In:Studies in Chinese and Japanese Language Acquisition: In honor of Stephen Crain
Edited by Mineharu Nakayama, Yi-ching Su and Aijun Huang
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 60] 2017
► pp. 223–235
Chapter 10Free choice and wh-indefinites in child Mandarin
Published online: 24 August 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.60.11zho
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.60.11zho
Abstract
The present study reports findings from experimental studies investigating Mandarin-speaking children’s knowledge of the free choice reading of existential expressions like wh-indefinites. Twenty-eight monolingual Mandarin-speaking children and twenty-two Mandarin-speaking adults participated in the study. Using a Question-Statement task (Zhou & Crain 2011), the present study found that four-year-old Mandarin-speaking children exhibited adult-like knowledge of the free choice reading of existential expressions. The current findings, in conjunction with the findings of previous research, provide evidence for a unified account of the semantic interpretations of existential expressions.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The present study
- 2.1Participants
- 2.2Procedures
- 2.3Materials
- 3.Results and discussion
Acknowledgements Note References
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