以中文為母語的兒童詮釋稱代詞「人家」之實證研究

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩士論文 Master Thesis Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University. 以中文為母語的兒童詮釋稱代詞「人家」之實證研究 Chinese Children’s Interpretations of the Pronominal Renjia. 指導教授：陳純音博士 Advisor: Dr. Chun-yin Doris Chen 研究生：許硯晴 Student: Yen-ching Abbie Hsu. 中華民國一百零二年二月. February, 2013.

(2) 摘要本研究旨在探討以中文為母語的兒童對稱代詞「人家」之第一語言習得。相較於中文的其它代名詞，「人家」的語意相對複雜，兒童在習得過程可能較為困難。本研究主要探討指涉歧義、指涉方向、指涉對象、題型及年齡是否會影響兒童對稱代詞「人家」的語意詮釋及表達。針對指涉歧義，本研究將句型分成兩大類：單指句與複指句。在這兩大類句型下，分別加入前指/後指，定指/非定指兩控制變因。為了避免潛在的實驗效應，本研究採用兩種測驗題型：圖片選擇測驗題與模仿測驗題。研究對象包含實驗組的八十位兒童，依平均年齡四歲到八歲分成五組，每組十六人，以及對照組的十六位成人。實驗結果顯示，指涉歧異、指涉對象、指涉方向、題型、年齡皆會影響兒童對稱代詞「人家」之詮釋及表達。首先，受試者對於單指句表現優於複指句，印證了歧義句的困難度較高之假設。在指涉方向方面，研究對象皆能接受後指句，雖然兒童在前指句的表現仍優於後指句，但他們對後指句的理解與表達，隨著年齡而增長。在指涉對象方面，受試者在定指句表現得比非定指句好，呼應文獻中兒童對於名詞的認知發展為具體先於非具體。題型效應顯示，兒童在圖片選擇測驗的表現較模仿測驗佳，說明此稱代詞的習得是理解先於表達。此外，在模仿測驗的句型分析中，錯誤句型大多反映受試者對於複指、後指以及非定指句之理解度較低，因而使用省略或代替策略來完成表達。最後，在年齡效應方面發現，七歲兒童之整體表現優於四～五歲受試者，因此六至七歲期間應是兒童習得中文稱代詞「人家」的關鍵期。. 關鍵詞：第一語言習得、稱代詞「人家」、語意詮釋、指涉歧義、指涉方向、指涉對象、題型效應、年齡效應. i.

(3) ABSTRCT In Mandarin Chinese, renjia is frequently used as a pronominal. The pronominal renjia is more semantically complex compared with other pronominals since it exhibits many interpretations in different contexts. Although the referentiality of the pronominal renjia has been widely discussed in the literature, little research to date can be found to examine it from the aspect of first language acquisition. Thus, the present research attempts to provide a pioneering L1 study on Chinese children’s interpretations of this semantically complex pronominal by probing into different interpretation patterns, referential directions, and referent types. A comprehension task (i.e., a picture selection task) and a production task (i.e., an imitation task) were assigned to 80 Chinese children (aged 4-8) and 16 native controls. The children were further divided into five groups, each of which consisted of 16 subjects. The overall results showed that different interpretation patterns, referential directions, and referent types were all determining factors affecting children’s acquisition of the pronominal renjia. With regard to different interpretation patterns, the single-interpretation patterns were relatively easier than the multiple-interpretation patterns, due to a higher degree of learnability in the ambiguous sentences. Concerning the direction of the reference, the subjects were able to accept both forward and backward coreference. Although the younger children had more difficulty dealing with backward coreference, their performance increased with age. As for referent types, it was found that specificity of the referent in context played a predominant role in the children’s interpretations of this pronominal. The results revealed that the subjects performed better on those with specific interpretations, while the non-specific interpretations were more challenging for the children. Additionally, task effects were also found obvious in the present study. Our children significantly performed better on the picture selection task (the PS task) than the imitation task (the IM task), which supported the claim that children’s comprehension exceeds production in language acquisition. With respect to the production analysis, it was found that the children’s non-target ii.

(4) productions were mostly derived from backward coreference and non-specific referents in the multiple-interpretation patterns. In addition, the younger children tended to omit the referent(s) with or without renjia, while the elder ones would keep the referent(s) without renjia or replace it with other pronominals. Finally, the age effects indicated that ages 6-7 were the critical period for the acquisition of the pronominal renjia, because in general the 7-year-olds performed better than the children aged 4-5.. Keywords: first language acquisition, pronominal renjia, interpretations, referential ambiguity, referential directions, referent types, task effects, age effects. iii.

(5) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis would not have been completed without many people’s assistance. It is with pleasure that acknowledge their helps. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my thesis advisor, Dr. Chun-yin Doris Chen, for her optimism, patience and encouragement. The process of writing thesis was painstaking and sometimes torturing, which made me depressed and even lost myself. I am very grateful that she never lost her belief in me and guided me through the hard time of my thesis writing. Without her, I could not have finished the thesis. I would also like to show my appreciation to my thesis committee members, Prof. Miao-Lin Hsieh and Prof. Rueih-Lirng Sharon Fahn, for their insightful remarks and constructive advice on my thesis proposal. They carefully read my thesis and provide invaluable comments and suggestions which truly improved the quality of the thesis. Sincere appreciation is given to the colleagues and children in Jhong Jheng Elementary School, Jincheng Kindergarten, and Yu Ying Day-care Center. Special thanks go to my teachers Bo-Yue Zhang, Li-Qi Sun, and friends Jing-Yi Liang and Jun Hsu. The subject recruitment would not been possible without these people’s friendly arrangement and assistance. I am also grateful to those adult subjects who were willing to spend their time participating in the experiment. Moreover, I want to thank my classmates in NTNU: Alison Chan, Katherine Chen, Helen Chien, Lina Chiu, Joy Hsieh, Monica Hsu, Jennifer Hsu, Linda Huang, Sam Jheng, Ann Lee, Julia Li, Vicky Lin, Stella Liu, Chris Wang, Bonnie Wei, Bebe Wu, and Gina Yang by alphabetic order. I was often encouraged by their constant support. Many thanks to my warmhearted friends, Kabi Zhang, who helped me accomplish the drawings used in the experiments, Katherine Chen, Literature Huang, Julia Li, Chris Wang, and Cindy Zhang, who helped me record the story. Moreover, I am appreciative of Alison Chen, who promised iv.

(6) without hesitation to help me code the raw data even though she was busy writing her thesis proposal. Last but most importantly, my heartiest and immense thanks go to my beloved parents and family members. They were always tolerant of my emotional fluctuations and never put pressure on me from the beginning to the end. I am forever grateful to their considerate understanding and unconditional love. Special thanks go to my little brother, Yu-Han Hsu, who helped me borrow and mail books from NTNU library when I was a student teacher at the junior high school in Kinmen. Without his help, the thesis would never been completed. I love them all. To my family, I dedicate this thesis.. v.

(7) TABLE OF CONTENTS CHINESE ABSTRACT ............................................................................................. i ENGLISH ABSTRACT ............................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................... vi LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................. ix LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................... xi. Chapter One Introduction ........................................................................................1 1.1 Motivation ...................................................................................................1 1.2 Theoretical Framework ..............................................................................2 1.3 Research Questions ....................................................................................6 1.4 Significance of the Study ...........................................................................7 1.5 Organization of the Thesis .........................................................................8. Chapter Two. Literature Review and a New Classification of the Pronominal Renjia in Chinese .........................................................................................9. 2.1 Theoretical Studies of the Pronominal Renjia in Chinese ...........................9 2.1.1 Chou (2000) ......................................................................................9 2.1.2 Liu (2001) ....................................................................................... 12 2.1.3 Huang (2004) .................................................................................. 15 2.1.4 Wang (2006) ................................................................................... 18 2.1.5 Summary ......................................................................................... 20 2.2 Previous Studies of Referential Expressions in Acquisition ...................... 21 2.2.1 Schneider & Dubé (1997).................................................................. 21 2.2.2 Wei (2001) ........................................................................................ 23 2.2.3 Millogo (2005) ................................................................................ 25 2.2.4 Huang (2011) .................................................................................. 27 vi.

