The Acquisition of Exhaustive Pairing in Multiple Wh-Questions in Mandarin |
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| Authors: | Jill de Villiers Chunyan Ning Xueman Lucy Liu Yi Wen Zhang Fan Jiang |
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| Affiliation: | 1.Psychology and Philosophy,Smith College,Northampton,USA;2.Institute of Linguistics,Tianjin Normal University,Tianjin,China;3.Research, Bethel Hearing and Speaking Training Center, Communication Sciences and Disorders,University of Texas at Dallas,Dallas,USA;4.Department of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics,Shanghai Children’s Medical Center Affiliated to Medical School of Shanghai Jiao Tong University,Shanghai,China |
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| Abstract: | The comprehension of paired wh-questions is examined in child Mandarin, to compare the age of acquisition with that of children speaking European languages like English and German. In Study 1, participants were 734 Mandarin speakers aged 2;6–7;11, drawn from four regions of China. Results reveal a striking parallel between the acquisition of exhaustive answers in Mandarin and that in languages with wh-movement. The significant correlation with children’s exhaustive interpretations of the universal quantifier every (dou) also parallels findings in English. In Study 2, the performance of children (N?=?100) identified as having language impairment is compared to that of non-impaired children (N?=?130), and the results support the idea that answering these paired wh-questions is a potential semantic deficit in language-delayed children. |
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