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Information to Users INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type ofcomputer printer. The quality ofthis reproduction is dependent upon the quality ofthe copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back ofthe book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521~600 PRAGMATIC COMPREHENSION: A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF MANDARIN-SPEAKING CHllDREN'S STRATEGIES FOR INTERPRETATION OF GIVEN AND NEW INFORMATION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DMSION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAn IN PARTIAL FULFllLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS MAY 19% By Shu-hui Eileen Chen Dissertation Committee: Ann M. Peters, Chairperson Patricia A. Lee Patricia J. Donegan Kenneth L. Rehg Martha E. Crosby OMI Number: 9629815 Copyright 1996 by Chen, Shu-hui Eileen All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9629815 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 © Copyright 1996 by Shu-hui Eileen Chen All Rights Reserved iii To my parents, and my husband for their constant love and support iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are so many people whose help I have benefited from for the success ofthe completion ofthis dissertation. First ofall, I gratefully acknowledge the unflagging guidance and invaluable help from Dr. Ann M. Peters, my dissertation advisor, whose dedication to research and penetrating insights into the issues ofchild language acquisition have inspired me profoundly. She spent a lot oftime carefully reading the draft versions of this thesis, and provided me with many insightful comments. My gratitude also goes to the other members ofmy committee: Dr. Patricia A. Lee, who gave me invaluable advice on pragmatics issues, Dr. Patricia J. Donegan, who provided me with helpful suggestions, Dr. Kenneth L. Rehg, who offered invaluable comments, and Dr. Martha E. Crosby, who helped me with statistics program for doing quantitative analysis on my data. My thanks also go to Yuichi Watanabe who helped me with computer technics to run statistics program. I would also like to express my thanks to my fellow students at University of Hawaii at Manoa, Natthapom Panpothong, Li-Hong Tseng, Shan-Shan Wang, 1-Yu Wu, Rueih-Lirng Fahn, Chin-Chin Tseng, Rong-Rong Kao, Mika Kirimura, Sarah Nourse, Enid Mok, Nobuko Koyama-Murakami, I-Ru Su, Ela Thurgood, Hideyaki Sugai, Feng­ Sheng Hung, Yu-Ling Chang, Tbeeranuch Chantrachit, just to name a few, for their friendship and help during these years at Hawaii. I thank all the lovely children and students who participated so enthusiastically in my experiments and their supervisors who helped me to arrange the meetings during the process ofthe experiments. I am grateful to my parents Hsueh-Chih Chen and Su-Yiin Liao for their moral and financial support, who gave me the best possible education they could. My special thanks go to my husband, Jhy­ Gang Hsieh, for his understanding, while I was pursuing my studies away from home. Finally, I am alone responsible for all the imperfections that inevitably still remain in this dissertation. v ABSTRACT As their language develops, children acquire strategies to utilize surface forms (syntactic, prosodic, semantic, and morphological) to interpret the meaning and functions ofsentences, including the ability to interpret information as Given or New. In Mandarin Chinese, the postverbal position in active, the position after bei in passive, the position after shi in cleft and pseudocleft, and stress tend to encode New information. This study investigates how Chinese-speaking children, aged 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and adults utilize word order and structure in the above four sentence types, and different levels ofstress to interpret Given and New information in isolated (hereafter IC) and contextualized (hereafter CC) conditions. In IC, the determination ofGiven and New was made within isolated sentences, while in CC, the identification ofGiven and New was made across sentences. In both conditions, three stress conditions were provided for each sentence type: normal stress on New, emphatic stress on New, and emphatic stress on Given. Subjects' choice and description