Chinese Children’s Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study

There is a debate as to whether topic structures in Chinese involve A’-movement or result from base-generation of the topic in the left periphery. If Chinese topicalization was derived by movement, under the assumptions of Friedmann et al.’s Relativized Minimality (Lingua 119:67–88, 2009), we would...

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Autores principales: Hu, Shenai, Guasti, Maria Teresa, Gavarró, Anna
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6244872/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29603115
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9575-6
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author Hu, Shenai
Guasti, Maria Teresa
Gavarró, Anna
author_facet Hu, Shenai
Guasti, Maria Teresa
Gavarró, Anna
author_sort Hu, Shenai
collection PubMed
description There is a debate as to whether topic structures in Chinese involve A’-movement or result from base-generation of the topic in the left periphery. If Chinese topicalization was derived by movement, under the assumptions of Friedmann et al.’s Relativized Minimality (Lingua 119:67–88, 2009), we would expect children’s comprehension of object topicalization (with OSV order) to be worse than their comprehension of subject topicalization (with SVO order). This study examined 146 Mandarin-speaking children from age three to age six by means of a picture-sentence matching task with an appropriate context. The results showed a subject/object asymmetry when the topic marker is overt, and no asymmetry when the topic marker is covert. This suggests that the presence or absence of topic markers play an important role in children’s comprehension of topicalization. We propose that both structures involve movement in the adult grammar, but not in the child grammar, at least initially. Sentences without overt topic markers are base-generated on a par with gapless sentences with a topic, and the base-generation analysis is abandoned as soon as children learn the syntax and semantics of topic markers, which function as attractors of topics.
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spelling pubmed-62448722018-12-04 Chinese Children’s Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study Hu, Shenai Guasti, Maria Teresa Gavarró, Anna J Psycholinguist Res Article There is a debate as to whether topic structures in Chinese involve A’-movement or result from base-generation of the topic in the left periphery. If Chinese topicalization was derived by movement, under the assumptions of Friedmann et al.’s Relativized Minimality (Lingua 119:67–88, 2009), we would expect children’s comprehension of object topicalization (with OSV order) to be worse than their comprehension of subject topicalization (with SVO order). This study examined 146 Mandarin-speaking children from age three to age six by means of a picture-sentence matching task with an appropriate context. The results showed a subject/object asymmetry when the topic marker is overt, and no asymmetry when the topic marker is covert. This suggests that the presence or absence of topic markers play an important role in children’s comprehension of topicalization. We propose that both structures involve movement in the adult grammar, but not in the child grammar, at least initially. Sentences without overt topic markers are base-generated on a par with gapless sentences with a topic, and the base-generation analysis is abandoned as soon as children learn the syntax and semantics of topic markers, which function as attractors of topics. Springer US 2018-03-30 2018 /pmc/articles/PMC6244872/ /pubmed/29603115 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9575-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Article
Hu, Shenai
Guasti, Maria Teresa
Gavarró, Anna
Chinese Children’s Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study
title Chinese Children’s Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study
title_full Chinese Children’s Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study
title_fullStr Chinese Children’s Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study
title_full_unstemmed Chinese Children’s Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study
title_short Chinese Children’s Knowledge of Topicalization: Experimental Evidence from a Comprehension Study
title_sort chinese children’s knowledge of topicalization: experimental evidence from a comprehension study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6244872/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29603115
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9575-6
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