Dataset Information

Children's syntactic representation of the transitive constructions in Mandarin Chinese.

ABSTRACT: Two studies are presented that investigate the effect of linguistic cues on Mandarin speakers' comprehension of transitive constructions. Study 1 investigated Mandarin-speaking 2- to 4-year-olds' and adults' comprehension of the SVO (Subject-verb-object) construction, ba-construction (SbaOV), and subjectless ba-construction ((S)baOV) with novel verbs using the forced choice pointing paradigm (FCPP). Study 2 investigated another group of participants with similar ages' comprehension of the SVO construction, the ba-construction, the long and short passive constructions with novel verbs and FCPP. Although these constructions have differing cue strengths, participants in the same age groups comprehended these construction types equally well. The results suggest that children as young as two attended to the case markers of ba and bei, allowing them to employ abstract syntactic representations in comprehending Mandarin transitive constructions. The findings demonstrate that children are sensitive early on to the structural information encoded in the constructions.

SUBMITTER: Hsu DB

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6221331 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Children's syntactic representation of the transitive constructions in Mandarin Chinese.

Hsu Dong-Bo DB

PloS one 20181107 11

Two studies are presented that investigate the effect of linguistic cues on Mandarin speakers' comprehension of transitive constructions. Study 1 investigated Mandarin-speaking 2- to 4-year-olds' and adults' comprehension of the SVO (Subject-verb-object) construction, ba-construction (SbaOV), and subjectless ba-construction ((S)baOV) with novel verbs using the forced choice pointing paradigm (FCPP). Study 2 investigated another group of participants with similar ages' comprehension of the SVO co ...[more]

PMID: 30403715

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Project description:Psycholinguistic research has long established that focus-marked words have a processing advantage over other words in an utterance, e.g., they are recognized more quickly and remembered better. More recently, studies have shown that listeners infer contextual alternatives to a focused word in a spoken utterance, when marked with a contrastive accent, even when the alternatives are not explicitly mentioned in the discourse. This has been shown by strengthened priming of contextual alternatives to the word, but not other non-contrastive semantic associates, when it is contrastively accented, e.g., after hearing "The customer opened the window," salesman is strongly primed, but not product. This is consistent with Rooth's (1992) theory that focus-marking signals the presence of alternatives to the focus. However, almost all of the research carried out in this area has been on Germanic languages. Further, most of this work has looked only at one kind of focus-marking, by contrastive accenting (prosody). This paper reports on a cross-modal lexical priming study in Mandarin Chinese, looking at whether focus-marking heightens activation, i.e., priming, of words and their alternatives. Two kinds of focus-marking were investigated: prosodic and syntactic. Prosodic prominence is an important means of focus-marking in Chinese, however, it is realized through pitch range expansion, rather than accenting. The results showed that focused words, as well as their alternatives, were primed when the subject prime word carried contrastive prosodic prominence. Syntactic focus-marking, however, did not enhance priming of focused words or their alternatives. Non-contrastive semantic associates were not primed with either kind of focus-marking. These results extend previous findings on focus and alternative priming for the first time to Chinese. They also suggest that the processing advantages of focus, including priming alternatives, are particularly related to prosodic prominence, at least in Chinese and Germanic languages. This research sheds light on what linguistic mechanisms listeners use to identify important information, generate alternatives, and understand implicature necessary for successful communication.

Dataset Information

Children's syntactic representation of the transitive constructions in Mandarin Chinese.

Publications

Children's syntactic representation of the transitive constructions in Mandarin Chinese.

Similar Datasets

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