(8) 2.2.5 Summary ......................................................................................... 29 2.3 A New Classification of the Pronominal Renjia in Chinese ...................... 32 2.4 Summary of Chapter Two ........................................................................ 40 Chapter Three Research Design ............................................................................. 42 3.1 Subjects ..................................................................................................... 42 3.2 Methods and Materials ............................................................................... 43 3.2.1 The PS Task ...................................................................................... 49 3.2.2 The IM Task ..................................................................................... 51 3.3 Procedures ................................................................................................. 52 3.3.1 Pilot Study ........................................................................................ 52 3.3.2 Formal Study .................................................................................... 53 3.3.3 Scoring.............................................................................................. 54 3.4 Summary of Chapter Three ........................................................................ 56. Chapter Four. Results and Discussion ..................................................................... 58. 4.1 Pattern Effects........................................................................................... 58 4.1.1 Overall Findings................................................................................ 58 4.1.2 General Discussion ........................................................................... 60 4.2 Directionality Effects ................................................................................ 62 4.2.1 Overall Findings................................................................................ 62 4.2.2 General Discussion ........................................................................... 65 4.3 Referent Effects ........................................................................................ 67 4.3.1 Overall Finding 1: Specific vs. Nonspecific Referent ........................ 68 4.3.2 Overall Finding 2: RCT1 vs. RCT2 ................................................... 69 4.3.3 General Discussion ........................................................................... 70 4.4 Task Effects .............................................................................................. 74 4.4.1 Overall Findings................................................................................ 74 4.4.2 General Discussion ........................................................................... 76 4.5 Production Analysis .................................................................................. 77 4.5.1 Overall Findings................................................................................ 77 vii.

(9) 4.5.2 General Discussion ........................................................................... 79 4.6 Age Effects ............................................................................................... 81 4.7 Summary of Chapter Four ......................................................................... 83 Chapter Five Conclusion ....................................................................................... 85 5.1 Summary of the Major Findings ................................................................ 85 5.2 Limitations of the Present study and Suggestions for Future Research....... 86. Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 88 Appendix A Scenarios Used in the PS Task and the IM Task ................................... 93 Appendix B The Results Obtained from the Pilot Study ......................................... 117 Appendix C The Consent Form .............................................................................. 120. viii.

(10) LIST OF TABLES Table 2-1 Major Findings and Limitations of the Previous Studies ........................... 31 Table 3-1 Basic Information of the Subjects ........................................................... 43 Table 3-2 Distributions of the Test Items Used in Both Tasks ................................... 47 Table 3-3 Example Sentences with a Single Interpretation ........................................ 48 Table 3-4 Example Sentences with Multiple Interpretations. .................................. 49. Table 3-5 A Test Scenario Used in the PS Task ...................................................... 50 Table 3-6 A Test Scenario Used in the IM Task ...................................................... 51 Table 3-7 The Criteria for Scoring the IM Task ...................................................... 56 Table 4-1 The p-values between Different Interpretation Patterns ............................. 59 Table 4-2 The p-values of Subjects’ Responses to Different Referential Directions .. 63 Table 4-3 The Comparisons of Subjects’ Responses to Different Referential Directions in Single- and Multiple- Interpretation Patterns ...................... 64 Table 4-4 The p-values of Subjects’ Responses to Different Referent Types: Single Interpretation ................................................................................ 69 Table 4-5 The p-values of Subjects’ Responses to Different Referent Combination Types: Multiple Interpretations .......................................... 70 Table 4-6 The p-values of Subjects’ Responses to the PS Task and the IM Task....... 75 Table 4-7 Proportion of the Subjects’ Wrong Productions in the IM Task................. 78. ix.

(11) LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3-1The Main Characters Used in the Story .................................................. 45 Figure 4-1 Subjects’ Responses to Different Interpretation Patterns .......................... 59 Figure 4-2 Subjects’ Responses to Different Referential Directions .......................... 63 Figure 4-3 Subjects’ Responses to Different Referent Types..................................... 68 Figure 4-4 Subjects’ Responses to Different Referent Combination Types................ 69 Figure 4-5 Subjects’ Performances on the PS Task and the IM Task ......................... 75 Figure 4-6 The Developmental Stages of the Pronominal Renjia .............................. 83. x.

(12) LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ASP. aspect marker. CL. classifier. NP. noun phrase. Par. particle. xi.

(13) Chapter One Introduction 1.1 Motivation Referring expressions are commonly used in everyday conversations and always play important roles in achieving coherence in discourse. As discussed in Quirk (1985), the function of pronouns is to substitute for nouns or noun phrases and their interpretations depend crucially on the linguistic and non-linguistic contexts of the speaker’s utterances. The referentiality of pronouns has been widely discussed in the field of language acquisition (Crain & McKee, 1985; Solan, 1983). It has been reported that the antecedent-pronoun relation, the distance between the antecedent and the pronoun, the clausal type, the referential direction, and the sentence boundary are all possible factors influencing the pronominal interpretations by native speakers (e.g., Chou, 2007; Crawley, 1985; Kennison, 2003; Song & Fisher, 2007).. In Mandarin Chinese, renjia is frequently used as a pronominal in different contexts. It has been pointed out in Wei (2001) that renjia is ambiguous in the following context.. (1) Chenxianshengi lai jiali chifan, ni you yizhi ma Mr. Chen come home eat_meal you again all_the_time scold renjiai/j, woj zhenshi juede mei mianzi. RENJIA I really feel no face ‘Mr. Cheni comes over to have dinner with us, but you keep scolding (himi/mej), Ij feel I am losing my face.’ (Wei, 2001: 19). In (1), the interpretation of the pronominal renjia is ambiguous since it can either refer to Mr. Chen, who is coming to have dinner with the family, or the speaker ‘I.’ There seems to be a tendency that structural ambiguities influence children’s acquisition of different constructions such as tough constructions (Anderson, 2002), relative clauses 1.

(14) (Felser et al., 2003) and kindergarten-path sentences (Trueswell et al.,1999) in English. Furthermore, several studies on children’s responses to referential ambiguities conclude that children up to seven or eight still fail to detect ambiguous messages (Asher, 1979; Patterson & Kister, 1981). Preschoolers’ ability to explicitly detect referential ambiguities is even poorer (Beal & Belgrad, 1990; Beal & Flavell, 1984). In addition, Huang’s (2011) study on Chinese children’s pronoun interpretations supports that ambiguous interpretations of pronouns are harder to acquire. Thus, the main purpose of the present study is to see if the referential complexity of the pronominal renjia in Mandarin Chinese will be difficult for children to acquire. Although renjia in Mandarin Chinese has been discussed from the perspective of syntax (Liu, 2001), semantics (Chiu, 2000; Wang 2006) and pragmatics (Chiu, 2000; Huang, 2004; Liu, 2001; Wang, 2006), little research to date can be found to examine this pronominal from the aspect of language acquisition, except Wei (2001), who conducted an L2 study on the interpretations of renjia by English-speaking and Japanese-speaking Chinese learners. Therefore, in the present study, with a new classification of renjia, different interpretation patterns, referent types, and referential directions are discussed. It is hoped that this study can provide a better picture of children’s acquisition of this referentially complex pronominal in Mandarin Chinese.. 1.2 Theoretical Framework 1.2.1 Single vs. Multiple interpretations When a sentence has only one reading, it is likely every element (such as the lexical nouns, pronominals, verbs and adjectives) in it only has single interpretation. For instance, the pronoun ta in (2) can only be interpreted as a discourse-bound, third-person pronoun whose identity is determined in the context. It can never refer to the matrix subject Zhangsan, according to Principle B of the Binding Theory (cf. Chomsky, 1981). 2.

