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THE INTERPRETATION OF NNV WORD ORDER IN TWO-YEAR-OLD

MANDARIN-SPEAKING TODDLERS

Naihsin Li and Hintat Cheung

National Taiwan University

Abstract

Past studies have pointed out that young Mandarin learners exploit word order

information to interpret sentences (Chang (1992) for a review), and their

interpretation would follow Mandarin’s canonical schema, SVO. Knowledge of word

order may indicate the presence of abstract grammatical knowledge, such as subject,

verb, and object, which is critical to the issue of innate linguistic knowledge. However,

evidence supporting Mandarin-speaking children’s knowledge of word order has been

derived mainly from the performances of act-out tasks in children at the age of three

and above, who have had considerable experiences with their language. To explore

the emergence of productivity in Mandarin-speaking children, we need to probe into

younger children’s comprehension of word order. In this study, we tested the

Mandarin-speaking toddlers with their sensitivity to word order, specifically their

comprehension of the non-canonical NNV clauses. Sixteen two-year-old toddlers

were recruited and tested with the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPL).

Results revealed that toddlers identified the NNV clauses as reflecting

subject-object-verb (SOV) relations when familiar verbs were given. However, they

did not extend the same SOV interpretation to the NNV clauses with novel verbs, nor

did they show a preference for OSV interpretation. This finding suggests that although

Mandarin-speaking toddlers showed sensitivity to the SOV word order, it is very

likely lexical-based, and generalizations at syntactic level is still wanting.

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I. Introduction

Children at around age two begin to produce two-word utterances, which can be

regarded as the primitive forms of sentences, and signals the presence of word-order

knowledge (Chang (1992) for a review). With these rudimentary forms, children can

express their needs and interact with others. For example, a child may say see dog to

direct other’s attention to a dog, want milk to demand for more milk, or mother hug to

request her mother to give her a hug. And children at this young age seem to have

demonstrated productivity in language. Their use of a lexical item is not restricted to

specific grammatical structures; moreover, the clauses they produce appear to follow

the word order of the ambient language. For instance, the verb hug can be used in

combination with a variety of subjects other than mother, so a child can produce

daddy hug or auntie hug. And these combinations all obey the canonical word order

of English: the subject precedes the verb. Productivity in language is the basic feature

of human communication system, and its emergence requires the presence of abstract

grammatical knowledge, such as subject, verb, and object. Therefore, questions arise

with regard to when and how children have these abstract structural representations.

The generativist view argues that children are innate with these abstract

representations, or Universal Grammar (Gleitman & Gleitman, 1997). For example,

children are born to have the concepts of phrases or nouns and verbs, and the

expectation for the systematically ordered relation between phrases and the head

(Chomsky, 1995). Fine-tuning to the language-specific details in structural

representations is made when inputs are provided. Therefore, from every early on,

children can comprehend sentence sequences with an underlying abstract format. In

the case of English-speaking children, they may represent the sentences “Bunny

kisses duck” and “Bunny kicks duck” both as “subject-verb-object”. In addition, this

predisposed abstract structural knowledge may aid verb learning. As suggested by the

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syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis, children can use syntactic clues to determine the

meaning of a novel word (Naigles, 1990, Fisher, 2002). Fisher (2000, cited in Fisher

(2002)) showed two videos of the same causal actions to 21- and 26-month-old

toddlers. In one of the video, a bunny rotated a duck on a swivel stool. In the other,

the duck did the same to the rabbit. Children heard one of two transitive sentences,

which differed in word order (The bunny is blicking the duck around vs. the duck is

blicking the bunny around). It was revealed that children showed a tendency to

recognize the subject of the sentence as the agent of the action. A number of other

studies also provide supporting evidence to the presence of syntactic knowledge at the

early stages of development, and its supportive role in verb learning (Fisher, 2002;

Gertner et al., 2006; Golinkoff et al., 1987; Naigles, 1996).

This account also faced some challenges, however. The usage-based account

(Tomasello, 2006) proposes that children may not be born to have a general abstract

representation of syntactic structure. Instead, children learn to interpret sentences by

acquiring verb-specific knowledge. Therefore, “Bunny” and “Duck” in the sentences

“Bunny kisses duck” and “Bunny kicks duck” may be respectively represented as

“kisser/kicker” and “kissee/kickee”. The syntactic categories, i.e. subject and object,

are the products of gradual generalization over these concepts. As it implicates, the

abstract structural knowledge is not innate in the language-acquisition system, but is

acquired when children have considerable experiences with the ambient language.

Most reports of toddlers’ word-order performance are from studies on

English-speaking children, whose language is noted for its rigidity in word order.

