Teaching Chinese modals: the case of habitual HUI 会
Enseigner les verbes modaux chinois : le cas de l'emploi habituel de HUI
试论汉语情态动词“会”的惯常用法及其教学
Résumé
We investigate here difficulties met in a French classroom by intermediate-level students with a secondary use of epistemic modal huì, i.e. its habitualuse. We argue that the habitual use (triggered by frequency adverbials such as mĕi dào ‘each time’ + VP) and the sporadic use (triggered by adverbials such as yǒushí‘sometimes’) should be taught at the intermediate level. Habitual huì shows a specific temporal frame: it may be used for past habitual events, and thus departs from other epistemic uses of modal huì, which are basically restricted to future events.Unlike English, which may use a modal irrealis verb ‘will, would’ that reminds us of irrealis huì, French most often just uses present and imperfective past tense to mark habitual events. A specific mention to habitual and sporadic uses of huì thus becomes useful for French L1 learners, and for Japanese L1 learners as well.
本文从教学的角度讨论情态动词“会”的惯常用法。这类“会”往往和频率副词共现，如：“我每到一个国家，也基本上都会找机会乘坐当地的火车…”（北大语料，网络语料），可以看作是属于认识情态的“会”的一个下位意义，表示在某种条件下必然出现的事态。论文根据法语母语者的实际学习情况，主张在中级阶段有必要把惯常义项从其他义项分出来加以说明。习得困难的一个因素是“会”所出现的惯常句往往表述过去的事态，如：“据说，冬日里我们的屋里八面透风，炕上冰凉，夜间连杯子里的残茶都会冻上。”（《正红旗下》），在法语里译成未完成过去时，与指向未然的其他义项相距很远。我们还讨论“有时会～”一类表示偶发事态的“会”及其在法语里的对应形式。