ofpictures in IC, and choice of the context sentence in CC were considered to be measures oftheir comprehension of the Given and New distinctions implied in a particular stimulus. It was hypothesized that: (1) in IC, subjects would assume Given information to be true, and focus their attention on New information; (2) in CC, subjects would choose the context sentence that contained th~ Given information ofthe stimulus. The results revealed that: (1) children were unable to use word order effectively in IC; a U-shaped development of using word order was found between five- and nine-year-olds in CC; (2) children could generally utilize marked syntactic structures; a U-shaped development in use ofpassive structure was found between seven- and eleven-year-olds in CC; (3) when stress converged or competed with word order or syntactic structures, children responded nonuniformly; interaction effects are discussed in the light of the Competition model; (4) the development ofprocessing vi strategies for Given and New interpretation varied as a function ofcontext; (5) processing strategies varIed across individuals, suggesting that there was heterogeneity ofreliance on one type ofinfurmation over another. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments v Abstract. vi List ofTables xii List ofFigures xiii List of Symbols and Abbreviations xvii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Functionalism 2 1.2 The role oflanguage processing in language development 5 1.3 Aim ofthe present study 7 1.4 Organization ofthe dissertation 8 Chapter 2 Linguistic encoding ofGiven and New 10 2.1 Grice's Cooperative Principle l0 2.2 Classification and identification ofinformation status l0 2.2.1 Dichotomous information structure 11 2.2.2 Formulation of multilevel information structure 14 2.3 Ela~tion of information structure lti 2.3.1 Information structure and semantic concept 1ti 2.3.2 Cognitive underpinning and information marking 18 2.3.3 Language-specific differences: A typological perspective 20 2.4 Surface structure devices for Given and New 22 2.4.1 Syntactic devices 23 2.4.1.1 Noun phrase and word order 23 2.4.1.2 Marked syntactic structure 2ti 2.4.1.3 Adverbials 28 2.4.2 The phonological device ofstress 31 Chapter 3 The Competition model. , 34 3.1 J)efinition 34 3.2 Basic tenets ofthe model. 34 3.2.1 Coalitions ofform-function mappings 34 3.2.2 Cue strength and processing limitations 38 3.3 Empirical evidence from crosslinguistic studies .40 3.3.1 Sentence interpretation by adults ofgrammatical subject and object. 41 3.3.2 Sentence interpretation by children ofgrammatical subject and object ,..47 3.4 Competition, overgeneralization, individual differences in learning process 50 3.5 Inadequacy ofthe model 54 Chapter 4 Literature review ofpragmatic uses ofGiven and New 59 4.1 Given and New effect on adults' processing .59 viii 4.1.1 Sentence comprehension .59 4.1.1.1 Stress 61 4.1.1.2 Word order 64 4.1.1.3 Marked grammatical sentence forms 66 4.1.2 Sentence production 73 4.1.2.1 Stress 74 4.1.2.2 Wordorder 75 4.1.2.3 Marked grammatical sentence forms 76 4.1.3 Crosslinguistic differences 77 4.2 Acquisition ofdevices for Given and New in child language 81 4.2.1 Referential expressions 81 4.2.2 Stress 84 4.2.3 Word order 88 4.2.4 Marked grammatical sentence forms 91 4.2.5 Crosslinguistic studies 92 Chapter 5 The present study 97 5.1 The goal and the predictions 97 5.2 Pilot studv 99 5.2.1 Method 99 5.2.1.1 Subjects 99 5.2.1.2 Stimuli 99 5.2.1.3 Procedures 103 5.2.2 Results 104 5.2.2.1 Main effects 104 5.2.2.2 Interaction effects 107 5.2.3 Discussion 110 5.3 The main study 112 5.3.1 Experiment I: Verification/Correction experiment 112 5.3.1.1 Method. 113 5.3.1.1.1 Subjects 113 5.3.1.1.2 Stimuli 113 5.3.1.1.3 Procedures 115 5.3.1.2 Coding and analysis 115 5.3.2 Experiment II: Picture-Choice experiment 117 5.3.2.1 Method 118 5.3.2.1.1 Subjects 118 5.3.2.1.2 Stimuli 118 5.3.2.1.3 Procedures 120 5.3.2.2 Coding and analysis 120 Chapter 6 Results 125 6.1 Results ofVerification/Correction experiment. o ••••••••••••• 125 6.1.1 Main effects 125 6.1.2 Interaction effects 128 6.2 Results ofPicture-Choice experiment 0' 139 6.2.1 Main effects 140 6.2.2 Interaction effects 142 Chapter 7 Discussion.
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