Classifiers as Count Syntax: Individuation and Measurement in the Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

The distinction between mass nouns (e.g., butter) and count nouns (e.g., table) offers a test case for asking how the syntax and semantics of natural language are related, and how children exploit syntax-semantics mappings when acquiring language. Virtually no studies have examined this distinction in classifier languages (e.g., Mandarin Chinese) due to the widespread assumption that such languages lack mass-count syntax. However, Cheng and Sybesma (1998) argue that Mandarin encodes the mass-count at the classifier level: classifiers can be categorized as “mass-classifiers” or “count-classifiers.” Mass and count classifiers differ in semantic interpretation and occur in different syntactic constructions. The current study is first an empirical test of Cheng and Sybesma's hypothesis, and second, a test of the acquisition of putative mass and count classifiers by children learning Mandarin. Experiments 1 and 2 asked whether count-classifiers select individuals and whether mass classifiers select portions of stuff or groups of individual things. Adult Mandarin-speakers indeed showed this pattern of interpretation, while 4- to 6-year-olds had not fully mastered the distinction. Experiment 3 tested participants' syntactic sensitivity by asking them to match two syntactic constructions (one that supported the mass or portion reading and one that did not) to two contrasting choices (a portion of an object and a whole object). A developmental trend in syntactic knowledge was observed: adults were near perfect and the older children were more likely than the younger children to correctly match the contrasting phrases to their corresponding referents. Thus, in three experiments we find support for Cheng and Sybesma's analysis, but also that children master the syntax and semantics of Mandarin classifiers much later than English-speaking children acquire knowledge of the English mass-count distinction.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Rosie Williams for constructing the stimuli and piloting Experiment 1, and Eva Xia for constructing Experiment 3 stimuli. We thank Yi-ting Huang for suggestions on how to run Experiments 1 and 2. Huang, Snedeker, & Spelke (2004) inspired our adaptation of Chien, Lust, & Chiang (2003). Special thanks also goes to C. -T. James Huang, Susan Carey, and members of her laboratory for discussions on classifiers and mass-count syntax. Thanks to Toko Univeristy, LinShen Elementary School Kindergarten, JiaDian Kindergarten, TseKuan Kindergarten, ChenHsin Kindergarten, and KuangFu Preschool for allowing us to test at their schools. This research was funded in part by an NRSA NIH post-doctoral fellowship to Peggy Li (#F32HD043532).

Notes

¹To be precise, only a restricted set of adjectives may modify mass classifiers. Specifically, following Hoekstra (1988), only adjectives (e.g., da – big, xiao – small, man – full, zheng – whole, chang – long, etc.) that modify the abstracted function of a container may modify the mass classifiers. Additionally, the mass classifiers must be container-based and not exact measures (e.g., bang – pound).

²The almost significant Classifier Type difference could be attributed to the particular classifiers chosen for the study. Participants might have sometimes opted to select the non-shape matching non-solids when given mass classifiers, dui (pile) and tuan (wad/ball), for two reasons. First, perhaps the two classifiers' shape requirements overlap. What is a pile is sometimes acceptable to some as a wad, and vice versa. Second, what is acceptable in shape as a dui (pile) or a tuan (wad) is less stringent in comparison to what is acceptable as a gen (rod) or a pian (slice), the two count classifiers.

³There are some exceptions. In a footnote, Cheng and Sybesma (1998) pointed out that some speakers of Mandarin are willing to accept limited instances of adjectives modifying count classifiers as being grammatical (e.g., yi da tiao yu, or “one big CL fish.”). The grammaticality judgment relies on the availability of the substance reading provided by the noun (i.e. “fish meat”).