Source of Individuation in Mandarin Chinese, a Classifier Language

Sources of Individuation in Mandarin Chinese, a Classifier Language * Pierina Cheung a, Peggy Li b, and David Barner c aDepartment of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3. bDepartment of Psychology, Harvard University, 25 Francis Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. cDepartment of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109 pierina.cheung@utoronto.ca, pegs@wjh.harvard.edu, barner@ucsd.edu Abstract. When presented with an entity (e.g., a wooden honey-dipper) labeled with a novel noun, how does a listener know that the noun refers to an instance of an object kind (honey-dipper) rather than to a substance kind (wood)? While English speakers draw upon count-mass syntax for clues to the noun’s meaning, linguists have proposed that classifier languages, which lack count-mass syntax, provide other syntactic cues. Three experiments tested Mandarin-speakers’ sensitivity to the diminutive suffix -zi and the general classifier ge when interpreting novel nouns. Experiment 1 found that -zi occurs more frequently with nouns that denote object kinds. Experiment 2 demonstrated Mandarin-speaking adults’ sensitivity to ge and -zi when inferring novel word meanings. Experiment 3 tested Mandarin three- to six-year-olds’ sensitivity to ge. We discuss differences in the developmental course of these cues relative to cues in English, and the impact of this difference to children’s understanding of individuation. Keywords: individuation, numeral classifiers, Mandarin –zi morpheme, mass-count syntax. 1. Introduction Language allows us to express different perspectives towards things in the world. For example, a single object, like a wooden table, can be described both as a table (i.e., a kind of object), and as some wood (i.e., a kind of material). The ways in which these perspectives are expressed, however, differs from language to language, leading some to claim that speakers of different language may think differently about objects in the world (Lucy, 1992; Imai & Gentner, 1997; Quine 1960). This paper contributes to this debate by probing the representation and development of syntactic cues to individuation in Mandarin Chinese. In English, a distinction can be made between count nouns and mass nouns. Typically, words like dog, table and idea are used as count nouns, and refer to kinds of things that have “atomic structure”, with “atoms” or “individuals” that come in natural units for counting. When hearing one of these words (e.g., dogs), we know that it refers to a quantity of discrete, naturally bounded individuals, and not some arbitrary portions thereof (e.g., pieces of dog). In contrast, mass syntax does not specify individuation (see Bloom 1994; Gordon 1988; Link 1983). Mass nouns can refer to unindividuated stuff like water, wood, and fun, or to sets of individuals like * Thank you to Frankie Chen for his help with preparing the word list in Experiment 1. Thank you also to Becky Huang and Xiaowen Xu for their help with data collection in Taipei, Taiwan. We are grateful to the parents and children who participated, and to the daycares and preschools in Taipei for their support and help with recruitment. This work was supported …

Content truncated to 500 words