Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Cantonese: a Multi-Factorial Analysis
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ACQUISITION OF RELATIVE CLAUSES IN CANTONESE: A MULTI-FACTORIAL ANALYSIS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS MAY 2016 By Elaine Lau Dissertation Committee: William O’Grady, Co-chairperson Kamil Ud Deen, Co-chairperson Stephen Matthews Theres Grüter Li Jiang ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It’s 2016, and my journey in quest of the acquisition of Cantonese relative clauses entered its twelfth year. Twelve bears the significance of representing completeness and plenitude in Christianity; this dissertation does not only mark the completion of my adventurous and rewarding postgraduate life, it also documents the abundance of encouragement and support I have received throughout all these years. I am deeply indebted to my co-chairs, William O'Grady and Kamil Ud Deen, for their steadfast patience, guidance and support. William, thank you for having faith in me when I do not even have it in myself. Although it was unnerving whenever I saw you calling my name in emails, it has become the drive for me to achieve better. Kamil, thank you for always being there for me and all the little pats on my shoulder every time when I felt so defeated. My gratitude also goes to the other members in my dissertation committee: Theres Grüter, Li Jiang, Stephen Matthews, and Martin Rayner. In particular, I am forever grateful for their willingness to cope with my situation and allow our meetings to take advantage of the modern technology. Theres, it is totally my honour to have you as my supervisor. The enthusiasm and persistence for perfection in research are just some of the invaluable things I have learnt from you. Julie, thank you for your kindness for agreeing to be my committee member even before we really met. Stephen and Virginia, you are indeed my baak3lok6, and no words can express, no act of gratitude can relay what your kindness and encouragement have meant to me. Stephen, thank you for showing me what it meant to be a scholar. Virginia, without your matchmaking me with relative clauses, there will not be this dissertation. I am also grateful to Ms. Mei Yung Cheng, the principal, and the teachers at the Kowloon City Baptist Church Tsz Oi Kindergarten, who generously offered me the opportunities to work with the lovely children. And children, it was a pleasure to watch you grow and nourished. You have indeed taught me how fun it was to work with children. This dissertation would not be have been possible without the generous statistical assistance from Etki. Thank you for the 24/7 professional statistical consulting service and your continuously pushing me to venture beyond the realms of my closed little numbers-related universe. I also have to thank all my family, cognians and friends (in and out of Hong Kong or Hawai’i) who persistently asked the “forbidden” question with all love and encouragement. This has been the fuel that has propelled me to endure all the hardships all along. Now, I can proudly present to you, Dr. Elaine Lau. Daddy and Mommy, who never doubted their daughters and give us the liberty to go after our dreams. Now, you finally do not have to worry about me, I hope. Bunny. Lalala. God, thank you for making me such a lucky girl. If you are reading this right now, I have been thanking you a million times in my heart from the moment I wrote this dissertation. Hope you enjoy the fun in Cantonese relative clauses! iii ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the acquisition of Cantonese relative clauses by examining the effects of three factors (the grammatical relation of the relative clause head noun, NP animacy, and the presence of resumptive pronouns) on Cantonese children’s production and comprehension. A prevailing subject preference is observed in both comprehension and production, supporting the hypothesis of a universal subject preference. Yet, the study on the effect of grammatical relations reveals that children’s acquisition is not only determined by factors that underlie a universal relative clause processing mechanism, but also by some general learning strategies with respect to the characteristics of the relative clause construction of the particular language. It suggests that topicality of subjects make the subject NP more prominent and more available for relativization; and because of the peculiar relative clause construction in Cantonese, children make use of the word order resemblance to construct and process their relative clauses. The effect of animacy is mainly observed in contrastive animacy configurations. The relative ease of relative clauses with an animate subject - inanimate object (AI) configuration comes from children’s strong preference for such animacy configuration; and their strong dispreference for the reverse inanimate subject – animate object (IA) configuration causes children to often respond with a conversion to the preferred AI configuration. Resumptive pronouns do not play a critical role in children’s acquisition, and the only effect observed seems to be rendering the relative clause structure more explicit, reducing ambiguity and mitigating certain errors in comprehension. