When it comes to first language acquisition, the innateness hypothesis (Chomsky 1986, Cook 1988, Gopnik 1988, Keil 1989, Gelman & Wellman 1991, Gopnik & Meltzoff 1997) is one of the most crucial theories to date. This hypothesis argues that children are born with some knowledge or principles of language where children can process and acquire a language in a short period of time. Nevertheless, not all linguistic knowledge is perceived at the same time.
It has been found that children can comprehend some knowledge easier and faster, and they learn other language devices on the basis of those easier ones. In other words, there is a sequence in mastering language, and acquisition of quantification is one of the cases that can be probed into.
In the process of acquisition, it has been found that children had difficulties in comprehending quantificational sentences (Herburger 1997, Cohen 2001, Geurts 2003). For example, for a sentence, like “Every kid holds an umbrella,” children tend to interpret the sentence as “Every umbrella-holder is a kid.” A donkey construction, which gets its name by its pattern of construction, is one of the important constructions concerning quantification.
(1) Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it. (Geurts 2002:129)
Sentence (1), where the pronoun it refers back to the antecedent a donkey, can be interpreted
as “Every farmer who owns a donkey beats at least one of the donkeys that he has,” indicating there is at least one donkey in the universe involved; hence, it is an existential reading of the sentence. On the other hand, (1) can also be interpreted as “Every farmer who owns a donkey beats all of the donkeys that he has,” implying all of the donkeys are involved, yielding a universal reading. Both readings for (1) are reasonable, but it has been found that speakers tend
to have a preference for a certain reading. For example, if a sentence is headed by a universal quantifier, like every, a universal reading is more likely to be favored, but if it is headed by an existential quantifier, like some, an existential reading tends to be chosen (Kanazawa 1994,
Geurts 2002, Foppolo 2009).
Like donkey sentences, Chinese conditional sentences as shown in (2)-(4) are also concerned with an interplay of logic between quantifiers and variable pronouns:
(2) Shei xian lai,
shei xian
chi.who come first who first eat
‘If X comes first, X eats first.’ (Cheng & Huang 1996:127) (3) Ruguo you shei quiao men, ni jiu jiao ta jin-lai.
if have who knock door you then ask him(her) come-in
‘If someone knocks on the door, you’ll ask him/her to come in.’
(Cheng & Huang 1996:142) (4) Ni jiao shei jin-lai, wo dou jian ta.
you ask who come-in I all see him(her)
‘Whoever you ask to come in, I will see him/her.’ (Cheng & Huang 1996:142) Sentence (2), an example of a bare conditional, is different from ordinary conditional sentences such as (3) and (4) in that neither a conjunction like ruguo ‘if’ in the antecedent clause as in (3)
nor an adverb like dou ‘all’ in the consequent clause as in (4) is present. As seen in (2), the variable, the wh-word shei ‘who,’ in the antecedent clause, Shei xian lai ‘who comes first,’ is connected to shei ‘who’ in the consequent clause shei xian chi ‘who eats first,’ meaning that whoever comes first, he (she) eats first.
There have been debates over whether Chinese bare conditionals can be regarded as one type of donkey sentences (Cheng & Huang 1996, Pan & Jiang 1997, Cheung 2007, Wang 2007) because the two constructions share referentiality in readings in common. In a donkey sentence like (1), the pronoun it refers back to the number of donkeys in the antecedent, and the sentence can obtain either an existential or a universal reading. In bare conditionals, as in (2), shei ‘who’
in the consequent clause refers back to shei ‘who’ in the antecedent clause. In other words, if
shei ‘who’ is referred to Zhangsan in the antecedent clause, then shei ‘who’ in the consequent
clause will be identical, and shei ‘who’ can be interpreted as “someone” or “everyone” with the sentence taking either an existential or a universal reading. Hence, through a comparison of readings (universal and existential readings) in the two constructions, the researcher would like to see whether and to what extent the two constructions are related.
In addition, construction-specific factors will be examined in the present study. For example, for donkey sentences, quantifier types, which elicit different readings, are taken as one crucial factor in determining the readings of donkey sentences, as in (5)1.
1 Examples in (5) are taken from Krifka (1996:2), but some modification has been made in order to exhibit contrasting quantifiers.
(5) a. Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it. (universal reading)
b. Some farmer who owns a donkey beats it. (existential reading) (Krifka 1996:2) For (5a), it is believed that the universal quantifier every entails a universal reading of the sentence, while for (5b), the existential quantifier some elicits an existential reading; hence, this study probed into whether different quantifiers will influence different readings.
Construction-specific factors that are influential to interpretations of donkey sentences and bare conditionals respectively are put in design in each construction to see whether the results can support analysis from previous studies.
Moreover, according to Prévost & Paradis (2004), Foppolo (2009), and Ireri et al. (2012), context can affect interpretations of sentences involving the syntax-semantic interface. Since it has been found that children depend on context to infer meanings of sentences, context is believed to be influential to interpretations of quantification as well. Accordingly, the contextual effects on the two constructions will be discussed in this study.
Furthermore, age has been a crucial issue in first language acquisition research (Assink, van Well & Knuijt 2003, Mayberry 2007). Hence, this study will also discuss this issue in order to see if there is a derivational pattern of acquisition in quantification of donkey sentences and bare conditionals.
Since little literature (Crain et al. 2009) is concerned with L1 acquisition of donkey sentences and bare conditionals, through a comparison of children’s and adults’ interpretations of these sentences, the present study aims to provide clues to the relatedness of the two
constructions, and to the factors that may influence readings.