(15) (2) Zhangsani piping ta*i/k. Zhangsan criticize he ‘Zhangsani criticized him. *i/k’ When a sentence has more than one reading, it is likely that an element (such as the lexical nouns, pronominals, verbs and adjectives) has multiple interpretations1. For example, the pronoun ta ‘he’ as in (3) is ambiguous.. (3) Wo kanjian Zhangsani de shihau, tai/j zai dazi. I see Zhangsan DE time he at type ‘When I saw Zhangsani, hei/j was typing.’ (Huang, 1982: 275). In (3), the pronoun ta ‘he’ can refer to either Zhangsan or a discourse-bound, third-person pronoun not specified in the clause, without violating Principle B of the Binding Theory.. 1.2.2 Specificity of NP Generally speaking, a noun phrase (NP) can be specific and non-specific according to the notion of specificity. Based on von Heusinger (2002), specificity is defined as a NP which is ‘referentially anchored’ to another expression in the discourse. A specific NP is ‘functionally linked to the speaker of the sentence or to another referential expression in the sentence such as the subject or object’ (von Heusinger, 2002: 35).. (4) Lisi shi. wo-de. laoshi.. Lisi be my teacher ‘Lisi is my teacher.’. 1. The main focus of the present study is on pronominal interpretations, so the ambiguous sentences caused by polysemies including lexical nouns, verbs, adjectives will not be discussed here. 3.

(16) As can be seen in (4), the NP wo-de laoshi ‘my teacher’ is specific since it is linked to the subject Lisi in the sentence. The use of proper name Lisi also indicates that the NP wo-de laoshi is definite because the speaker assumes that the referent is known to the hearer (Givón, 1978). However, a non-specific NP can be indefinite or generic (cf. Liu, 2001) since it is not functionally linked to another expression in the discourse, as in (5) and (6).. (5) You xie ren xihuan youyong, you xie ren xihuan paobu. some_people like swim some_people like jog ‘Some like swimming and others like jogging.’ (6) Dajia juede shengbing yao duo xiuxi. everybody feel sick want more rest ‘Everybody believes that a sick person should have a good rest.’ In (5), the indefinite NP you-xie-ren ‘some people’ is non-specific because the intended referents of the speaker are not specified in the context. In (6), the generic NP dajia ‘everybody’ is also non-specific on account that it just denotes a generic group of people in the world. Therefore, a diagram regarding the classification of noun phrases can be represented in (7).. 4.

(17) noun phrase2. (7). specific3 definite. non-specific indefinite. generic. A specific NP is definite since it is ‘referentially anchored’ to a particular referent. On the contrary, a non-specific NP can be indefinite or generic because it is not referentially specified in the discourse.. 1.2.3 Directionality of pronominal coreference There are two types of pronominal coreference, namely forward and backward, according to the referential direction involved in anaphoric interpretations. Forward coreference, as in (8a), refers to a sentence in which the pronominal follows the antecedent, while backward coreference, as shown in (8b), refers to a sentence in which the pronominal precedes the antecedent.. (8) a. When Sarahi listens to music, shei reads poetry. b. When shei listens to music, Sarahi reads poetry.. (Lust, 2006: 214). As indicated by Lust (2006), in an English adverbial sentence, although both forward coreference and backward coreference are grammatical in adult grammar, children showed a stronger preference for forward than for backward coreference, indicating that children are sensitive to the head direction of their L1s in the acquisition of grammatical anaphora. Some 2. There is also another classification of NPs. Givón (1978) classified NPs into definite and indefinite according to the notion of definiteness. A definite noun refers to a referent that is ‘assumed by the speaker to be uniquely identifiable to the hearer,’ while an indefinite noun is used when the speaker is ‘not so assumed that the referent is uniquely identifiable to the hearer.’ However, according to von Heusinger (2002), it is quite hard to understand the speaker’s attitudes toward the hearer’s the mental representation, so from the acquisitional perspective, this classification seems to be difficult to work with. 3 A specific NP can also be indefinite. A specific indefinite NP generally refers to a referent which is known to the speaker but unknown to the hearer. However, it is uncommon for a pronominal to be specific indefinite because the use of a pronominal often indicates that the speaker believes the referent is already known to the hearer. 5.

(18) researchers have also found that children whose L1 is head-initial productively choose forward over backward coreference (e.g., C.S Chomsky, 1969; Goodluck, 1981; Lust et al., 1986; Solan, 1983). However, children whose L1 is head-final significantly perform better on sentences with backward coreference (e.g., Lust & Chien, 1984; Lust et al., 1982). As for Chinese, both forward coreference as in (9) and backward coreference as in (10) are acceptable.. (9). Wo I. ma scold. Lisii, Lisi. yinwei because. tai he. zuo do. cuo shi wrong thing. le. Par. ‘I scolded Lisii because hei did something wrong.’ (10). Wo I. ma scold. tai, him. yinwei Lisii zuo because Lisi do. cuo wrong. shi thing. le. Par. ‘I scolded himi because Lisii did something wrong.’ (Kao, 1993: 157) As pointed out by Kao (1993), although some languages display precedence constraints on the direction of referential pronouns, there is no such general constraint against backward coreference in Mandarin Chinese.. 1.3 Research Questions Based on the theoretical background sketched in Section 1.2, the present study is designed to address the following research questions: 1). Do Chinese children show similar responses to different interpretation patterns (single vs. multiple) when they acquire the pronominal renjia?. 2). How do referential directions influence children’s interpretations of renjia in Mandarin Chinese?. 3). How do referent types affect children’s interpretations of the pronominal renjia?. 4). Do different task formats elicit different experimental results?. 6.

(19) 5). Is age a factor influencing children’s acquisition of the pronominal renjia in Mandarin Chinese?. 1.4 Significance of the Study The issue on the pronominal interpretation has aroused much interest in the field of children’s first language acquisition (Crain & Mckee, 1985; Goodluck, 1987; Solan, 1981; Tavakolian, 1977). However, the empirical studies on Chinese pronominal acquisition are limited to personal pronouns (Chen, 1997; Chien, 1993; Lust et al., 1996; Wilcoxon, 1991). Compared with personal pronouns, the pronominal renjia in Mandarin Chinese carries more semantic complexity since it exhibits many interpretations in different contexts. Although the referentiality of the pronominal renjia has been widely discussed in the literature (e.g., Chiu, 2000; Huang, 2004; Liu, 2001; Wang, 2006), little research to date can be found to examine it from the aspect of first language acquisition. This study attempts to provide a pioneering L1 study to investigate Chinese children’s interpretations of this semantically complex pronominal. In addition, unlike different classifications discussed in the previous theoretical studies, the present study aims to shed new light on the different interpretations of renjia from the perspective of acquisition by probing into referential directions, referent types, and the differences between single and multiple interpretations. With both the comprehension and production data, it is hoped that we can provide a complete picture of children’s acquisition of this semantically complex pronominal in Mandarin Chinese.. 1.5 Organization of the Thesis This proposal is organized as follows. In Chapter Two, some theoretical studies on the pronominal renjia along with several empirical studies on the pronominal acquisition are reviewed. The findings and the limitations of previous studies are also discussed. Then, according to the properties of the pronominal renjia discussed in the previous studies, a new 7.

(20) classification is presented regarding different interpretation patterns, referential directions, and referent types. In Chapter Three, the research design is reported. Chapter Four presents the results and discussion of the experiments. Finally, Chapter Five summarizes the major findings of the present study.. 8.

