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ERIC Number: EJ1485862
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Mar
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: EISSN-1469-7602
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Mandarin-Learning 19-Month-Old Toddlers' Sensitivity to Word Order Cues That Differentiate Unaccusative and Unergative Verbs
Ziqi Wang1; Xiaolu Yang2; Rushen Shi2
Journal of Child Language, v51 n2 p249-270 2024
Languages employ different means to manifest the unaccusative-unergative distinction. In Mandarin Chinese, unaccusative verbs are allowed in the inversion construction "V-le NP", while unergative verbs are not. This grammaticality contrast brings a presence/absence contrast between the two verb classes in the inversion construction in the input. Using an eye fixation task, we investigated whether Mandarin-learning 19-month-olds were sensitive to this specific input frequency contrast. We found that infants distinguished the grammatical versus ungrammatical uses of the two verb classes in the inversion construction "V-le NP" (Experiment 1). When the verb classes were in the "NP V-le" order (Experiment 2) (i.e., the same level of grammaticality), infants showed no evidence of a looking difference. These responses indicate toddlers' sensitivity to the distribution of the two verb classes in the inversion construction. This distributional information is likely to be one of the potential cues that facilitate their acquisition of the unaccusative-unergative distinction.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Tsinghua University, China; 2Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada