NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Showing all 6 results Save | Export
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Ying, Yuanfan; Yang, Xiaolu; Shi, Rushen – First Language, 2022
Previous studies show that infants store functional morphemes for inferring syntactic categories of adjacent words, and they generally perform better with nouns than with verbs. In this study, we tested whether toddlers can exploit phrasal groupings for syntactic categorization in the face of noisy co-occurrence patterns. Using a visual fixation…
Descriptors: Morphemes, Toddlers, Language Acquisition, Inferences
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Hu, Shenai; Zhou, Peng; Foppolo, Francesca; Vender, Maria; Delfitto, Denis – First Language, 2019
This study investigates the derivation of scalar implicatures in Chinese children with reading difficulties (RD). Twenty-four children with RD (mean age 9 years and 8 months), 20 age-matched typical readers (mean age 9 years and 10 months), 20 six-year-old children and 20 five-year-old children were tested with the comprehension of sentences with…
Descriptors: Reading Difficulties, Reading Comprehension, Sentences, Pragmatics
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Hao, Ying; Bedore, Lisa; Sheng, Li; Zhou, Peng; Zheng, Li – First Language, 2021
Mandarin classifiers are a complex system, but little is known about how Mandarin-speaking children manage to learn the system. Based on the extant literature, we explored potential factors influencing the comprehension and production of Mandarin shape classifiers, including classifier-based semantic categorization and errors pertaining to the…
Descriptors: Mandarin Chinese, Form Classes (Languages), Language Processing, Child Language
Ma, Weiyi; Zhou, Peng; Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick; Lee, Joanne; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy – First Language, 2019
The syntactic structure of sentences in which a new word appears may provide listeners with cues to that new word's form class. In English, for example, a noun tends to follow a determiner ("a"/"an"/"the"), while a verb precedes the morphological inflection [ing]. The presence of these markers may assist children in…
Descriptors: Syntax, Cues, Mandarin Chinese, Verbs
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Yang, Anqi; Chen, Aoju – First Language, 2018
This study investigates how children acquire prosodic focus-marking in Mandarin Chinese. Using a picture-matching game, we elicited spontaneous production of sentences in various focus conditions from children aged four to eleven. We found that Mandarin Chinese-speaking children use some pitch-related cues in some tones and duration in all tones…
Descriptors: Native Language, Mandarin Chinese, Intonation, Suprasegmentals
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
Eika, Evelyn; Hsieh, Yining – First Language, 2017
Students in South East Asia often struggle with English /l/ and /r/. This study therefore set out to examine how Taiwanese pupils' perception of these sounds is influenced by cross-language effects. Most Taiwanese students have Mandarin as L1 and Taiwanese as L2 or vice versa, and English as L3. A same-different discrimination experiment was…
Descriptors: English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Foreign Countries