The Acquisition of Relative Clauses by Cantonese Children: An Experimental Approach

This dissertation, "The Acquisition of Relative Clauses by Cantonese Children: an Experimental Approach" by Elaine, Lau, 劉綺雯, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled "The Acquisition of Relative Clauses by Cantonese Children: an experimental approach" Submitted by Elaine Lau for the degree of Master of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in June 2006 Chinese, as an head-initial language with prenominal relative clauses, is of particular interest to theories of processing and acquisition. Contrary to the subject advantage found in other languages, several theories predict an advantage (for both acquisition and processing) for object-extracted relative clauses (RCs) over subject-extracted RCs in Chinese. On the other hand, some accounts maintain a universal subject advantage across languages. Two experiments were conducted to examine the production and comprehension of relative clauses by Cantonese monolingual children aged 4 to 6. In addition to adopting the prototypical test sentences as used in research on relative clauses, this study incorporates relative clauses in copular constructions, with the intention of lowering the processing demands as suggested by Diessel and Tomasello (2005). Results from both tasks showed the best performance with subject-relatives, followed by agent- and patient-relatives, forming a hierarchy with significant differences, while performance on indirect object-, oblique- and genitive-relatives varied markedly between tasks. This accords with the developmental predictions derived from Keenan and Comrie's (1977) Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy, thus reinforcing its universality. Children's erroneous responses suggest that canonical word order is not so much a cue used by children to process RCs, but rather misleads them to interpret them as main clauses (MCs). Relative clauses in copular constructions are found to be less demanding than relative clauses in main clause constructions, giving support to Diessel and Tomasello (2005)'s claims. A developmental trend is observed, with elder children aged 5;0-6;1 having better performance than young children aged 4;0-4;11. The discrepancy in performance between comprehension and production demonstrates the dissimilarity of the two processes. However, the combined role of the two processes in revealing the breadth of linguistic knowledge and proficiency in linguistic skills of children is maintained. DOI: 10.5353/th_b3723334 Subjects: Cantonese dialects - Relative clauses Language acquisition Preschool children - China - Hong Kong - Language