(21) Chapter Two Literature Review and a New Classification of the Pronominal Renjia in Chinese In this chapter, several theoretical studies of the pronominal renjia in Mandarin Chinese are reviewed in Section 2.1. In Section 2.2, some empirical studies on the acquisition of referential expressions are discussed, and a new classification of the pronominal renjia is presented in Section 2.3. Finally, Section 2.4 is a summary of this chapter.. 2.1 The Theoretical Studies of the pronominal renjia in Chinese This section recapitulates four theoretical studies of the pronominal renjia in Chinese. Chiu (2000) and Wang (2006) make a general description of different functions and interpretations of renjia and analyze it from the perspectives of semantics and pragmatics; however Liu (2001) analyzes the interpretations of renjia from the syntactic perspective. Huang’s (2004) research is more related to the pragmatic functions of the pronominal renjia in the face-to-face conversations.. 2.1.1 Chiu (2000) Chiu (2000) suggests that renjia should be a unique term in Chinese. The data she collected are mainly written texts like The Smiling, Proud Wanderer (Xiao-Ao-Jiang-Hu). From the semantic perspective, renjia is a polysemy, which has at least ten interpretations such as a house, the family status, an identity, a husband, an indefinite person, a third-person singular pronoun ‘s/he,’ a third-person plural pronoun ‘they,’ a first-person pronoun ‘I,’ a first-person plural pronoun ‘we,’, and a discourse marker. The ‘linguistic context’ can only help to disambiguate five interpretations including a house, the family status, an identity, a husband and a discourse marker. When renjia serves as a pronominal in the isolated sentence, 9.

(22) its interpretation is unclear, resulting in referential ambiguity. Therefore, Chiu argues that the referential ambiguity of renjia can be attributed to its unspecific property in isolated sentences, which is called ‘syntactic vagueness,’ as in (1).. (1) Shi yingxiong hao-han, jiu yinggai zhen-dao-zhen-qiang, be hero good_man just should real_knife_real_gun zai renjia bei-hou tou-xi, suan sheme renwu? at RENJIA back_behind sneak_attack count what figure ‘If you are a man, you should confront people hand-on. Sneaking behind RENJIA’s back is not what a decent man would do.’ (Chiu, 2000: 67) In (1), the pronominal renjia can refer to the speaker himself, a third-person pronouns or an indefinite person if the contextual information is not sufficient. In order to reduce the referential ambiguity of renjia, not only the contextual cues but also the ‘pragmatic context’ should be taken into consideration. For instance, if the addressee has already known who suffered a sneak attack in the discourse context, the intended referent in (1) would be clear to him. As pointed out by Chiu (2000), the unspecific property of renjia might make the proposition less assertive, as in (2). (2) Ni guolai, wo dei zhufu ni ji ju, ke you come I must urge you some sentence can bie shang-le renjia-de dang. not up-Asp RENJIA’s trick ‘Come here! I must tell you that you should not be fooled by others.’ (Chiu, 2000: 77) In (2), the speaker actually does not have a particular referent in mind and s/he just makes a conjecture that the addressee may be fooled. Thus, in the situation without clear evidence, the use of renjia instead of a specific pronoun can avoid possible offences. In addition, Chiu (2000) discusses the interpretations of the pronominal renjia from the 10.

(23) pragmatic perspective. Following Leech’s (1983) ‘politeness principle,’ she suggests that when renjia is used to refer to a third-person pronoun, it should satisfy the ‘approbation’ and ‘tact’ maxims, which can prevent from dispraising others, as in (3). (3) Ni shi dushu ren, dangran zhidao da zhangfu you be study person of_course know big husband you-suo-bu-wei, renjia bi wo shahai Qu-Yang, have_location_not_do RENJIA force I kill Qu-Yang ci shi wanwanbu- neng. this thing ten thousand- ten thousand-not-can ‘You are an educated man, so you should be able to judge what an educated man should do. If s/he (or they) forces me to kill Qu-Yang, I will never do it.’ (Chiu, 2000: 92) In (3), the speaker in fact can identify the referent, namely the person who forces him to kill Qu-Yang. However, in order to obey the ‘pointiness principles,’ the speaker uses renjia to escape from degrading the referent in his mind. When renjia is used to refer to the first person ‘I,’ it can follow the ‘tact’, ‘generosity’ and ‘sympathy’ maxims, labeling the speaker as inferior to the addressee in order to get sympathy or comfort from him, as in (4). (4) Die-die, dadddy. ni you. hai still. zai at. quxiao laugh. renjia. RENJIA. ‘Daddy, how could you keep laughing at me?’ (Chiu, 2000: 103) Furthermore, when renjia is used to refer to the second-person pronoun ‘you,’ the ‘agreement’ and ‘sympathy’ maxim can be satisfied. In this way, the speaker shows agreement and sympathy to the address about the situation, as in (5).. 11.

(24) (5) Nii you-le hen hao de tai-tai, hai you-le keai you have-Asp very good DE wife and have-Asp cute de haizi, xiang wo zhe yang yi-ge yousi si de DE child like I this kind one-CL hairspring like DE xi zai renjian de ren, hebi zai lai pohuai renjiai-de link at world DE man why again come sabotage RENJIA’s xingfu ne? happiness Par ‘You’ve already had a good wife and cute children. As a mere existence threaded in the world like me, why do I need to sabotage your happiness?’ (Chiu, 2000: 104) In conclusion, Chiu (2000) points out different interpretations of renjia. However, her study is insufficient to provide a clear categorization from the acquisitional perspective. Although she puts great emphasis on the importance of the ‘pragmatic context’ that influences the interpretations of the pronominal renjia, the ‘linguistic context’ such as analyzing it from the syntactic perspective receives less attention. In addition, some politeness principles that account for the use of renjia seem far-fetched such as the ‘approbation’ maxim as in (3) and the ‘generosity’ maxims as in (4). Moreover, the semantic and pragmatic analyses of the use of renjia seem to overlap with each other. Finally, most of the data in her study are taken from written texts, which may not represent all the interpretations of renjia.. 2.1.2 Liu (2001) Liu (2001) proposes that the pronominal renjia with a specific interpretation should be differentiated from that with a non-specific interpretation in sentences. When the pronominal renjia has a specific interpretation, it may take some identifiable individual(s) as a referent. He compares the pronominal renjia with a specific interpretation, the bare reflexive ziji as well as the third-person pronoun ta ‘s/he,’ and argues for the following syntactic constraints on renjia. First, a specific referential renjia cannot refer to a clausemate subject as an antecedent. 12.

(25) (6) Lisii juedui bu hui piping renjia*i. Lisi absolutely not will criticize RENJIA ‘Absolutely, Lisi will not criticize my humble self (i.e., the external speaker) or some identifiable or unidentifiable individual(s) other than the speaker, the addressee or Lisi.’ (Liu, 2001: 311) In (6), the pronominal renjia can refer to the external speaker of the proposition, some identifiable or unidentifiable individual(s) other than the speaker and addressee. It is impossible for renjia to refer to Lisi in the subject position. Second, when renjia is embedded in an attitudinal predicate as in (7), it cannot refer to the matrix subject.. (7) Zhangsani shuo [Lisij juedui bu hui piping renjia*i/*j]. Zhangsan say [Lisi absolutely not will criticize RENJIA ‘Zhangsan said that Lisi absolutely would not criticize me (i.e., the external speaker) or some identifiable or unidentifiable individual(s) other than the external speaker, the addressee, Zhangsan or Lisi.’ (Liu, 2001: 312) Moreover, a specific referential renjia disallows a matrix subject as a referent when it is embedded in the subject position, as in (8):. (8) Zhangsani shuo renjia*i zui congming. Zhangsan say RENJIA most smart ‘Zhangsan says that I (the external speaker)/some identifiable or unidentifiable individual(s) other than the external speaker, Zhangsan or the addressee is the smartest.’ (Liu, 2001: 313) In (8), the coreference between the matrix subject Zhangsan and the embedded subject renjia is restricted. Finally, a specific referential renjia cannot refer to an object antecedent Laowang, as in (9):. 13.

