Is there a difference in word stress between 会 as a time marker and 会 as an auxiliary verb meaning "to know how to"?

Question

”他会看书“ could have two meanings: 1. "He knows how to read", and 2. "He will read". Context in most situations would make it clear which is meant, though I've noticed that there is also a difference in pronunciation. In communicating meaning 1., 会´s tone is exaggerated, or rather, the word is stressed. In communicating meaning 2. the pronunciation of 会‘s tone is much lighter, and the stress moves to 看书.

I think that the same thing happens with 要，with its double meaning of "want" and "gonna".

Can anybody corroborate this intuition?

Answer 1

In my opinion, the tone indeed gives hint to the meaning, but I doubt it has a strong correspondence. As to your intuition, namely, the stressed tone corresponds to "know how" and the lighter one corresponds to "will".

Whenever there is an ambiguity, rather to say we figure out the meaning from tones but from the context. Since it's the context that matters. As a listener, we know the speaker add their tones based on the context to convey what he/she means exactly. For me, the context is the root and the tone is just a derived aspect.

Suppose such a scenario. A father wants to let his son finish the homework, however he doubts if the son will really do it. And the mother may come to say, he will finish his work. 他会写完作业的。 So it's natural to stress "会" based on the context, which doesn't necessarily means he knows how to finish his work.

Similar for 要. But notice that 要 is really similar to "would like to", so it can mean a desire "want" but also a tendance to do something in the future (caused by the desire) "gonna"

Edit: @Sanchuan constrastive stress and neutral declarative context sound new to me. I am not major in linguistics, perhaps I treat the phenomenon naively. For me, these concepts seem to distinguish two kinds of scenario: a neutral one and an unusual one. However I still think the context can explain such difference. In practice, the usage of know how is less frequent than the usage of "will". So the latter may turns out to be a common one and neutral scenario. In contrast, the former contains more information (measured by how unusual the meaning is) therefore needs a stress.

Answer 2

I think context is the key, instead of tone. Tone is just for emphasis, not affecting the meaning per se.

E.g. 他会唱歌 could mean either.

A: 他都会些什么？

B: 他会唱歌。// he knows how to sing.

A1: 他在晚会上要表演什么？

B1: 他会唱歌。// he will sing.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, the sound of "会" remains the same, whether it means "know how/able" or "will". So it can cause confusion when saying something without given sufficient context to differentiate its meaning, such as the example you provided - ”他会看书“. However, the sentence can be twisted with some auxiliary words to make it means what it is intended to mean:

• ”他很会看书“ - Literally means "He be able to read a lot of books". Here "会" is the same as "能" that won't be misunderstood as "will".

• ”他会看书的“ - Not mistakable, the sentence means "He will read the book (eventually).".

Note, the translation of "He knows how to read" should be "他會/能讀".

要 is more clear than 会:

• "He wants to study" - ”他要看书“.

• "He's gonna study" - ”他将要看书“.