A Study On The Acquisition Of The Exhaustivity Of Shi-clefts In Mandarin-speaking Children

Clefts have been a hot issue in theoretical and empirical studies.Previous studies have investigated Mandarin-speaking children's acquisition of the exhaustivity in shi…de clefts and exclusive particle zhi(you),but they draw different conclusions about children's interpretation of the exhaustivity in shi…de clefts.In addition,although previous studies have explored the source of exhaustivity of clefts in English,German and French,no agreement has been reached about the nature of the exhaustivity and the dispute lies in the assertion account,the presupposition account and the pragmatic claim.The exhaustivity of shi-clefts is usually compared with zhi sentences,pseudo-clefts and plain focus sentences.Focus particle zhi asserts the meaning of exhaustivity and plain focus sentences pragmatically implicates exhaustivity.In light of previous research,the present study aims to explore how Mandarin-speaking preschool children interpret the exhaustivity of shi-clefts and zhi sentences and find out the nature of the exhaustivity in clefts.This study consists of two experiments.Experiment 1 employed a Truth Value Judgement task(TVJ)in the Question Under Discussion(QUD)condition.90 participants were tested,half of whom were 45 children divided into 3 groups,namely shi-clefts group,zhi group and plain focus group,and the rest of whom were 45 adults as controls.Experiment 2 adopted a variant of Covered Box paradigm to explore how children comprehend shi-clefts,pseudo-clefts,zhi sentences and plain focus sentences.60 children divided into 4 groups(shi-clefts group,pseudo-clefts group,zhi group and plain focus group)participated the test and 60 adults as controls were invited.SPSS 19.0 was administrated to analyze the collected data.The results show that children have adult-like interpretation of the exhaustivity in shi-clefts and zhi sentences.But children have difficulty in interpreting shi-clefts in the QUD.Moreover,both adults and children have different readings of the exhaustivity in shi-clefts and zhi sentences,which indicates that the exhaustivity in shi-clefts is not asserted as zhi.The present study proposes that the exhaustivity of shi-clefts is a pragmatic implicature and can be strengthened when interacting with the QUD condition.Contrary to the findings of previous studies that children had difficulty in understanding the exhaustivity of shi-clefts,the present study reveals that 5-6-year-old children had adult-like interpretation for the exhaustivity of shi-clefts in Experiment 2.The difference between previous studies and the current research lies in different methodologies of studying shi-clefts.Experiment 1 employed the same method used in previous studies and Experiment 2 adopted a variant of Covered Box paradigm.With different methods,children's interpretation of the exhaustivity in shi-clefts was very poor in Experiment 1 but approximately approached to adults' performance in Experiment 2,which suggests that probably the TVJ task is not an ideal method for testing young children' interpretation of constructions with truth-value gaps like clefts.Therefore,this study provides a modified method for testing children's interpretation of other undefined structures.The present research also enriches studies on the exhaustivity of clefts across languages and shows that the exhaustivity of clefts in Mandarin is derived from the pragmatic implicature.Both children and adults take a different exhaustive reading in shi-clefts and zhi sentences.The result rejects the assertion account for the exhaustivity in shi-clefts.In addition,participants interpreted shi-clefts like plain focus sentences,which supports the pragmatic account for the exhaustivity in shi-clefts.It empirically proves that the exhaustivity in clefts and the exhaustive reading attached with exclusive particles are derived from different layers of meaning.