(26) (9) Zhangsani cong Laowangj nar tingshuo renjia*i/*j jintian Zhangsan from Laowang there hear RENJIA today bu shang xüe. not up school ‘Zhangsan heard from Laowang that I/some identifiable or unidentifiable individual(s) other than the speaker, the addressee, Zhangsan or Laowang will not go to school today.’ (Liu, 2001: 313). The pronominal renjia with a non-specific reference, on the contrary, neither takes the speaker and the addressee, nor some identifiable individuals other than the speaker or the addressee as a referent, as in (10):. (10) Renjia shuo qing guan nan duan jia wu shi. RENJIA say clear official hard judge home business affair ‘People other than the speaker or the addressee say that even an upright official finds it hard to settle a family quarrel.’ (Liu, 2001: 317) In (10), the interpretation of the pronominal renjia is non-specific. It refers to unidentifiable individuals other than the speaker or the addressee(s). Liu (2001) further argues that the specific referential renjia is indeed a sympathetic antilogophor, which is used to get the addressee’s sympathy. By using renjia to refer to the first-person ‘I,’ the speaker can avoid embarrassment when failing to appeal to the addressee’s sympathy. In addition, as noted by Liu (2001), it is easy for the speaker to get sympathy from the addressee by using renjia to refer to some external protagonists other than the speaker or the addressee. To conclude, Liu (2001) discusses several syntactic constraints on the interpretations of the pronominal renjia, and he proposes that the interpretations of it can be classified into two types, specific and non-specific. However, he only focuses on the major categories of renjia, rather than the subtypes of it. In addition, aside from the purpose of getting sympathy from the addressee(s), the 14.

(27) specific referential renjia can also be used to sneer at someone, as in (11). The speaker carries a sarcastic tone to comment on the external protagonist. (11) Renjia name shou, renjia ai chi sheme shi renjia-de RENJIA so thin RENJIA love eat what be RENJIA’s shi, bu guan women-de shi. thing not about our thing ‘She is very thin, so eating whatever she likes is her business. It’s none of our business.’ Finally, although Liu (2001) points out the ambiguous interpretations of renjia in sentences, a clear classification of sentences with a single reading and a multiple reading may be better from the acquisitional perspective. In this way, developmental progress from single to multiple interpretations of the pronominal renjia in sentences can be obtained (cf. Huang, 2011; Wei 2001).. 2.1.3 Huang (2004) Different from Chiu (2000), who mainly collects data from written texts, Huang (2004) employs face-to-face conversations to explicate the pronominal renjia in Mandarin Chinese. According to her, the 54 tokens of renjia in their corpus can be classified into four types based on Kitagawa and Lehrer’s (1990) and Bredel’s (2002) referencing functions of personal pronouns: referential, vague, impersonal, and self-positioning. Referential renjia generally refers back to a person or some people who are specific and definite in the previous discourse, as in (12)1.. 1. All the examples in Huang (2004) were transcribed into intonation units (IU), but the present study removes this part in order to reach the consistency of the examples. In addition, only parts of the dialogues in Huang’s data are presented in this study. 15.

(28) (12) B: Dou shi Jiang Yi-cheng. all be Jiang Yi-cheng ‘B: It’s all for Jiang-Yi-cheng.’ A: Renjia keneng you huodong ba. RENJIA probably have appointments Par ‘A: She might have an appointment.’ (Huang, 2004: 78-79) In (12), Speaker A uses renjia to refer to a particular person, Jiang Yi-cheng, mentioned in the discourse. As remarked by Huang (2004), although the third-person pronoun ta ‘s/he’ or tamen ‘they’ has the same function as the referential renjia, the meaning of the referential renjia is not equal to ta/tamen, since the former further reveals the speaker’s ‘remote social distance’ with the intended referent. By using the referential renjia, the speaker can create two social groups in the discourse interactions: WE (the speaker and addressee) and THE OTHER (renjia). Vague renjia refers to an individual or a group which is only specific in the speaker’s mind but is not identified to the addressee(s), as in (13). (13) B: Eh women daodi yao-bu-yao jiao nage… Par we in_fact want_not_want pay that shuqi zhusufei a. summer stay_fee Par ‘B: Eh, do we eventually have to pay the summer accommodation fee?’ A: Ta you kou a. s/he have deduct Par ‘A: S/he deducted that (from our account).’ B: Daoshihou mei jiao bei renjia gan chuqu. till_then no pay BEI RENJIA chase out ‘B: I may be kicked out if I did not pay.’ (Huang, 2004: 78) In (13), the pronominal renjia may refer to a group of people who are in charge of the accommodation fee in the school. Even though the speaker does not specify the referents, he. 16.

(29) expects the addressees to know whom s/he is talking about in the given context. Impersonal renjia refers to a generic group of people outside the discourse. This is similar to the interpretation of bieren ‘others’ or existential you-ren ‘have-people, as in (14). The speaker used the impersonal renjia to refer to anyone who is asking for help. (14) Youdeshihou renjia lai wen wo, bifangshuo sometimes RENJIA come ask I for_example ta gen wo shuo, eh wo… s/he to I say Par I nage men da bu kai. that door open not open ‘Sometimes people come to me. For instance s/he says to me, ‘I cannot open the door.’’ (Huang, 2004: 77). Self-positioning renjia refers to the speaker himself, that is, the first person ‘I’ in the conversation. Huang (2004) claims that when the speaker wants to make a request, a complaint or an apology to the addressee, the use of self-positioning renjia can avoid threatening the addressee’s face. The speaker also can mitigate face-to-face confrontation, making his request more indirect and less assertive, as in (15).. (15) A: Ni huibuhui pa laibuji? You will_not_will be_afraid late ‘A: Are you afraid that you will be late?’ B: keshi zhege yin haishi yao lu a. Ni yijing but this voice still want record Par you already daying renjia. promise RENJIA ‘B: But we still have to record the voice (conversation). You have promised me.’ (Huang, 2004: 84). Huang (2004) also demonstrates the idea of perspectivization of renjia with Langacker’s (1990) and Traugott’s (1999) theories of subjectification and intersubjectivication. Based on 17.

(30) these theories, the use of impersonal renjia can be seen as a strategy to express the speaker’s personal, subjective belief. (16) Wo shi juede ta you yi-xie jingli, yinggai hui I be feel s/he have some experience suppose will rang renjia you yi-xie xiaxiang ba. let RENJIA have some fancy Par ‘I think she has some experience, which makes others (implying me) draw some negative impression.’ (Huang, 2004: 83) In (16), although the antecedent of renjia is ostensibly a generic group of people, the context in fact reveals a self-centered evaluation by the speaker. To conclude, Huang (2004) uses face-to-face conversations to discuss different referencing functions of the pronominal renjia. She also focuses on pragmatic factors influencing its interpretations and perspective shifts in different contexts. However, with regard to the referential renjia in her classification adopted from Kitagawa and Lehrer (1990), it seems confusing in terms of her definition. A referential noun phrase in fact can be definite or indefinite (Li & Thompson, 1981). In addition, the vague renjia and the impersonal renjia only show subtle differences since both of them are non-specific. Therefore, from the acquisitional perspective, conflating them into one type will be more desirable.. 2.1.4 Wang (2006) Wang (2006) investigates the semantic, discourse and socio-pragmatic functions of personal pronouns in Mandarin Chinese. She starts with identifying the members of Mandarin personal pronouns and proposes that the so-called ‘indefinite pronouns’ such as dajia ‘everybody,’ renjia ‘others,’ bieren ‘others,’ ren ‘people,’ as well as the zero pronoun should be regarded as parts of the system of personal pronouns. Based on Wang, the indefinite pronouns do not have definite referents because they are. 18.

(31) quantitative, bearing universal or partitive properties. In addition, the referents of indefinite pronouns can be singular or plural, as in (17).. (17) Yong zhihui lai bang ren, na shi wuxian-de. use wisdom come help people that be unlimited ‘It is unlimited to help people by using the wisdom.’(Wang, 2006: 39) In (17), the indefinite pronoun ren ‘people’ in Wang’s classification can denote its partitive or universal meaning. Wang (2006) further distinguishes the canonical uses and non-canonical uses of indefinite pronouns. The canonical uses are typically indefinite, while the non-canonical uses are definite in the immediate deictic domain. Take the pronominal renjia as an example, its canonical use is when it refers to indefinite individual(s) or a collective of people, as in (18). In (18), the pronominal renjia is canonical since its referent(s) is indefinite.. (18) Renjia xuyao ni ti de zhengjian zai nail? RENJIA need you propose DE political_view at where ‘Where are the politics people want you to propose?’ (Wang, 2006: 42). The non-canonical use of the pronominal renjia, on the contrary, is generally definite and deictic, referring to a particular person, as in (19).. (19) Ni weisheme ba renjiai nong ku? Tai dou ku-le, you why BA RENJIA make cry She all cry-Asp ni hai bu chengren. you still not commit ‘Why did you make her cry; She has already been crying, but you still have not committed it.’ (Wang, 2006: 41) In (19), the pronominal renjia refers to the third-person pronoun ta ‘she’ in deictic. 19.

