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. 2018 Nov 7;13(11):e0206788.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0206788. eCollection 2018.

Children's syntactic representation of the transitive constructions in Mandarin Chinese

Dong-Bo Hsu  1
Affiliations

Children's syntactic representation of the transitive constructions in Mandarin Chinese

Dong-Bo Hsu. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Two studies are presented that investigate the effect of linguistic cues on Mandarin speakers' comprehension of transitive constructions. Study 1 investigated Mandarin-speaking 2- to 4-year-olds' and adults' comprehension of the SVO (Subject-verb-object) construction, ba-construction (SbaOV), and subjectless ba-construction ((S)baOV) with novel verbs using the forced choice pointing paradigm (FCPP). Study 2 investigated another group of participants with similar ages' comprehension of the SVO construction, the ba-construction, the long and short passive constructions with novel verbs and FCPP. Although these constructions have differing cue strengths, participants in the same age groups comprehended these construction types equally well. The results suggest that children as young as two attended to the case markers of ba and bei, allowing them to employ abstract syntactic representations in comprehending Mandarin transitive constructions. The findings demonstrate that children are sensitive early on to the structural information encoded in the constructions.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Mean proportion identifying the correct agent as a function of age and construction type.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Mean proportions of identifying the correct agent as a function of age and construction type.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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