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...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer US
2018
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6244872 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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