(32) domain. In addition, Wang mentions renjia can have a ‘specific’ interpretation, as in (20), when the referent is known to the speaker but unknown to the addressee. (20) A: Wo jintian bei renjia beipan. I today BEI RENJIA betray ‘A: I was betrayed today.’ B: Weisheme bei beipan? Why BEI betray ‘B: why were you betrayed?’ A: Yinwei you ren bu shou xinyong. Because have person not keep promise ‘A: It is because someone did not keep his words.’ (Wang, 2006: 41) In general, Wang (2006) makes distinctions between the canonical and non-canonical uses of the pronominal renjia and especially discusses the ‘specific’ interpretation of it. Nevertheless, a more detailed categorization is still needed.. 2.1.5 Summary In this section, four studies on the interpretations of the pronominal renjia have been reviewed. First, the pronominal renjia can be definite (Wang, 2006) and specific (Liu, 2001), referring to a first-person pronoun, a second-person singular pronoun2, or a third-person pronoun (Chiu, 2000; Huang, 2004; Liu, 2001; Wang, 2006). On the contrary, it also can have indefinite (Wang, 2006) and non-specific (Liu, 2001) interpretations. The vague and impersonal renjia discussed in Huang (2004) also presents indefinite or generic interpretations of it. However, it is challenging to adopt the above-mentioned classification to examine children’s comprehension and production of this pronominal, since their grammar is. 2. Liu (2000) points out that the pronominal renjia seldom can be a second person pronoun. Although Chiu (2001) provides examples that renjia can refer to the addressee, the situations are rare in modern Chinese. Therefore, the present study excludes the second person pronoun in the interpretations of the pronominal renjia. 20.

(33) generally simple. Thus, in order to reduce the acquisition burden, a general explanatory categorization is necessary.. 2.2 Previous Studies of Referential Expressions in Acquisition How children acquire the intricate referential system has been the interest of linguists studying child language acquisition. In this section, two studies on the L1 acquisition of personal pronouns in English and French (Millogo, 2005; Schneider & Dubé, 1997) are reviewed; the study of the L1 acquisition on pronominal interpretations in Mandarin Chinese (Huang, 2011) and the research on the L2 acquisition of the pronominal renjia in Mandarin Chinese (Wei, 2001) are discussed as well.. 2.2.1 Schneider & Dubé (1997) Schneider & Dubé (1997) attempted to investigate the effects of pictorial versus oral story presentation of children’s referential adequacy. It has been generally reported that older children used a higher percentage of adequate referring expressions than younger children in terms of reference introduction and reference maintenance when they retell the stories. They began with presenting three factors which were claimed to have influence on children’s mastery of referential expressions. Firstly, story complexity was a factor affecting children’s production of adequate reference. Simple stories were found easier than complex ones for children at a young age (Hickmann & Schneider, 1993). Even 7-8 aged children (Hickmann, 1982) or adolescents would find it difficult with complex stories (Schneider, 1984). The second factor was said to be mutual knowledge between the one telling the story and the one listening to it. Children performed better and used more correct references if they knew that the listener did not have any ideas about the story before story retelling. The third factor was the way that stories were presented. In this experiment, three conditions: the pictures-only condition, oral-with-pictures 21.

(34) condition, and oral-only condition were compared. The subjects were 44 children whose first language was English. Twenty-two children (9 boys, 13 girls) were from kindergarten and 22 children were from grade two in the Edmonton Public School District. The mean age of the younger group was 5.58 years and that of the older group was 7.81 years. Three stories were designed for the three presentation conditions, but they were randomly presented to each subject. In the pictorial conditions, five pictures were made up for a story from the book Oops by Mercer Mayer (1977). Each story consisted of the same main character (female), and the secondary character (male) was different in three stories. The oral condition of the stories contained each story grammar (SG) unit as presented in Stein & Glenn (1979). The length and difficulty of the stories were controlled. During the story-telling section, the listener sat behind a screen so that she could not see the pictures presented on the screen in the pictures-only and oral-with-pictures conditions. A two-way ANOVA with repeated measures revealed a significant interaction between the number of referring expressions for the three conditions and two grade levels (F [2, 42] = 3.58, p = 0.032). Post hoc LSD tests with Bonferroni correction further indicated that children from grade two used more referential expressions in the oral-only and the oral-with-pictures conditions than in the picture-only condition (p = 0.001 and p = 0.009, respectively). The performances of the kindergarten children were similar in the three presentation types. With regard to the overall adequacy, the results presented a main effect for the presentation type (F [2.84] = 6.81, p < 0.002) and for the grade level (F [1, 42] = 14.35, p < 0.001). A significant interaction was also obtained (F [2, 42] = 3.14, p = 0.048). Moreover, there was no significant difference between the oral-only and oral-with-pictures condition for both groups, implying that regardless of the presence of pictures, the children used referential expressions more adequately when the stories were orally presented. One of the most frequent inadequate expressions was the wrong use of pronouns for subsequent mentions. Both groups used pronouns for the main character more often than the 22.

(35) secondary character, consistent with the assumption of the thematic subject strategy adopted by the children during the story retelling in the orally-presented conditions.. 2.2.2 Wei (2001) Wei (2001) conducted an empirical study of the acquisition of the pronominal renjia in Mandarin by Japanese and English students who were learning Chinese as the second language in Taiwan. The purpose was to investigate whether different referential interpretations, referential directions and referential constraints on the pronominal renjia would cause learning difficulties for L2 learners. First, Wei (2001) classified the referential interpretations of the pronominal renjia into two types: the pronominal renjia with a single interpretation and that with multiple interpretations in sentences. The referential directions (forward and backward), referential constraints in terms of the distribution (i.e., subject or object), referring saliency, and the blocking effects by verbs were all examined. Two groups of subjects were included in this study: a group of English-speaking learners and a group of Japanese-speaking learners of Chinese in Mandarin Training Center (MTC) of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). A total of 40 subjects were taken into data analysis: 20 Japanese-speaking and 20 English-speaking learners. Most of them were intermediate learners. Only one learner of the Japanese group and two learners of the English group were at the advance level. Two tasks were designed to investigate the subjects’ comprehension of the pronominal renjia in Mandarin. In a grammaticality judgment task, the subjects were asked to select one or more than one appropriate referent for renjia in each question. A picture identification task was designed to further explore the subjects’ interpretations of renjia in contexts. A conversation with pictures was provided, and the subjects had to record their answers regarding the referent of renjia in the given contexts. In addition to answering the questions 23.

(36) from a third person’s point of view, the subjects were asked to play the role of the character in the conversation and select the answer again to see if the change of the subjects’ viewpoints would influence their interpretations of renjia. The results showed that both the English and Japanese groups performed better on the patterns with single interpretation for renjia. With respect to the distribution effect, when renjia occurred in the subject position, both groups found it easier to take an object than a subject as its referent. When it appeared in the object position, the English-speaking learners had difficulty referring renjia forward to an object as its referent, while the Japanese learners found it more difficult to refer renjia backward to an object as its referent. Overall, the subjects performed badly on the patterns with multiple interpretations for renjia. In addition, one-way ANOVA further showed that the change of verbs indeed significantly affected the subjects’ choice of appropriate referents for renjia in patterns with multiple readings. (F (1, 6) = 63.75 > F0.05 (1, 6), p = 0.04). What’s more, the results were consistent with the prediction that there was a hierarchy of referring saliency: 1st > 3rd > 2nd. With regard to the referential direction of renjia, the results of one-way ANOVA showed that there were no significant differences between forward and backward coreference in the sentences with a single reading in two experimental groups (F (1, 2) = 4.9680, p =1.556). As for the sentences in which the pronominal renjia can take either a forward or backward referent, both groups tended to select a forward rather than a backward referent. For the English-speaking learners of Chinese, L1 transfer seemed to be influential because those whose native language is right-branching tend to choose a forward referent. The results of the Japanese group, however, challenged the assumption of L1 transfer. A high percentage of forward than backward coreference was found in the Japanese group, contradicting with the directionality constraint. Finally, it was found that there was no significant difference between the subjects’ performances on the grammaticality judgment task and on the picture identification task. 24.

