L1 Acquisition of Chinese Quantifiers
The main purpose of the present study is to investigate Chinese childrens interpretations of Chinese quantificational noun phrases (QNPs) in four constructions (i.e., simple active, simple passive, dative, and retained object constructions). Eighty subjects were asked to interpret sentences with two sequences of QNPs (a universal QNP preceding an existential QNP and an existential QNP preceding a universal QNP) (cf. Aoun and Li, 1993; Huang, 1995) in the four constructions. A picture-identification task and an act-out task were employed to collect the data. Every response was entered into the SPSS statistics package. The Chi-square test and posterior comparisons were applied for data analysis. The results showed that the existential quantifier suoyou all was slightly easier than the universal quantifier mei every. In addition, our subjects preferred collective readings to distributive readings regardless of whether a universal quantifier preceded or followed an existential quantifier. Finally, the passive, dative and retained object constructions were found more challenging than the simple active construction, showing that a construction effect was obvious on the Chinese childrens acquisition of quantifiers.
universal quantifiers existential quantifiers L1 acquisition
Chun-yin Doris Chen
National Taiwan Normal University
国际会议
2009 International Conference on Applied Linguistics & Language Teaching(2009应用语言学暨语言教学国际研讨会)
台湾
英文
567-576
2009-04-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）