It has long been noted that verb phrase (VP) ellipsis cancels the polarity sensitivity of the English Positive Polarity Items (PPIs). In recent work, it has been proposed that words for disjunction are governed by a parameter. On one value of the parameter, disjunction is a PPI for adult speakers of many languages including Mandarin Chinese. On…

It has been well-documented that although children around 4 years start to attribute false beliefs to others in classic false-belief tasks, they are still less able to evaluate the truth-value of propositional belief-reporting sentences, especially when belief conflicts with reality. This article investigates whether linguistic cues, verb…

Recent studies have accumulated to suggest that children, akin to adults, exhibit a processing advantage for formulaic language (e.g. "save energy") over novel language (e.g. "sell energy"), as well as sensitivity to phrase frequencies. The majority of these studies are based on formulaic sequences in their canonical form. In…

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…

Idiomatic expressions pose substantial learning difficulties for learners across languages and tend to be acquired later in the course of language development both in L1 and L2. A number of factors have been identified as contributing to this difficulty. However, cross-linguistic studies on figurative language acquisition are still rare. The…