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Focus identification in child Mandarin*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2009

PENG ZHOU  and
STEPHEN CRAIN
PENG ZHOU*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
STEPHEN CRAIN
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
*
Address for correspondence: Peng Zhou, Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Level 4 Building C5C, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia. e-mail: pzhou@maccs.mq.edu.au
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Abstract

In this study, we investigated how Mandarin-speaking children and adults interpret focus structures like Zhiyou Yuehan chi-le pingguo ‘Only John ate an apple’ and Shi Yuehan chi-de pingguo ‘It is John who ate an apple’. We found that children tended to associate focus operators zhiyou ‘only’ and shi ‘be’ with the verb phrase (VP), whereas adults uniquely associated them with the subject noun phrase (NP). To account for this difference, we propose that children initially treat focus operators as adverbials, thus ending up associating them with the VP. In order to assess our proposal, we examined children's understanding of zhiyou-constructions with negation, like Zhiyou Yuehan meiyou chi pingguo ‘Only John didn't eat an apple’. It was found that children, like adults, consistently associated the focus operator with the subject NP in this construction. The findings have an important bearing on language learnability, since negation assists children in reaching the adult-like interpretation.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 37 , Issue 5 , November 2010 , pp. 965 - 1005
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP0879842 to Stephen Crain and Rosalind Thornton. We are grateful to Nobu Akagi, Anna Notley, Yi (Esther) Su, Francesco Ursini and especially Rosalind Thornton for advice and comments; we would also like to thank the Second Language Acquisition Research Group of Beijing Language and Culture University headed by Professor Liqun Gao for their assistance and support in running the experiments; and of course we thank the children and adults who took part in the experiments for their time and patience.

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