ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a scrutiny of the notion “subjunctive conditional” together with an introduction to the distinction of “extrinsic” and “intrinsic” factors affecting the nature of logical operators. This is followed by a cursory overview of psychological and grammatical research on counterfactual expressions in Mandarin Chinese. It then sets out a list of tasks to be accomplished and explicates a recent proposal that Mandarin counterfactuals can be formally divided into “explicit” and “implicit” counterfactuals, which cross-cut the tripartite division of “truthifiers”, “falsifiers” and “counterpossibles”. It is suggested that this understanding can serve as a unified framework to describe Chinese counterfactuals and can also be used to accommodate some related optative expressions found in several dialects.
