The present study explored the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese conditionals by
investigating children’s interpretation and imitation under the manipulations of the independent variables, viz. markedness, hypotheticality and counterfactuality, tasks and age. Several issues were addressed, including the difficulty order, the correlation between variables in perception and production of conditionals, and correlation about production patterns different from the target sentences.
The overall results indicated that the two major types (i.e., unmarked and marked), inclusive of the five conditional types, exhibited different degrees of difficulty. The unmarked conditionals was found significantly easier than the marked ones. As for the subjects’ performance on the five types of Mandarin Chinese conditionals, it showed that clause-initial adverbial conditionals were the easiest, and double adverbial conditionals and non-wh-word conditionals were relatively easier than wh-word and clause-final adverbial conditionals. In addition, the subjects’
performances on wh-word conditionals compared with their responses on clause-final adverbial conditionals revealed that the adverbial jiu ‘then’ helped trigger conditional interpretation as significantly as the clause-initial adverbial ruguo ‘if’ while the clause-final adverbial dehua ‘if’ in the antecedent clause intervened in the children’s processing.
Concerning the effects on hypotheticality and counterfactuality, it was found that
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there was a trend that the hypothetical conditionals were more accessible than the counterfactual conditionals. This finding, even without significant differences between the two conditionals, still suggested that hypotheticality should be acquired prior to counterfactuality in the subjects’ linguistic development. The result also implied that a procedural factor, that is, the causal and negative events in the present design on counterfactual sentences assisted our children in reasoning, resulting in less distinctive differentiation between these two scenarios. In addition, the reason why the adults performed better on the counterfactuals was that the design of Type 5 especially on the IM task let the adults add a clause-final adverbial dehua ‘if’ to avoid ambiguity but violate the procedures.
With regard to the task effects, it was found that the IT task was performed significantly better than the IM task. Nonetheless, the low mean scores on the IM task for G1 and G2 presented some implications. Some children’s production, breaking the rules, still reflected their better control of unmarked conditionals though their utterances were not in accord with the target structure. In addition, it showed that there was a mutual relationship of modification between competence and production in early ages. Aside from this, the adults’ better performance on the counterfactual IM task than the hypothetical IM task demonstrated the saliency of counterfactuals.
As for the production analysis, five patterns different from the target sentences
were found in the present study: Insertion, Omission, Substitution, Wrong Order and Other patterns. Insertion was commonly used as the dominant strategy to produce typical conditional sentences (i.e., the clause-initial conditional adverbial ruguo ‘if’) by most groups. Nonetheless, the three-year-olds tended to delete conditional adverbials (i.e., if-words) to make their utterances shorter owing to the fact that they were at their initial stage of conditional acquisition. Omission was employed to delete marked terms such as dehua ‘if’ in Type 3 or shei ‘if whoever was’ in Type 5,
94
demonstrating that our children did comprehend the target structures but they produced in an unmarked way. As for Substitution, the children often replaced the target patterns with temporal or causal sentences. Wrong order occupied the least part of the subjects’ production types and Other patterns such as partial imitation, no responses and irrelevant production mostly found in G1 because the-three-year-olds were on the threshold of their conditional development.
Finally, the age effects indicated that the performance of most groups was improved with age except for G4 (the six-year-olds), showing that the six-year-olds were at their transitional point in conditional acquisition. Nevertheless, the differentiation between the six and seven-year-olds was not significant and both of the groups reached the adult grammar.
5.2 Limitations of the Present Study and Suggestions for Further Research
In the following are the limitation of the present study, leaving some topics for further research.
First of all, in the present study only the familiar terms for children were examined and the length of the sentences were controlled within five to six words.
However, some results were not significant, implying that the test sentences may be shortened in the future.
In addition, the imitation task (the IM task) was conducted to investigate children’s production of Mandarin Chinese conditionals in the present study.
However, the preschoolers’ production was far from our expectation because some of them did not follow the procedures or tended to make partial imitation. Accordingly, an elicitation task can be designed to probe into children’s full-scale capability of conditional performance in further research.
Lastly, the present study only investigated five types of Mandarin Chinese
95
conditionals. It is suggested that other Chinese conditional patterns can be comprised to further examine children’s development of conditionals.
96
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Appendix A: The Scenarios Used in the Interpretation Task
熊寶貝是森林裡一隻很可愛的動物，但 是很多的動物都不了解他在想什麼？
小朋友聽說你是班上的聰明王，你可以 告訴大姐姐他的心事嗎？
Q1:熊寶貝和小羊到溪邊玩，看到好多 小魚，
他說：「如果我是小魚的話，我每天就
可以快樂地游泳耶！」請問熊寶貝的意 思是什麼?
(1) 他想變成小魚 (2) 他變成小魚了
Q2:昨天熊寶貝買了個娃娃，想跟小羊 一起玩。
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他到了小羊的家後，說：「我昨天把娃
娃放進袋子的話，今天就可以拿出來玩 了！」請問熊寶貝的意思是什麼?
(1) 他把娃娃放進袋子裡 (2) 他沒把娃娃放進袋子裡
Q3:熊寶貝在做餅乾，做了好久，餅乾 都還沒做好，
然後他說：「誰有魔法，我們就可以把
餅乾做好了！」請問熊寶貝的意思是什 麼?
(1) 他有魔法 (2) 他沒魔法
Q4:熊寶貝去爬山，爬了好久，
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終於到了山上，然後說：「如果我身上
有翅膀，咻一聲，我馬上就可以飛到山 上了!」請問熊寶貝的意思是什麼?
(1) 他沒有翅膀 (2) 他有翅膀了
Q5:昨天晚上熊寶貝在客廳玩玩具，
今天早上起來，他看著地上，然後說：
「我昨天晚上收玩具，今天地上就很乾 淨了！」請問熊寶貝想說什麼?
(1) 他昨天晚上沒收玩具 (2) 他昨天晚上有收玩具
Q6:下午下大雨，熊寶貝淋濕了，
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他說：「我早上出門的時候，應該帶傘
的。」請問熊寶貝的意思是什麼?
(1) 他早上出門有帶傘 (2) 他早上出門沒帶傘
Q7:熊寶貝比賽前會先喝牛奶，他都跑 得很快，
他常對小羊說：「如果你先喝牛奶的
話，你就可以和我跑得一樣快！」請問 熊寶貝的意思是什麼?
(1) 小羊先喝牛奶 (2) 小羊沒喝牛奶
Q8:熊寶貝講了一個昨天他說過的故 事，可是大家都忘記了，
106
然後他說：「誰回家讀故事書，現在就
會知道我說的故事了！」請問熊寶貝的 意思是什麼?
(1) 有人回家再看一遍故事 (2) 沒有人回家再看一次故事
Q9:這天小羊搭飛機去傳奇王國，熊寶 貝好羨慕他，
然後說：「我是隻小鳥的話，我也可以
飛到傳奇王國玩了！」請問熊寶貝的意 思是什麼?
(1) 他變成小鳥了 (2) 他想變成小鳥
Q10:熊寶貝在路上遇到小羊，然後說：
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「如果你乖乖地把垃圾丟到垃圾桶，地 上就很乾淨了！」請問熊寶貝的意思是 什麼?
(1) 小羊有把垃圾丟到垃圾桶裡 (2) 小羊沒把垃圾丟到垃圾桶裡
Q11:小朋友在公園打球，
熊寶貝說：「我被球打到了！」請問熊
寶貝的意思是什麼?
(1) 他打到球了 (2) 球打到他了
Q12:熊寶貝看著天上美麗的星星，
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然後他說：「我變成仙女，就可以飛到
然後他說：「我變成仙女，就可以飛到