Development of Referential Dependency in Preschool Mandarin-Speaking Children

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Children's understanding of reflexive pronouns is often studied through syntax.
• Syntax alone is insufficient for explaining referential dependencies, which require discourse context.
• The Mandarin reflexive 'ziji' relies heavily on discourse context for interpretation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the development of referential dependency in preschool children using the Mandarin reflexive 'ziji'.
• To examine how children establish referential dependencies between 'ziji' and its antecedent.
• To differentiate between anaphoric and logophoric uses of 'ziji' in children's language acquisition.

Main Methods:

• A truth-value judgment task was employed.
• Participants were 3- to 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children.
• The study assessed children's interpretation of 'ziji' in various discourse contexts.

Main Results:

• Children demonstrated equal proficiency in interpreting both anaphoric and logophoric uses of 'ziji'.
• A clear developmental trajectory was observed in children's understanding of referential dependencies.
• Performance indicated that children utilize discourse context effectively.

Conclusions:

• Children's acquisition of referential dependency involves more than just syntactic rules.
• Processing factors and language-specific properties significantly influence the development of anaphora resolution.
• Findings contribute to understanding language acquisition and the interplay of syntax and discourse.