(37) 2.2.3 Millogo (2005) Millogo (2005) aimed to examine the combined effects of distance, thematization, and discourse focus by focusing on the 3rd person pronoun ‘il/elle’ (he, she, and it) of French in written production. The subjects were fifty-eight French children and they were classified into three groups according to their age: G1 (18 children aged from 7; 0 to 8; 0), G2 (20 children aged from 9; 0 to 10; 0), G3 (20 children aged from 11; 0 to 12; 0). A set of small texts were designed. Two protagonists with different syntactic functions (agent vs. patient) were introduced in the first sentence and the agent role was the only candidate to conduct the action in the test sentences. Each test sentence consisted of a blank for a missing anaphoric expression. The subjects needed to fill in the banks according to the texts provided. With regard to the first factor ‘Distance,’ the D1 level involved only one intermediate sentence between the introductory and test sentence, while D2 level contained four intermediate sentences. As for the second factor ‘Thematization,’ the T1 level was for ‘Thematized Agent role’ and T2 represented ‘Non-thematized Agent role.’ The third factor ‘Discourse focus’ was classified into Broken Focus (BF) and Maintained Focus (MF). In the BF, the focus was switched in the second sentence for the D1 level and the fourth sentence for the D2 level. Overall, with respect of the use of personal pronouns, a significant difference was found among the three age groups (F (2, 52) = 3.35, p < 0.04). The younger children scored lower than the older ones. Furthermore, the significant difference was found only between seven-year-olds and eleven-year-olds (F (1, 52) = 6.67, p < 0.02). No significances were found between the seven-year-olds and nine-year-olds (F (1, 52) =2.38, p > 0.12), and between nine-year-olds and eleven-year-olds (F (1.52)1.14, p < 0.28). Concerning the focus effect, the result showed no difference in the subjects’ use of personal pronouns. However, there was a significant difference between the long-distance condition and the short-distance condition. The children used more personal pronouns when the referential distance decreased. 25.

(38) With respect to the thematization of the grammatical subject effect, the use of personal pronouns decreased when the grammatical subject is not thematized. A significant difference was also found in the interaction Age × Focus (F (2, 52), p < 0.001). Further analyses showed that the effect of focus was only observed in G1 and G3. The children in G3 used more personal pronouns when the discourse focus was maintained, while those in G1 used more personal pronouns in the broken-focus texts. The interaction effect between age and the thematization factor was significant (F (2, 52) =3.37, p < 0.05), but it was found that only the children in G2 were influenced by the change of thematization (F (1, 52) = 16.45, p < 0.01). A triple interaction was found when three factors ‘Age,’ ‘Focus,’ and ‘Thematization’ interacted, but only the seven-year-olds showed a significance (F (1, 52) = 3.44, p < 0.07). As a whole, the children as young as the seven-year-olds have detected changes in the referential distance in written forms. The nine-year-old children behaved differently from the other age groups with respect to the effect of the thematization, since they put more emphasis on the thematization factor during their development of referential system in written production. Their use of personal pronouns increased when the agent role was thematized. On the contrary, the seven-year-olds and the eleven-year-olds both gave more weight to the situation with focalization in the intermediate sentence, but their performances were totally different. The seven-year-old children used more pronouns when the discourse focus was broken, while the nine-year-old children used more pronouns when the focalization remained. Millogo (2005) explained that the seven-year-old children seemed not to see personal pronouns as textual anaphors and that they just used them in an over-generalized manner. Unlike the seven-year-olds, the eleven-year-old children were able to make use of the gender information and decide an appropriate pronoun to achieve textual coherence. However, they did not pay much attention to the changes of thematization of the agent role.. 26.

(39) 2.2.4 Huang (2011) Huang (2011) aimed to investigate Chinese children’s acquisition of pronominal interpretations from the perspective of antecedent-pronoun relation. Her subjects were 80 children, aged from 3; 1 to 7; 10 and 16 Chinese adults. Concerning the tasks, two comprehension tasks (picture-identification task with/without a rich context, PIC task; PI task) and one production task (imitation task, IM task) were employed. Five patterns were examined including (1) antecedent in S position & pronominal in S position (SS), (2) antecedent in S position & pronominal in O position (SO), (3) antecedent in O position & pronominal in S position (OS), (4) antecedent in O position & pronominal in O position (OO), and (5) antecedent in possessor position (Poss). These five types were further divided into twelve subpatterns with regard to the possible antecedent–pronoun coreference. For instance, ACs2-PC1 stands for the subpattern in which the antecedent is in the subordinate clause and the pronoun is in the main clause. The test sentence is like (21).. (21) Ruguo laoshu dapo chuanhu, ta hui shoushang. if mouse break window he will hurt ‘If the mouse breaks the window, he will get hurt.’ (Huang, 2011: 129). The results are as follows: First, a significant difference was found among the six age groups in three types (the S type, F (5, 90) = 23.528, p < .001; the O type, F (5, 90) = 24.295, p < .001; the Poss type, F (5, 90) = 18.203, p < .001). There was a tendency of S > O > Poss according to the position of the antecedent. With regard to the differences in the main pattern, all the groups performed better on SO than SS (G1, M = 0.36 > 0.34; G2, M = 0.40 > 0.34; G3, M = 0.50 > 0.38; G4, M = 0.47 > 0.44, G5, M = 0.60 > 0.51; G6, M = 0.77 > 0.67 in the S type) and OS than OO (G1, M = 0.38 > 0.33; G2, M = 0.40 > 0.29; G3, M = 0.39 > 0.34; G4, M = 0.47 > 0.39, G5, M = 0.56 > 0.45; G6, M = 0.71 > 0.62 in the O type). With respect to the clausal effects, the children performed better on the complement clause than the 27.

(40) adjunct clause (G1, M = 0.40 > 0.34; G2, M = 0.42 > 0.32; G3, M = 0.45 > 0.39; G4, M = 0.50 > 0.41, G5, M = 0.55 > 0.52). The children aged 7 to 8 had acquired adult-like interpretations in the complement clauses. With regard to the minimal-distance principle influencing the subjects’ pronominal interpretations, the results showed that there was no significant difference in the subjects’ performances on the short-distance and long-distance types for all age groups (G1, F (1, 30) =0.003, p >.05; G2, F (1,30) =1.092, p > .05; G3, F (1,30) =0.185, p > .05: G4, F (1,30) = 0.003, p > .05; G5, F (1,30) =1.565, p > .05; G6, F (1,30) =0.459, p > .05). Considering the differences between backward and forward coreference, it was found that backward coreference was accepted by both the children and the adults, though the children performed better on forward than backward coreference, and the adult showed an opposite tendency (G1, M = 0.36 > 0.30; G2, M = 0.35 > 0.32; G3, M = 0.42 > 0.38; G4, M = 0.46 > 0.39, G5, M = 0.53 > 0.51; G6, M = 0.76 < 0.68). This supports the proposal that backward coreference is exhibited in Chinese (Huang, 1982; Kao, 1993). Moreover, the results showed that all the age groups did better in the PIC task than the PI task because the children had difficulty understanding the ambiguous reading in the PI task (G1, M = 0.54 > 0.26; G2, M = 0.62 > 0.16; G3, M = 0.75 > 0.13; G4, M = 0.76 > 0.17, G5, M = 0.86 > 0.11; G6, M = 0.94 > 0.22.) Compared the results in the comprehension and production tasks, it was found that the latter posed more problem for the younger children (G1, M = 0.40 > 0.34; G2, M = 0.39 > 0.32; G3, M = 0.44 > 0.38; G4, M = 0.46 > 0.45). The older children and adults performed significantly better on the production task than on the two comprehension tasks (G5, F (1, 30) =18.743, p <.001; G6, F (1, 30) =135.548, p < .001). In general, age influenced the interpretations of pronominal coreference. According to Huang, the children aged three to five had not yet been able to interpret pronouns well. Age five to seven seemed to be a transitional stage of the acquisition of pronouns since the children aged seven to eight significantly outperformed the younger children. Therefore, 28.

