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Acquisition of polarity-sensitive items in Mandarin Chinese
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Abstract:
"A thesis submitted to the Department of Cognitive Science in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cognitive Science at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia" ; "May 2013" ; Thesis by publication. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; 1. Introduction -- 2. Acquisition of the polarity sensitive item renhe 'any' in Mandarin Chinese -- 3. Interpretation of the wh-pronoun shenme 'what' in Mandarin Chinese -- 4. Acquisition of the wh-pronoun shenme 'what' in Mandarin Chinese -- 5. Acquisition of the wh-pronoun ji 'how many' in Mandarin Chinese -- 6. Polarity sensitivity decomposed: concluding remarks -- Appendix ; In Mandarin Chinese wh-pronouns such as shenme 'what' and shei 'who' are widely interpreted as negative polarity items, due to the similarity in distribution and interpretation between wh-pronouns and the polarity sensitive item any in English. Against this general theoretical background, this thesis contends that wh-pronouns in Mandarin Chinese are not homogeneous. I illustrate this by examining the interpretation of two wh-pronouns, namely, shenme 'what' and ji-ge 'how many-classifier'. I particularly focus on the interpretation of these two wh-pronouns in simple negative statements. While negated shenme sentences receive both a 'none' reading and an 'insignificance' reading, negated ji-ge sentences receive a 'small-amount' reading. Both cases depart from negative statements containing renhe (which is the Chinese equivalent of English any); negated renhe sentences can only be assigned the 'none' reading. Various semantic and pragmatic factors contribute the interpretation of renhe, shenme and ji-ge in negative statements, and these theoretical issues have implications for child language development. In a series of controlled experiments, I investigated Mandarin-speaking children's comprehension of (i) sentences containing negative polarity item renhe; (ii) sentences containing free choice renhe; (iii) negated renhe sentences versus negated shenme sentences; (iv) negated ji-ge sentences. The general findings are that while the relevant pragmatic knowledge as related to the interpretation of these polarity items are delayed in Mandarin-speaking children, their semantic knowledge of these polarity items are in place early in the course of language development. This study offers new data on the acquisition of polarity sensitive items, and sheds new light on the linguistic theory of wh-pronouns in Mandarin Chinese. ; Mode of access: World wide web ; 1 online resource (xiv, 208 pages) illustrations (some colour)
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Keyword:
Chinese language -- Acquisition; Chinese language -- China -- Beijing; Chinese language -- Pronoun; Cognition and culture -- China; Comparative and general -- Syntax -- Research; Grammar; ji-ge; language acquisition; Language acquisition -- China; Language acquisition -- Research; Mandarin Chinese; Mandarin dialects -- China -- Beijing; polarity-sensitive items; renhe; shei; shenme
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URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/1278256
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| 82 |
Evaluation der kompensatorischen Sprachförderung: Abschlussbericht
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In: 77 (2013)
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| 83 |
Evaluation der kompensatorischen Sprachförderung: erster Zwischenbericht
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In: 65 (2013)
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| 84 |
Evaluation der kompensatorischen Sprachförderung: zweiter Zwischenbericht
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In: 76 (2013)
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| 85 |
Transnationales Bildungskapital und soziale Ungleichheit
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In: 25 ; Berliner Studien zur Soziologie Europas / Berlin Studies on the Sociology of Europe (BSSE) ; 37 (2013)
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| 87 |
Zweisprachiger Schulunterricht für Migrantenkinder: Ergebnisse der Evaluationsforschung zu seinen Auswirkungen auf Zweitspracherwerb und Schulerfolg
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In: 2 ; AKI-Forschungsbilanz ; 77 (2012)
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| 88 |
Am wichtigsten die Sprache. Erkundungen zur Bedeutung von Sprache im Migrationsprozess
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In: 11/2002 ; HSFK-Report ; 36 (2012)
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| 89 |
Ankommen in Frankfurt: Orientierungskurse als kommunales Angebot für Neuzuwanderer
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In: 8/2004 ; HSFK-Report ; 36 (2012)
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| 90 |
Sprach- und Integrationskurse für MigrantInnen: Erkenntnisse über ihre Wirkungen aus den Niederlanden, Schweden und Deutschland
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In: 3 ; AKI-Forschungsbilanz ; IV,62 (2012)
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| 92 |
Living and working in ethnic enclaves: Language proficiency of immigrants in US metropolitan areas
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| 93 |
Statistical Learning of Syntax (Among Other Higher-Order Relational Structures)
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| 94 |
Statistical Learning of Syntax (Among Other Higher-Order Relational Structures)
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| 95 |
Rapport final sur le projet Construction des Connaissances Langagières, Diversité des Usages, Contextes Sociolinguistiques
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In: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00580019 ; 2011 (2011)
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| 96 |
Unsupervised learning of time-frequency patches as a noise-robust representation of speech
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: Elsevier, 2011
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| 97 |
Where are the cookies? Three-year-olds use number-marked verbs to anticipate upcoming nouns
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| 98 |
Autonomous learning of action-word semantics in a humanoid robot
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| 99 |
Coming to Language : Wittgenstein's Social 'Theory' of Language
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