Acquisition of the Polarity Sensitive Item "Renhe" "Any" in Mandarin Chinese

Autor/inn/en	Huang, Aijun; Crain, Stephen
Titel	Acquisition of the Polarity Sensitive Item "Renhe" "Any" in Mandarin Chinese
Quelle	In: Journal of Child Language, 41 (2014) 4, S.861-889 (29 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0305-0009
DOI	10.1017/S0305000913000275
Schlagwörter	Mandarin Chinese; Language Acquisition; Young Children; Comprehension; Child Language + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Frühe Kindheit; Verstehen; Verständnis; 'Children''s language'; Kindersprache
Abstract	The present study investigated Mandarin-speaking children's acquisition of the polarity sensitive item "renhe'"'any" in Mandarin Chinese. Like its English counterpart "any," "renhe" can be used as a negative polarity item (NPI), or as a free choice (FC) item, and both the distribution and interpretation of renhe are governed by the same syntactic and semantic constraints as English any. Using a Truth Value Judgment Task, the present study tested five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's comprehension of FC "renhe" in sentences containing the modal word "neng" "can," and tested children's comprehension of NPI "renhe" in sentences containing the temporal conjunction "zai"…"zhiqian" "before". Most children demonstrated knowledge of the interpretation of both FC "renhe" and NPI "renhe" despite a paucity of relevant adult input. Like adults, however, Mandarin-speaking children do not use "renhe" frequently in ordinary conversation, due to the availability of alternative colloquial expressions ("wh"-pronouns) that also convey children's intended meanings. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10