Revisiting Subject–Object Asymmetry in the Production of Cantonese Relative Clauses: Evidence From Elicited Production in 3-Year-Olds

Abstract

Emergentist approaches to language acquisition identify a core role for language-specific experience and give primacy to other factors like function and domain-general learning mechanisms in syntactic development. This directly contrasts with a nativist structurally oriented approach, which predicts that grammatical development is guided by Universal Grammar and that structural factors constrain acquisition. Cantonese relative clauses (RCs) offer a good opportunity to test these perspectives because its typologically rare properties decouple the roles of frequency and complexity in subject- and object-RCs in a way not possible in European languages. Specifically, Cantonese object RCs of the classifier type are frequently attested in children’s linguistic experience and are isomorphic to frequent and early-acquired simple SVO transitive clauses, but according to formal grammatical analyses Cantonese subject RCs are computationally less demanding to process. Thus, the two opposing theories make different predictions: the emergentist approach predicts a specific preference for object RCs of the classifier type, whereas the structurally oriented approach predicts a subject advantage. In the current study we revisited this issue. Eighty-seven monolingual Cantonese children aged between 3;2 and 3;11 (Mage: 3;6) participated in an elicited production task designed to elicit production of subject- and object- RCs. The children were very young and most of them produced only noun phrases when RCs were elicited. Those (nine children) who did produce RCs produced overwhelmingly more object RCs than subject RCs, even when animacy cues were controlled. The majority of object RCs produced were the frequent classifier-type RCs. The findings concur with our hypothesis from the emergentist perspectives that input frequency and formal and functional similarity to known structures guide acquisition.

Relative clause comprehension in Cantonese-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder

“…Thus, in the RC theories discussed, experience-based frequency effects including support from simpler, known constructions are directly applicable within the domain-general framework (e.g. [7,14,40]). O'Grady's emergentist approach [19] highlights two additional relevant factors among the RC acquisition/processing theories discussed, namely, general subject prominence and the linear distance effects, that interact to contribute to processing cost While the existence of hierarchical representations is assumed in the Dependency Locality Theory [17,18], the domain-general emergentist account does not make such an assumption but rather considers the linear distance effects (in terms of intervening elements) as simply postponing the resolution of filler-gap dependency, which invokes greater working memory burden [19].…”

“…Chinese languages like Cantonese and Mandarin attest a typologically rare combination of SVO word order with relative clauses preceding the head noun [58,59], with this unique word order property resulting in some processing factors favoring subject RCs while others favoring object RCs [37]. While Cantonese and Mandarin RCs are similar in word order configurations, there are characteristics unique to Cantonese RCs that further impact processing demands (see [14,37] for a discussion of similarities and differences between Cantonese and Mandarin). The current study focused on Cantonese RCs and aimed to test the contrasting theoretical predictions of the domain-specific versus domain-general approaches to explaining RC acquisition and processing in Cantonese-speaking children with and without DLD.…”

“…More recently, studies have focused on RC acquisition in East Asian languages, many of which have prenominal RCs. In contrast to the work on languages with post-nominal RCs, which attests a robust SRC advantage, acquisition studies in languages like Japanese [ 11 , 12 ], Mandarin [ 13 ] and Cantonese [ 14 , 15 ] paint a more complex picture, with studies frequently reporting either an ORC advantage or no difference. It is therefore important to study typologically diverse languages to examine how language-specific effects manifest in acquisition.…”

“…Lau [ 64 ] reported a SRC-over-ORC advantage in a picture-based character identification task testing RC comprehension by children aged 3;0–5;11, but no SRC/ORC advantage in elicited production from children aged 4;0–5;10. However, Chan et al [ 14 ] recently reported a robust ORC-over-SRC advantage using elicited production from Cantonese three-year-olds; while Chan et al [ 65 ] found a significant ORC advantage in CL RCs but SRC advantage in ge3 RCs in four-year-old Cantonese-speaking children’s online comprehension. Taken together, these mixed findings call for a theoretical account that can explain these variations observed.…”

Logophoricity, Perspective, and Reflexives

“…Originally, research on perspectival reflexives in Japanese and English seems to have developed independently of research on logophoric pronouns in West African languages. However, these two lines of research quickly merged and gave rise to many crosslinguistic studies on the perspectival properties of (exempt) reflexives, which came to be known as logophoric [e.g., studies by Napoli (1979) and Giorgi (2006Giorgi ( , 2007 on Italian; von Bremen (1984) on Marathi and Swedish; Kameyama (1984) and Kishida (2011) on Japanese; Nichols (1985) on Chechen and Ingush; Yu (1992Yu ( , 1996 and Huang & Liu (2001) on Mandarin; Jayaseelan (1998) on Malayalam; Amritavalli (2000) on Kannada; Hestvik & Philip (2001) and Strahan (2003) on Norwegian; Kornfilt (2001) on Turkish and Major & Ozkan (2018) on Turkish and Uyghur; Sundaresan (2012Sundaresan ( , 2018 on Tamil; Rakósi (2013) on Hungarian; Chan (2017) on Cantonese; Solberg (2017) on Latin]. To give one example, several studies of the Icelandic reflexive sig reveal its perspectival properties.…”