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Children's use of phonological information in ambiguity resolution : a view from Mandarin Chinese

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/184936

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Title: Children's use of phonological information in ambiguity resolution : a view from Mandarin Chinese
Related: Journal of child language, Vol. 39, Issue 4, (2012), p.687-730
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000911000249
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 2012
Author/Creator: Zhou, Peng
Author/Creator: Su, Yi (Esther)
Author/Creator: Crain, Stephen
Author/Creator: Gao, Liqun
Author/Creator: Zhan, Likan
Description: How do children develop the mapping between prosody and other levels of linguistic knowledge? This question has received considerable attention in child language research. In the present study two experiments were conducted to investigate four- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to prosody in ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 used eye-tracking to assess children's use of stress in resolving structural ambiguities. Experiment 2 took advantage of special properties of Mandarin to investigate whether children can use intonational cues to resolve ambiguities involving speech acts. The results of our experiments show that children's use of prosodic information in ambiguity resolution varies depending on the type of ambiguity involved. Children can use prosodic information more effectively to resolve speech act ambiguities than to resolve structural ambiguities. This finding suggests that the mapping between prosody and semantics/pragmatics in young children is better established than the mapping between prosody and syntax.
Description: 44 page(s)
Resource Type: journal article
Organisation: Macquarie University. Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science
Organisation: Macquarie University. Dept. of Linguistics

Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/184936
Identifier: ISSN:0305-0009
Identifier: mq_res-ext-2-s2.0-84864548341
Language: eng
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