(41) Huang’s findings showed that age six might be critical for children to acquire pronominal coreference in Chinese.. 2.2.5 Summary Although so far there have not been any studies on the L1 acquisition of the pronominal renjia in Mandarin Chinese, the similarities observed among these studies still serve as the basis of the present study. Generally speaking, most results of the previous studies have showed that children’s comprehension and production of referential expressions improved with ages (Huang, 2011; Millogo, 2005; Schneider & Dubé, 1997). It has also been claimed by Huang (2011) that the age of six is a critical stage for the children’s acquisition of pronominal coreference, while Millogo (2005) has found that children’s referential adequacy in written texts is a late development, and that would continue to the age of eleven. In addition, factors influencing the subjects’ responses to pronominal expressions were story complexity, mutual knowledge, and the presentation way in the oral production task (Schneider & Dubé, 1997), effects of distance, thematization of subjects, and discourse focus in the written production task (Millogo, 2005), and ambiguous interpretations in contexts, antecedent-pronoun relation, clausal type, referential direction and antecedent types in the comprehension tasks as well as the oral production task (Huang, 2011). Although Millogo (2005) argued that effects of distance played an important role in influencing children’s pronominal acquisition, Huang (2011) argued for little influence of the distance effects. The L2 study on the pronominal renjia by Wei (2001) has been a big step toward the acquisition of indefinite pronouns in Mandarin Chinese. Factors affecting L2 learners’ interpretations of renjia involve the differences between single and multiple interpretations, referential direction, referent types, the antecedent-pronoun relation, referring saliency, and blocking effects by verbs. As for limitations of these studies, first, only one production task was employed in most 29.

(42) studies, so the task design was imbalanced (i.e., Millogo, 2005; Schneider & Dubé, 1997). Moreover, the purposes of the two studies were different; one was to examine children’s referencing ability in story retelling, and the other was to investigate children’s referential adequacy in written texts. Thus, it is hard to make a generalization of children’s acquisition of referential expressions. Although Wei (2001) employed two tasks to test L2 learners’ acquisition of the pronominal renjia in Mandarin Chinese, both of which were comprehension tasks. With only one type of task, it is unlikely for Wei to gain further understanding of learners’ performance on the production of the pronominal renjia. In addition, there are some inadequacies about grouping of subjects in these studies. The range of the subjects’ age in Schneider & Dubé’s (1997) study is too big (G1: 5.02 ~ 6.10, G2: 7.08 ~ 8.61), with an interval of almost two years. In Wei (2001), most of her subjects were at the intermediate level, which is hard to see the L2 learners’ developmental progress, not to mention that she did not recruit a group of native controls. Table 2-1 summarizes the major findings and limitations of the four empirical studies reviewed in this section:. 30.

(43) Table 2-1 Major Findings and Limitations of the Previous Studies Major Findings. Limitations. Schneider & Dubé (1997). 1. Performance: (1) Grade 2 (7.08-8.61) > kindergarten children (5.02-6.10). (2) better in oral-only and oral-with-pictures 2. Factors: the presentation way. 1. employed a production task 2. a big interval of groupings. Wei (2001). 1. Performance: (1) better in single interpretations; more forward > backward coreference (2) no task effects 2. Factors: ambiguous interpretations, the antecedent-pronoun relation, referent types, referential directions, referring saliency, and blocking effects by verbs. 1. employed two comprehension tasks 2. mostly intermediatelevel subjects involved. Millogo (2005). 1. Performance: (1) 11-year-olds > 9-year-olds > 7-year-olds (2) more personal pronouns when the referential distance is short 2. Factors: effects of distance, thematization, and discourse focus. 1. employed a written production 2. only 3rd-person pronouns examined. Huang (2011). 1. Performance: (1) 7-year-olds > 3-, 4-, 5-, 6- year-olds; critical points: age 6 (2) harder in ambiguous readings; more forward > backward coreference by children 2. Factors: ambiguous interpretations, the antecedent-pronoun relation, clausal types, referential directions, and antecedent types. 1. recruited children aged up to 7 years old 2. only 3rd-person pronouns examined. 31.

(44) 2.3 A New Classification of the Pronominal Renjia in Chinese Based on the previous studies, a revised classification will be proposed in this section. To begin with, interpretations of the pronominal renjia can be classified into two types: a single interpretation and multiple interpretations (cf. Wei, 2001). Each type can be further divided into two subtypes: forward and backward coreference with regard to its referential direction (cf. Huang, 2011; Wei, 2001). In addition, the referent types can affect the possible coreference (cf. Chiu, 2000; Huang, 2004; Liu, 2001; Wang, 2006; Wei 2001).. Type 1: A Single Interpretation In this type, the pronominal renjia only refers to one interpretable referent. The interpretation can be a first-person, a second-person, a third-person pronouns or an indefinite individual (Chiu, 2000; Huang, 2004; Liu, 2001; Wang, 2006). It can also refer to a generic group of people in the universe (Huang, 2004; Liu, 2001). (22) Nii zhe yang xiao woj, renjia*i/j hui bu-hao-yi-si de. you this kind laugh I RENJIA will embarrassed Par ‘Do not laugh at me this way; I will feel embarrassed.’ (Wei, 2001: 49) In (22), the pronominal renjia has only one interpretation, referring back to the first-person pronoun wo ‘I’ in the previous sentence. This example is also used by Wei (2001) in her study of L2 learners’ interpretations of the pronominal renjia in Chinese. According to the relative position and the anaphoric relation of the antecedent and pronominal, the referential directions, namely forward and backward, are also taken into account in the present of the pronominal renjia.. Type 1-1 Forward Coreference Sentence (23) is an example of forward coreference.. 32.

(45) (23) Tameni liangdian-ban dao, nij sidian lai, liu chu they two_ thirty arrive you four_o’clock come leave out shi-jian lai xian rang renjiai hao hao xu xu. time come first let RENJIA good good talk talk ‘They will arrive at 2:30, and you come at 4. Leave them some time to get together and chat.’ (Chiu, 2000: 66) The only interpretable referent in (23) is taman ‘they,’ which appears in sentence initial position. The pronominal renjia refers back to the third-person pronoun in the previous sentence. Under the category of forward coreference with a single interpretation for renjia, there are two subtypes according to the referent of it: one is with a specific referent, and the other is with a non-specific referent.. Type 1-1-1 RENJIA referring to a specific antecedent When the pronominal renjia is specific, it refers to an antecedent which is clearly specified in the context. Huang (2004) use the term ‘referential renjia’ to label this type, which generally refers back to a person or some people who are specific in the previous discourse. Liu (2001) also classifies the pronominal renjia based on whether it refers to a specific or a non-specific antecedent. (24) Nii qiao bu guan womenj zhe de ren, ye You see not accustomed we here DE person also yong-bu-zhao zheme yunong renjia*i/j does_not_need this_way cheat RENJIA ‘Although you feel disgusted about us, you still should not cheat us.’ (Chiu 2000: 67). In (24), the pronominal renjia refers to the first-person pronoun women ‘we,’ which is a specific antecedent preceding it. In addition, the pronominal renjia can refer to a specific third-person R-expression in the 33.

以中文為母語的兒童詮釋稱代詞「人家」之 實證研究

以中文為母語的兒童詮釋稱代詞「人家」之實證研究