On causal inferences of counterfactual conditionals: Mandarin vs. German

Causal dependence and counterfactual dependence are tightly related, as can be seen in David Lewis’ counterfactual definition of causation (i.e., Where A and C are two distinct actual events, C causally depends on A if and only if, if A were not to occur C would not occur.). In natural language semantics and pragmatics, researchers also study the causal inferences of counterfactual conditionals (e.g., “If Susan had not pushed John, he wouldn’t have fallen.” can mean “John fell because Susan pushed him.”) and their formal modelling, but there is no consensus as to whether the inference is semantic or pragmatic. Languages use different devices to express counterfactuals: while some (e.g., English, German) use tense, aspect or mood, Mandarin Chinese can use conditional connectives (yaobushi, i.e., “if-not”) solely. We present a preliminary study with two rating experiments in Mandarin and German targeting the semantic or pragmatic status of the causal inference triggered by counterfactual conditionals. Results show that Mandarin counterfactual conditionals encode semantic causality, whereas the causal inference with German counterfactual conditionals is weaker.