LINGUIST List 25.5149
Wed Dec 17 2014
Diss: Mandarin Chinese; Language Acquisition, Syntax: Hu: 'Intervention Effects and the Acquisition of Relativization and Topicalization in Chinese'
Editor for this issue: Danuta Allen <danutalinguistlist.org>
Date: 17-Dec-2014
From: Shenai Hu <huxinai
gmail.com>
Subject: Intervention Effects and the Acquisition of Relativization and Topicalization in Chinese
E-mail this message to a friend Institution: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
Program: Cognitive Science and Language; Department of Psychology
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2014
Author: Shenai Hu
Dissertation Title: Intervention Effects and the Acquisition of Relativization and Topicalization in Chinese
Dissertation URL:
https://boa.unimib.it/handle/10281/53875 Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
Syntax
Subject Language(s):
Chinese, Mandarin (cmn) Dissertation Director:
Anna Gavarró
Maria Teresa Guasti
Dissertation Abstract:
This thesis is about the acquisition of relativization and topicalization in Chinese.
Through a series of experimental studies, I obtain the following results. First, a disadvantage of object relatives holds in comprehension and in production for children from three to seven years of age. Second, subject relatives are also difficult to comprehend and elicit a variety of errors from children up to six years of age. Third, a large use of resumptive NPs is observed in production across age groups (including adults); for many adult native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, relative clauses with resumptive NPs are acceptable in spoken Chinese. Fourth, children from three to six years of age understand sentences featuring object topicalization as well as those featuring subject topicalization; on both structures children perform at ceiling at five years of age.
The noted difficulty of object relatives is captured by the Relativized Minimality approach. I propose that structural intervention of the subject within the chain connecting the relative head and its copy is the source of the difficulty. With respect to topicalization, the results are interpreted by assuming that topicalization in Chinese does not involve A’-movement, but an anaphoric relation between the empty category pro and the base-generated topic.
Page Updated: 17-Dec-2014