TY - JOUR
T1 - Acquisition of the polarity sensitive item renhe 'any' in Mandarin Chinese
AU - Huang, Aijun
AU - Crain, Stephen
N1 - Copyright 2014 Cambridge University Press. Article originally published in Journal of child language, vol 41, iss 4, pp. 861-889. The original article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000913000275.
PY - 2014/7
Y1 - 2014/7
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84902507202&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0305000913000275
DO - 10.1017/S0305000913000275
M3 - Article
C2 - 23883442
AN - SCOPUS:84902507202
SN - 0305-0009
VL - 41
SP - 861
EP - 889
JO - Journal of Child Language
JF - Journal of Child Language
IS - 4
ER -