Thus, it is equivocal in accounting for the two-year-old toddlers’ robust SVO

interpretation to NVN sentences. The generativist view would attribute this to

children’s predisposition of abstract structural knowledge, whereas the usage-based

view would explain this as the consequence of children’s accumulating experiences

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with the structural characteristics of their language. One good way to evaluate these

two accounts is to examine evidence from other languages, especially those that allow

more variable word order patterns. And Mandarin is a good testing ground for this

purpose.

The basic word order of Mandarin is not easy to determine, since Mandarin has

both SVO and SOV characteristics (Li and Thompson, 1981, for more detailed

discussion). Roughly speaking, SVO can be taken as the canonical word order, since

most sentences in Mandarin are expressed in SVO form (Sun and Givón, 1985), for

example wo mai shu le (I bought a book). And also it is the word order that most often

occurs in child-directed speech (Lee and Naigles, 2005). However, other word orders,

such as SOV, OSV, and VS are possible in Mandarin. The SOV word order is present

in ba-construction, such as wo ba shu mai le (I bought the book) or when the object is

focused to express contradiction to expectation [e.g. ta gongke yijing zuo wan le

(S/He’s already done his/her homework)]. And the OSV word order can be observed

in bei-construction [e.g. we bei ma ma da (I was hit by mother)] or when the object is

topicalized [e.g. na zhi ji wo chi le (that chicken, I ate)]. Even, the subject can occur in

postverbal position [i.e. lai le ren le (some person(s) has/have come)] when the

subject is interpreted as indefinite. As Mandarin-speaking children are exposed the

various word order possibilities, it is of interest when the word order knowledge

emerges in Mandarin-speaking children.

A number of comprehension studies have been carried out to examine

Mandarin-speaking children’s word-order knowledge (Cheng, 1985; Miao et al.,

1984). Miao et al. (1984) tested 4- to 13-year-old children and adults with their

interpretations to different word orders, which included the canonical NVN sequence,

and the non-canonical VNN and NNV sequences, given the two nouns in the

sequences were animates. The results showed that children and adults robustly

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interpreted the NVN sequence as reflecting agent-verb-patient. Regarding the VNN

sequence, the second noun was more likely to be treated as the agent, which

implicated a VOS reading. As for the NNV sequence, only the 5- and the 7-year-old

children showed a tendency to take the first noun as the agent. The other age groups

showed no preference for either SOV reading or OSV reading. These findings implied

that Mandarin-speaking children as young as 4 years of age could exploit word order

information (SVO or VO) to interpret NVN and VNN sentences. However, we also

noticed that children’s interpretation of NNV sequences was ambiguous. So far,

evidence supporting Mandarin-speaking children’s knowledge of word order has been

derived mainly from the act-out performances in children at the age of three or above.

To adequately probe into Mandarin-speaking children’s word-order knowledge, we

applied the intermodal preferential paradigm (IPL) on toddlers around the age of two

in this study.

The IPL paradigm was first developed by Spelke (1979, cited in Hirsh-Pasek and

Golinkoff, 1996) to test infants’ intermodal perception, and then adopted by other

scholars to explore children’s language competence at the very early stage (Golinkoff,

et al., 1987; Naigles, 1990, 1996). This paradigm has several advantages over other

comprehension tasks (Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff, 1996). First of all, it only requires

children to watch, which is a response already in their repertoire; thus the cognitive

demand is minimized. Second, in this paradigm, children can take advantage of the

coalition of all the cues normally used in language comprehension, including the

syntactic, semantic, prosodic, and contextual information. Overall, IPL can be a better

way to probe young children’s language comprehension ability.

Our study is part of a larger cross-linguistic project, which aims to explore the

emergence of productivity in young children. In Cheung et al. (2009), 2- and

3-year-old English, Turkish, and Mandarin toddlers’comprehension of NVN sentence

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were tested with the IPL paradigm. They found age and language differences in

children’s looking time to the matched screen. The older children showed stronger

preference for the SVO interpretation than the younger. English-speaking children

yielded more robust effects than their counterparts in Mandarin and Turkish in novel

verb trials. In the current study, we probed 2-year-old Mandarin learners’

comprehension of non-canonical NNV word order by using the same paradigm. It has

been hypothesized that if children exploit word order information to interpret the

NNV sequence, then the NNV sequence may be interpreted as either reflecting SOV

or OSV, since these word order patterns occur in the inputs. And this result indicates

that while children have the sensitivity for the basic SVO word order, they still keep

track of other word order patterns in the inputs. The source of SOV interpretation

could possibly be confounded by children’s strategy of treating the first noun as the

agent, which has been discussed in the literature (Chen (1984) for a review). However,

we would put aside this issue for now, since it is not the focus of this study. The other

possible result would be children show no preferred interpretation for the NNV

sequence. This would suggest that children have yet developed sensitivity for the

SOV or OSV word order, as it is likely that they are confused by the variable word

order patterns in Mandarin inputs. And this may further imply that children learn

verbs in a verb-specific manner, which would favor the usage-based account. The

finding of this study may provide us with more insights into young children’s

mapping between the thematic roles and the syntactic structure.

