The Acquisition of Anaphora in Child Mandarin

The Acquisition of Anaphora in Child Mandarin explores how Mandarin-speaking children's interpretation of the reflexive ziji and their use of null arguments can be understood under the notions of locality and prominence. This book investigates the interpretation of ziji and the use of null subjects and null objects by experimenting on Mandarin-speaking children and adults using a range of experimental techniques such as the truth value judgment task, the picture identification task, and the story-telling task. The book provides evidence to show that reflexive binding and argument dropping are determined by the interplay between universal principles and language-specific properties. It shows that children at the age of 4 make an adult-like distinction between the anaphoric and logophoric interpretations of ziji. The former is subject to the locality condition manifested by the blocking effect on the long-distance binding of ziji, whereas the latter is free from the locality condition and closely related to the understanding of the false beliefs of others. This book is an important contribution to language acquisition research and can serve as a valuable reference for graduate students and researchers in the field of language acquisition, Chinese linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science.

Ruya Li is Professor of Linguistics at the Institute of Linguistics, Tianjin Normal University.

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements About the Book List of Abbreviations Introduction The Reflexive Binding The Null Arguments The Acquisition of Locality and Prominence The Organization of the Book 1 Theories of Reflexive Binding and Pro-Drop 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Reflexive Binding 1.2.1 The Properties of Ziji 1.2.2 The Syntactic Analyses of Blocking Effect and Subject-Orientation Effect 1.2.3 The Self-Ascription Theory 1.2.4 The Logophoric Analysis 1.2.5 The Prominence and Locality Theory 1.2.6 The Intermediate Summary 1.3 Null Arguments 1.3.1 The Topic Continuity Condition 1.3.2 The Status of Null Objects 1.4 Theoretical Implications to Language Acquisition 1.4.1 Implications to the Acquisition of Reflexive Binding 1.4.2 Implications to the Acquisition of Argument Dropping 1.5 Summary Acquisition Studies of Reflexives and Null Arguments 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The Acquisition of Reflexive Binding 2.2.1 The Acquisition of Principle A 2.2.2 LD Binding in Child Chinese 2.2.3 Children's Sensitivity to the Subject-Orientation Effect 2.2.4 The Acquisition of Logophoric Reflexives 2.2.5 Intermediate Summary 2.3 The Acquisition of Null Arguments 2.3.1 The Parametric Analysis 2.3.2 The Root Truncation Hypothesis 2.3.3 The Defective INFL Hypothesis 2.3.4 The Unique Checking Hypothesis 2.3.5 The Bidirectional Growth Hypothesis 2.3.6 The Processing Limitation Hypothesis 2.3.7 The Metrical Template Hypothesis 2.3.8 Intermediate Summary 2.4 Summary 3 Experimental Studies of Reflexive Interpretation 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Study 1: Children's Sensitivity to Blocking Effect 3.2.1 Linguistic Assumptions 3.2.2 Experimental Design and Predictions 3.2.3 Participants 3.2.4 Elicitation Task 3.2.5 Stimuli 3.2.6 Procedure 3.2.7 Coding and Data Analysis 3.2.8 Results 3.2.9 Intermediate Discussion I 3.2.10 Summary of Study 1 3.3 Study 2: Children's Logophoric Interpretation of Ziji 3.3.1 Linguistic Assumptions 3.3.2 Experimental Design and Predictions 3.3.3 Participants 3.3.4 Elicitation Task and Stimuli 3.3.5 Procedure 3.3.6 Coding and Data Analysis 3.3.7 Results 3.3.8 Intermediate Discussion 3.3.9 Summary of Study 2 3.4 Study 3: Children's Choice of Antecedents 3.4.1 Linguistic Assumptions 3.4.2 Experimental Design and Predictions 3.4.3 Participants 3.4.4 Elicitation Tasks and Stimuli 3.4.5 Procedure 3.4.6 Coding and Data Analysis 3.4.7 Results 3.4.8 Intermediate Discussion 3.4.9 Summary of Study 3 3.5 Summary of the Three Studies 4 An Experimental Study of Null Arguments 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Linguistic Assumptions 4.3 Experimental Design and Predictions 4.4 Participants 4.5 Elicitation Task 4.6 Procedure 4.7 Coding and Data Analysis 4.8 Results 4.8.1 Topic Continuity 4.8.2 Animacy Effect 4.8.3 Null Subject-Object Asymmetry 4.9 Discussion 4.10 Summary 5 Feature Valuation and Maturation of Grammar 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The AGR/TNS Omission Hypothesis 5.3 Feature Valuation and Local Domain Defining 5.4 Prominence in Maturation 5.5 Summary Conclusion Bibliography Appendix 1: Test Sentences for Study 1 Appendix 2: Test Sentences for Study 2 Appendix 3: Test Sentences for Study 3 Author Index Language Index Subject Index