Intervention effects and the acquisition of relativization and topicalization in Chinese

Abstract

This thesis is about the acquisition of relativization and topicalization in Chinese. Through a series of experimental studies, I obtain the following results. First, a disadvantage of object relatives holds in comprehension and in production for children from three to seven years of age. Second, subject relatives are also difficult to comprehend and elicit a variety of errors from children up to six years of age. Third, a large use of resumptive NPs is observed in production across age groups (including adults); for many adult native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, relative clauses with resumptive NPs are acceptable in spoken Chinese. Fourth, children from three to six years of age understand sentences featuring object topicalization as well as those featuring subject topicalization; on both structures children perform at ceiling at five years of age. The noted difficulty of object relatives is captured by the Relativized Minimality approach. I propose that structural intervention of the subject within the chain connecting the relative head and its copy is the source of the difficulty. With respect to topicalization, the results are interpreted by assuming that topicalization in Chinese does not involve A'-movement, but an anaphoric relation between the empty category pro and the base-generated topic.

Date of Award	5 Sept 2014
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)
Supervisor	Maria Teresa Guasti (Director) & Anna Gavarró Algueró (Director)