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