Sentential complements in Mandarin over age: On thinking falsely

• In Event: 3-037 - Syntactic Development in Mandarin-Speaking Children

Integrative Statement

Sentential complements are predictors of false belief reasoning in English (de Villiers & de Villiers, 2000), but not in Mandarin (Tardif, So & Kaciroti; Mo, So, Sabbagh & Xiu, 2014). Studies suggest that the lexical verb yiwei (think falsely) might instead be linked to false belief understanding (Tardif & Wellman, 2000).
In Mandarin, tense marking is absent, as are complementizers like that. Perhaps children treat complements like adjuncts, where the attached proposition is considered true. In Mandarin, the wh question remains in its place in the phrase structure. The Mandarin speaker must reconstruct the wh-question under the scope of both verbs, but only when a complement is involved. Yet the developmental studies have used the wh-complement test from English, asking e.g.
1) Gege shuo tang li you shenme?
Uncle say soup in has what?
what did the uncle say he has in his soup?
Piecing data together from various reports, correct understanding of type 1) appears later than in English (Mo et al, 2014; Tardif & Wellman, 2000). The average number correct at 4.5 years was >50% in Mo et al, but 85% in our work with low income US children at the same age and on the same task.
The current study uses data from a new assessment test, DREAM, that allows us to track understanding in Mandarin from the ages of 2;6 to 7;11: N =715, stratified by age and parental education. The test contained 8 examples like 1), 6 with the verb say (shuo) and two with think-falsely (yiwei). An example is given in Figure 1.
Figure 2 shows the growth with age in correctly answering say and think-falsely. There is no significant advantage of think-falsely overall (F(1,696)= 1.7, n.s.). However there is a significant interaction of verb type and age (F(8,696)=2.4, p<02). Yiwei is significantly harder than shuo for under 5’s (F(1,394)=8.0, p<.005), and easier for 7 (F(1.74)=8.8, p<.005).
About 10% answers, mostly from children older than 5, use a complement. In 29% of cases the child uses say wrongly, e.g. they say this for Figure 1:
Child (4;8): xiao meimei shuo xiao jiejei tou shang you yi duo hua
Little younger sister say little elder sister on head have one flower (not what was said)
There are even (14%) answers where a child uses think-falsely mistakenly with a true complement:
Child (6;9): yiwei ta zhao dao le xiao laoshu
(she) think-falsely she find a little mouse. (She DID find a mouse).
Three phenomena here need further investigation. The verb yiwei, (think) refers to an abstraction compared to shuo (say), and is more difficult for the younger ages. However, it marks that the complement is false, hence is advantageous for older learners. This interaction with age is a new finding. Second, children produce errors with false complements. Finally, children comprehend the wh-question only with its adjacent verb in Mandarin. We need to separately study complements with and without wh-movement, before we can understand whether links of language and false belief performance are indeed exceptional in Mandarin.

Authors

• Jill de Villiers, Smith College
  Presenting Author

• Xueman Lucy Liu, Bethel Hearing and Speaking Training Center; University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chunyang Ning, Tianjin University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Wendy Lee, Bethel Hearing and Speaking Training Center; University of Texas at Dallas Xueman Lucy Liu
  Non-Presenting Author

• Teresa Hutchings, Bethel Hearing and Speaking Training Center; University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eric Rolfhus, Bethel Hearing and Speaking Training Center; University of Texas at Dallas
  Non-Presenting Author