions, there are only four types of presuppositions found in the tagline of horror movie posters: existential presupposition, lexical presupposition, factive presupposition, and counterfactual presupposition.

Actionality, Aspect, Tense, and Counterfactuality in Kuban Kabardian

This paper presents the fieldwork data on the interaction of actionality, aspect, and tense in counterfactual conditional clauses of the Kuban dialect of Kabardian, a polysynthetic Northwest Caucasian language. Kabardian shows non-trivial similarities to Romance languages in its use of the Imperfective Past suffix as a marker of counterfactuality — alone or as a part of the complex marker of the Pluperfect marker where the Imperfect attaches to the Preterite (perfective past). I show that the choice between several types of marking in counterfactual protases (the plain Imperfect, the Pluperfect, and the simple Preterite) primarily depends on actional class and viewpoint aspect: perfective counterfactuals employ either the Pluperfect or the Preterite, while imperfective counterfactuals require the Imperfect, which is in line with the more general distribution of these tense-aspect forms. Theoretical implications of the tense-aspect marking in Kuban Kabardian counterfactual conditionals are also briefly discussed.

Conditional Reasoning Part I

Three types of conditional are distinguished: the material conditional, indicative conditional, and subjunctive/counterfactual conditional. The apparent difference in truth conditions of each is suggestive of different psychological procedures used in the evaluation of each. The psychology of the material conditional is then examined. Despite procedures in formal logic that are suggestive of sui generis imaginative states (e.g., “assuming” a proposition for conditional proof, or for reductio), we need not countenance the use of such states within the psychological procedures used to carry out the inferences. Further, work in psychology has long suggested that humans do not, as a rule, reason in accordance with normative standards appropriate to the material conditional. A popular alternative proposal in psychology is that conditional reasoning involves the use of mental models (Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 2002). The use of mental models is shown to be consistent with conditional reasoning involving only sequences of beliefs.

Conditionals and Abduction

The chapter gives a preliminary sketch of some cognitive differences between indicative conditionals and counterfactual conditionals relevant to the testing of hypotheses by experiment. They especially concern cases where the indicative conditional can be decided without new evidence while the counterfactual conditional cannot. They also show that the antecedent of a ‘counterfactual’ conditional need not be presupposed to be false. Differences connected with the past tense morphology of ‘would’ are explored. Cases are given where the morphology should be understood as expressing a ‘fake past’, modal rather than temporal.

Conditional analysis of free will and consequence argument

The conditional analysis of the meaning of the phrase “free will” is a classical compatibilist strategy, first introduced by David Hume and still widely used by compatibilists. The consequence argument is an influential argument against compatibilism. If the consequence argument is sound, then physical determinism is incompatible with alternative possibilities for any agent. In this article, I consider the relationship between the consequence argument and classical compatibilism. I demonstrate that the consequence argument uses premises that should be rejected by proponents of the counterfactual conditional analysis of free will

Dispositions

‘Disposition’ is a term used in metaphysics usually to indicate a type of property, state or condition. Such a property is one that provides for the possibility of some further specific state or behaviour, usually in circumstances of some specific kind. Terms such as ‘causal power’, ‘capacity’, ‘ability’, ‘propensity’, and others, can be used to convey the same idea. The general criterion for something to be a disposition is that the appropriate kind of behaviour, the so-called manifestation, need not be actual. Thus, something can be disposed to break though it is not broken now. The disposition is thought to be a persisting state or condition that makes possible the manifestation. Because dispositions make other events or properties possible, they are often understood in relation to counterfactual conditional sentences. Something being fragile is somehow related to the conditional that if it is dropped, it will break. The antecedent of the conditional identifies the stimulus for the disposition. The consequent identifies the manifestation of the disposition. Philosophers are increasingly interested in dispositions because many properties seem to be essentially dispositional in nature. Thus, to say that something is soft means that it is disposed to deform when put under pressure. It is difficult to identify a property that does not have some dispositional aspect. Even the fundamental properties of physics, such as spin, charge and mass, appear to be dispositional. This has led some to the conclusion that all properties are dispositions, or at least that they bestow dispositions. In the philosophy of mind, many mental ascriptions carry dispositional implications. For example, to have a belief is to be disposed to behave in an appropriate way in certain circumstances. There are a number of philosophical problems that arise about dispositions, however. Are they real properties in their own right or are they in some way derived from other elements? How are dispositions distinguished from other things? What is the precise relation a disposition bears to its manifestation?

Counterfactual conditionals

‘If bats were deaf, they would hunt during the day.’ What you have just read is called a ‘counterfactual’ conditional; it is an ‘If…then…’ statement the components of which are ‘counter to fact’, in this case counter to the fact that bats hear well and sleep during the day. Among the analyses proposed for such statements, two have been especially prominent. According to the first, a counterfactual asserts that there is a sound argument from the antecedent (‘bats are deaf’) to the consequent (‘bats hunt during the day’). The argument uses certain implicit background conditions and laws of nature as additional premises. A variant of this analysis says that a counterfactual is itself a condensed version of such an argument. The analysis is called ‘metalinguistic’ because of its reference to linguistic items such as premises and arguments. The second analysis refers instead to possible worlds. (One may think of possible worlds as ways things might have gone.) This analysis says that the example is true just in case bats hunt during the day in the closest possible world(s) where they are deaf