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When OR is conjunctive in child Mandarin

  • Haiquan Huang , Rosalind Thornton and Stephen Crain
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Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research
This chapter is in the book Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research

Abstract

According to a recent proposal, children license a conjunctive inference for statements with disjunction even without a licensing expression that adults require, e.g., the deontic modal verb is allowed to (Singh, Wexler, Astle, Kamawar, & Fox, 2016; Tieu et al., 2017). However, the rates of children’s conjunctive inferences vary considerably across studies, which may be due to the different experimental tasks and materials. Using a Truth Value Judgment Task (Crain & Thornton, 1998), the present study systematically investigated children’s interpretation of disjunctive sentences with and without a deontic modal verb. It was found that children computed conjunctive inferences only in sentences with the deontic modal verb. We discuss the possible reasons for the varying findings of children’s interpretation of disjunction in previous studies.

Abstract

According to a recent proposal, children license a conjunctive inference for statements with disjunction even without a licensing expression that adults require, e.g., the deontic modal verb is allowed to (Singh, Wexler, Astle, Kamawar, & Fox, 2016; Tieu et al., 2017). However, the rates of children’s conjunctive inferences vary considerably across studies, which may be due to the different experimental tasks and materials. Using a Truth Value Judgment Task (Crain & Thornton, 1998), the present study systematically investigated children’s interpretation of disjunctive sentences with and without a deontic modal verb. It was found that children computed conjunctive inferences only in sentences with the deontic modal verb. We discuss the possible reasons for the varying findings of children’s interpretation of disjunction in previous studies.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Three streams of generative language acquisition research 1
  4. Part I. Variation in input
  5. The comprehension of 3rd person singular -s by NYC English-speaking preschoolers 7
  6. Children’s acquisition of sociolinguistic variation 35
  7. Variability within varieties of English 59
  8. Part II. First language acquisition
  9. Parsing, pragmatics, and representation 85
  10. The interpretation of disjunction in VP ellipsis in Mandarin Chinese 107
  11. When OR is conjunctive in child Mandarin 125
  12. The acquisition of V-V compounds in Japanese 143
  13. Differentiating universal quantification from completive aspect in child Cantonese 159
  14. On the learnability of implicit arguments 185
  15. Red train, big train, broken train 203
  16. Part III. Second language acquisition
  17. The acquisition of Mandarin reflexives by heritage speakers and second language learners 225
  18. Interpretation of count and mass NPs by L2-learners from generalized classifier L1s 253
  19. Acquisition of word order in L2 Spanish 271
  20. Argument omission in SignL2 acquisition by deaf learners 297
  21. The Bottleneck Hypothesis updated 319
  22. Author index 347
  23. Subject index 355
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.63.07hua

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Three streams of generative language acquisition research 1
  4. Part I. Variation in input
  5. The comprehension of 3rd person singular -s by NYC English-speaking preschoolers 7
  6. Children’s acquisition of sociolinguistic variation 35
  7. Variability within varieties of English 59
  8. Part II. First language acquisition
  9. Parsing, pragmatics, and representation 85
  10. The interpretation of disjunction in VP ellipsis in Mandarin Chinese 107
  11. When OR is conjunctive in child Mandarin 125
  12. The acquisition of V-V compounds in Japanese 143
  13. Differentiating universal quantification from completive aspect in child Cantonese 159
  14. On the learnability of implicit arguments 185
  15. Red train, big train, broken train 203
  16. Part III. Second language acquisition
  17. The acquisition of Mandarin reflexives by heritage speakers and second language learners 225
  18. Interpretation of count and mass NPs by L2-learners from generalized classifier L1s 253
  19. Acquisition of word order in L2 Spanish 271
  20. Argument omission in SignL2 acquisition by deaf learners 297
  21. The Bottleneck Hypothesis updated 319
  22. Author index 347
  23. Subject index 355
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