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The linguistic encoding of space in child Mandarin: A corpus-based study

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Published/Copyright: August 13, 2015

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition of Mandarin spatial phrases from the perspective of language universality and specificity. The potential language universals discussed in this study include aspect shift (Fong 1997; Smith 1997; Rothstein 2004), and subevent modification (Dowty 1979; Parsons 1990). We propose an event-semantics account for the distribution and interpretation of Mandarin spatial PPs headed by zai ‘(be) at’. However, in Mandarin, the formation of localizer phrases and the division of labor between zai and dao ‘reach, to’ in the postverbal position also demonstrate language-specific complexities. We conducted a corpus study of Mandarin-speaking children aged between 1;9 and 6;0, adopting an integrative approach that takes into account multiple factors, including linguistic input, children’s knowledge of event semantics, formal complexity, and cognitive development. Inconsistent cues from the input slow down acquisition: children up to 6;0 omitted localizers that are obligatory; 4-year-olds have not acquired the division of labor between zai and dao. Children’s early sensitivity to the placement and interpretation of zai-PPs suggests guidance by universal principles. Formal complexity explains why prepositional zai, being more complex than verbal zai, is acquired later. Further, children’s cognitive development explains their reliance on deictic pronouns, and their preference to express Goal.

Acknowledgments

We thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We have benefited from the suggestions of a number of colleagues: Stephen Matthews, Audrey Li, Ziyin Mai, Jiahui Yang, Haoze Li, Zhuang Wu, Hinny Wong, Haoyan Ge, Donald White, Jing Yang; and in particular, Boping Yuan, Thomas Lee and Candice Cheung who served on the PhD thesis committee of the first author. Thanks are also due to the participants at the International Conference on Bilingualism and Comparative Linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and the 24th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-24) at the University of San Francisco. The research was supported by a start-up grant to set up the Bilingualism and Language Disorders Laboratory at the CUHK Shenzhen Research Institute, a General Research Fund from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (Project no. 14413514) and the Stella and Leanne Lu Fund.

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Published Online: 2015-8-13
Published in Print: 2015-9-1

©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton

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