Academic Paper |
|
|
|
|
| Title: | Acquisition of generic noun phrases in Chinese: learning about lions without an ‘-s’ |
| Author: | Twila Tardif |
| Institution: | University of Michigan |
| Author: | Susan A Gelman |
| Institution: | University of Michigan |
| Author: | Xiaolan Fu |
| Institution: | Chinese Academy of Science |
| Author: | Liqi Zhu |
| Institution: | Chinese Academy of Science |
| Linguistic Field: | Language Acquisition; Psycholinguistics |
| Subject Language: |
Chinese, Mandarin
English |
| Abstract: | English-speaking children understand and produce generic expressions in the preschool years, but there are cross-linguistic differences in how generics are expressed. Three studies examined interpretation of generic noun phrases in three- to seven-year-old child (N=192) and adult speakers (N=163) of Mandarin Chinese. Contrary to suggestions by Bloom (1981), Chinese-speaking adults honor a clear distinction between generics (expressed as bare NPs) and other quantified expressions (‘all’/suo3you3 and ‘some’/you3de). Furthermore, Mandarin-speaking children begin to distinguish generics from ‘all’ or ‘some’ as early as five years, as shown in both confirmation (Study 2) and property-generation (Study 3) tasks. Nonetheless, the developmental trajectory for Chinese appears prolonged relative to English and this seems to reflect difficulty with ‘all’ and ‘some’ rather than difficulty with generics. Altogether these results suggest that generics are primary, and that the consistency of markings affects the rate at which non-generic NPs are distinguished from generics. |
|
|
|
|
This article appears in Journal of Child Language Vol. 39, Issue 1, which you can read on Cambridge's site . |
|
|
|
|
Back
Add a new paper Return to Academic Papers main page Return to Directory of Linguists main page |
|
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
