Negation And Its Scope In Mandarin Chinese

The aim of this thesis is to present a unified account of the system of principles Chinese children and adults apply in interpreting scope relations between negation and quantifiers, and between negation and modal verbs on the other. Its findings support the following hypotheses:a. Children's and adults' hypotheses about language are constrained by Universal Grammar;b. Children acquire a language by setting parameters under the guidance of Universal Erinciples. After the language-particular parameters are set, the effect of Universal Principles doesn't completely vanish, although it is not as strong as before.c. There is continuity between the initial and steady states of language. This thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter One gives a brief introduction of the theoretical framework, and the sources of data upon which the study is based.Chapter Two discusses the definitions of "negation", "negative word" and "negative sentence". Based on the findings of first language acquisition, the thesis treats "non-existence" as the prototype meaning of the concept of "negation". The thesis reports the order in which some key negative words, negative concepts and negative constructions are acquired by SJQ ( 01;02;06-01;11;29 ) and ZTX (00;11;18-02;09;27), two children born and brought up in Beijing. The postverbal negation involves the operation of wrapping, so it is acquired later than the preverbal negation. Their first use of postverbal negation was found at around 01;09;00. The findings prove that at this age children's ability to form negative constructions greatly improves. Furthermore, they are getting more sensitive to the word order, the scope and the focus in negative constructions. Compared to propositional negation, metalinguistic negation is acquired later. The children at the age of 06;00;00 -07;00;00 are aware of the difference between the two kinds of negation. However, the children aged from 07;00;00 to 08;00;00 don't have a very good command of metalinguistic negation.Chapter Three begins with a brief study of the lexical properties of Chinese quantifiers and then makes a close study of their scope interaction with negation. In interpreting scope relations between negation and quantifiers, young children and adults apply the same set of principles. The principles involved are the same but their rankings in weight are different:Ranking of principles in young child grammar:Semantic Entailment Principle/Number Reading Principle>Linear Precedence Principle Ranking of principles in adult grammar:Linear Precedence Principle >Semantic Entailment Principle/Number Reading PrincipleThere exists a close bond between the Linear Precedence Principle and the Semantic Entailment Principle. The latter is an axiom. The former can be derived from the latter and is, thus, a theorem. When interpreting a sentence with negation and a quantifier, children first assume that the linear reading and the inverse reading both are valid, and then judge which one to be optimal. Stimulated by language input, the children agedaround 06;00;00-07;00;00 re-rank the principles and finally set up the adult system with the Linear Precedence Principle playing the dominant role in interpreting scope relations. The data in this study does not support the Semantic Subset Principle proposed by Crain (1992,1993) and Crain, Ni & Conway (1994). Moreover, the study shows that young Chinese children do accept the inverse reading, which is rejected by Musolino, Crain & Thornton (2000) and Lidz & Musolino(2002).Chapter Four gives a list of modal words ZTX used before 02;09;27. ZTX first used dynamic modal words (neng 01;07;00) , then deontic words (keyi 01 ;08;l 1) and finally epistemic words (neng 01;09;22). In his data, the dynamic use of a modal word occurs before its epistemic use, and the deontic use before its epistemic use. Some cross-linguistic studies also report the same acquisition order, which the thesis accounts for in terms of the diverse complexity in "mapping among different worlds". The thesis explores the scale of modality in Chinese and it...