The role of discourse in Mandarin-speaking children's comprehension of ambiguous wh-adjuncts
Wang, Xuan
Wang, Xuan
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Abstract
Children have been argued to acquire why-adjuncts later than how-adjuncts across languages (de Villiers, 1991; Spinner & Grinstead, 2006). Li & Zhou (2020) examined Mandarin-acquiring children’s interpretation of zenme, a wh-operator which is ambiguous between why(cause)- and how(manner)-interpretations (1a). The ambiguity of zenme can be syntactically resolved; a modal verb hui (‘will/would’) appears structurally lower than the why¬-zenme in Spec-CP (1b), but higher than the how-zenme within vP (1c) (Tsai, 2008; Rizzi, 1997). In Question-after-Story experiments with Mandarin-speaking children aged 3-5 and adults, Li & Zhou examined their comprehension of zenme-questions about picture-stories comprising manner and cause of an event. When zenme-questions are ambiguous like (1a), children and adults preferred the how-interpretation. When zenme was syntactically disambiguated as (1b-c), only 5-year-olds and adults accessed both interpretations as syntactically cued by hui; 3- and 4-year-olds preferred the how-interpretation regardless of the position of hui, confirming children’s initial challenges with Mandarin why-adjuncts.
The current study focuses on the role of discourse in zenme disambiguation. The why-interpretation of zenme is discourse-driven, conveying a “why-on-earth” interpretation when the discourse marks the unexpectedness of the cause. Li & Zhou presented the unexpectedness of the cause, and they also counterbalanced the order of mention for presenting manner and cause across stories. However, they did not directly examine whether the discourse salience of manner and cause, as modulated by order-of-mention, may influence children’s interpretation, constituting a question calling for investigation given the discourse-driven nature of zenme disambiguation. Our study, thus, manipulated the ‘Order-of-mention’ as a between-subject independent variable, adopting their Question-after-Story paradigm.
Experiment 1 investigated the Order-of-mention effects with 27 Mandarin-speaking children (age mean=4;2, range=3;4-5;2) and 22 adults. They viewed stories where manner and cause were presented in either ‘Cause-and-then-Manner’ (CM) order (2a), or ‘Manner-and-then-Cause’ (MC) order (2b) where the unexpectedness is marked by the cause following the manner, and then answered ambiguous zenme questions like (1a). Overall, children and adults preferred the how-interpretation (Figure 1), while adults accessed why-interpretation more robustly than children (p=.032). Importantly, whereas the main effect of the Order-of-mention was not significant, a significant Order-of-mention × Age interaction (p=.03) was yielded for children (not for adults, p = .68), revealing 4-year-olds’ more effective use of the MC order as a cue for accessing why-interpretation than 3-year-olds.
Experiment 2 examined both discourse (Order-of-mention) and syntactic (hui) cues, involving 51 children (age mean=4;3, range=3;4-5;3) and 33 adults. After viewing stories in either CM-order (2a) or MC-order (2b), they answered unambiguous zenme-questions (1b) or (1c). As Figure 2 shows, adults interpreted unambiguous zenme-questions (1b-c) as cued by the position of hui, but children correctly interpreted unambiguous why-zenme (1b) only 41% of the time, while showing ceiling for unambiguous how-zenme (1c) interpretation. Crucially, an Order-of-mention × Syntax interaction (p=.07) was revealed for children’s why-interpretation, indicating that, when the syntax cues why-interpretation, children showed significantly more why-interpretations in MC stories than in CM stories.
Taken together, our findings suggest that discourse cues, interacting with syntactic cues, affect children’s why-interpretations of zenme, helping younger children access why-adjuncts more successfully.
Description
This poster was presented at THE 49th ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT on 11/09/2024.
Date
2024-11-09
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University of Kansas
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Keywords
Discourse, Child mandarin, Language comprehension