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III ABSTRACT iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v LIST OF FIGURES VIII LIST OF TABLES xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 THE SCOPE OF THIS DISSERTATION 3 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW: FACTORS UNDERLYING RELATIVE CLAUSE PROCESSING AND ACQUISITION 6 2.1 GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS 6 2.1.1 The effect of grammatical relations in relative clause processing and acquisition 6 2.1.2 The effect of grammatical relations on relative clause processing and acquisition in the Chinese languages 8 2.2 ANIMACY 12 2.2.1 The effect of animacy in relative clause processing and acquisition 12 2.2.2 The effect of animacy in Chinese relative clause processing 16 2.3 RESUMPTIVE PRONOUNS 18 2.3.1 Use of resumption in adult processing 19 2.3.2 Use of resumption in children’s processing 21 2.3.3 Use of resumption in Chinese 23 CHAPTER 3 RELATIVE CLAUSE CONSTRUCTION IN CANTONESE 25 3.1 THE CANTONESE RELATIVE CLAUSE CONSTRUCTION 25 3.2 RELATIVIZATION STRATEGIES 26 3.3 TYPOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CANTONESE RELATIVE CLAUSES 28 v CHAPTER 4 THE ROLE OF GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS 29 4.1 EXPERIMENT 1: THE ROLE OF GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS IN THE COMPREHENSION OF CANTONESE RELATIVE CLAUSES 30 4.1.1 Method 30 4.1.2 Results 39 4.1.2.1 Accuracy 39 4.1.2.2 Error Analysis 41 4.1.3 Interim Discussion: Children’s Comprehension 46 4.2 EXPERIMENT 2: THE ROLE OF GRAMMATICAL RELATIONS IN THE PRODUCTION OF CANTONESE RELATIVE CLAUSES 47 4.2.1 Method 47 4.2.2 Results & Discussion 51 4.2.2.1 Adults 51 4.2.2.1.1 Proportion of target production 51 4.2.2.1.2 Patterns of adults’ relative clauses 54 4.2.2.1.3 Adults’ relative clause constructions 70 4.2.2.1.4 Interim summary of adults’ production 73 4.2.2.2 Children 73 4.2.2.2.1 Proportion of target production 73 4.2.2.2.2 Patterns of relative clause responses 76 4.2.2.2.3 Children’s relative clause constructions 91 4.2.2.3 Interim discussion: Production of relative clauses by Cantonese adults and children 93 4.3 GENERAL DISCUSSION 94 4.3.1 Discrepancy between comprehension and production: the effect of word order 95 4.3.2 Implications for theories of relative clause processing/acquisition 101 4.4 CONCLUSION 107 CHAPTER 5 THE ROLE OF ANIMACY 109 5.1 EXPERIMENT 3: THE ROLE OF ANIMACY IN THE PRODUCTION OF CANTONESE RELATIVE CLAUSES 109 5.1.1 Method 111 5.1.2 Results & Discussion 114 5.1.2.1 Adults 114 5.1.2.2 Discussion: Adult production 123 5.1.2.3 Children 125 5.1.2.4 Discussion: Children production 134 5.1.3 Conclusion 141 vi CHAPTER 6 THE ROLE OF RESUMPTIVE PRONOUNS 143 6.1 EXPERIMENT 4: THE ROLE OF RESUMPTIVE PRONOUN IN THE COMPREHENSION OF CANTONESE RELATIVE CLAUSES 144 6.1.1 Method 144 6.1.2 Results 147 6.1.2.1 Accuracy 147 6.1.2.2 Error Analysis 147 6.1.3 Discussion 149 6.2 USE OF RESUMPTIVE PRONOUNS IN RELATIVE CLAUSE PRODUCTION 152 6.2.1 Analysis 152 6.2.1.1 Object relativization 152 6.2.1.2 Subject relativization 154 6.2.1.3 Indirect object, oblique and genitive relativization 155 6.2.1.4 Relative clauses with resumptive NP (RNP) 157 6.2.1.5 Internally headed relative clauses (IHRC) 158 6.2.2 Discussion 160 6.3 CONCLUSION 162 CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION 163 7.1 SUMMARY OF THE EXPERIMENTAL FINDINGS 163 7.1.1 The role of grammatical relations 163 7.1.2 The role of animacy 166 7.1.3 The role of resumptive pronouns 168 7.2 GENERAL RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS 171 7.2.1 Universal subject relative clause preference 171 7.2.2 Comprehension vs. Production 171 7.2.3 Children vs. Adults 172 7.3 CONCLUDING REMARKS 173 REFERENCES 177 APPENDIX A: Relative clause responses in children’s and adults elicited production across all comparisons in Experiment 2 188 APPENDIX B: Test stimuli for Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 190 APPENDIX C: Targeted relative clauses for Experiment 3 195 APPENDIX D: Test stimuli for Experiment 4 197 vii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1. SAMPLE VISUAL STIMULUS FOR SUBJECT VS. DIRECT OBJECT (S-DO) COMPARISON. 35 FIGURE 2. SAMPLE VISUAL STIMULUS FOR SUBJECT VS. INDIRECT OBJECT (S-IO) COMPARISON WITH BEI2 ‘GIVE’ AS MAIN VERB. 35 FIGURE 3.