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II. Method

Participants. Sixteen toddlers, with the mean age of 23.44 months (age range:

22~26 months), participated in the study. They were recruited through web

advertising or by word-of-mouth. Half of the participants were boys. The

backgrounds of the participants were presented in Table 1.

Table 1. The descriptive data of the participants.

Participant

No. of participant 16

Age 23.4

Vocabulary size 284.875 (221.397)

Range 3~648

Boy Girl

No. of participant 8 8

Age 23 23.88

Vocabulary size 227.75 (193.715) 342 (245.053)

Range 7~453 3~648

MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories-Taiwan Version (Liu &

Tsao, to be published). CDI is a parent-report instrument for assessing infants’and

toddlers’vocabulary development (Fenson et al., 2000). Liu and Tsao (in preparation)

have developed a CDI adaptation in Taiwan. Thus, in this study, the Taiwan version

CDI was used to examine Taiwanese toddlers’expressive vocabulary size.

IPL Setting. The video stimuli were played from a laptop and projected onto a 110

cm x 80 cm size screen via a projector. The linguistic stimuli were transmitted

through speakers situated below the screen. Behind the screen, a camcorder was

placed for recording toddler’s eye movements. The parent and the toddler were seated

on a chair between the screen and the projector, facing the big screen.

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IPL videos. Five testing blocks were constructed. The first testing block was to

introduce the two animal characters, the bunny and the duck. The second and the third

testing blocks were to examine toddlers’ understanding of NNV clauses constituted

with familiar verbs. In these two blocks, the two contrasting videos differed only in

the actions. For example, in one video, the bunny hugged the duck, while in the other

video, the bunny wipes the duck. Finally we examined toddlers’interpretation of the

NNV sequence with a novel verb. In these blocks, the videos not only differed in the

actions, but also the roles of agent and patient were reversed. For instance, in one

video, the duck was rocking the bunny, who was sitting in an armchair; while in the

other video, the bunny rolled the duck toward her on a wheeled dolly. The layout for

the video was presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Sample layout of the videos.

Trial Video 1 Audio Video 2

Sequential trial Bunny waves Here is a bunny Blank

Sequential trial Blank Here is a duck Duck waves

Control trial Bunny waves Where is the duck? Duck waves

Character

Identification

Test trial Bunny waves Where is the bunny? Duck waves

Sequential trial Bunny hugs Duck Look! Blank

Sequential trial Blank Look! Bunny wipes Duck

Control trial Bunny hugs Duck Bunny Duck is hugging. Bunny wipes Duck

Familiar Verb

Test trial Bunny hugs Duck Find “Bunny Duck hugging” Bunny wipes Duck

Sequential trial Duck rocks Bunny Look! Blank

Sequential trial Blank Look! Bunny rolls Duck

Control trial Duck rocks Bunny Bunny Duck is de-ing. Bunny rolls Duck

Novel Verb

Test trial Duck rocks Bunny Find “Bunny Duck is de-ing” Bunny rolls Duck

Coding. The direction and the duration of children’s visual fixation were rated

off-line. Children’s visual fixation might be coded as left, right or center to the screen,

or away from the screen. A control trial or a test trial would not be included in the

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analysis when children’s fixation to the centering red light did not exceed 0.3s or

children did not look at either screen for at least 0.3s. No trial was dropped in this

study.

The percentage of time children looked at matched event during the control and

test trials were calculated. The matched event was arbitrarily defined as the scene

which denoted the first N in NNV sequence as the agent.

Procedure. The parents and the toddler were introduced into a reception room. The

parents were informed about the purpose, content, and procedure of the experiment,

while the toddler was given some toys to play with. After the parents signed the

consent form, they were instructed to fill in a demographic form and the

MCDI-Taiwan version. After around twenty minutes, when the toddler became

familiar with the environment, one of the parents and the toddler were invited into the

testing room, and began the testing. During the testing, the parent was asked to wear a

pair of opaque glasses to block the parent’s vision to the content of the video. The

child was seated on the lap of the parent, facing the screen. The whole testing session

lasted for approximately three minutes.

III. Results

The percentage of time children looked on the match during the control and test

trials were compared. A significance increase of looking time in the test trial would

signal children’s preference for the matched screen.

First, children’s performance in the first block was examined. The average

percentage of time children looked on the matched character was 53.59% in Duck and

52.91% in Bunny. One sample t-test performed on the two test trials confirmed that

children’s choice on the matched character was at chance level (Duck: t (15)=1.515,

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p>.05; Bunny: t(15)=1.480, p>.05), suggesting that neither one had an appeal to

children.

Table 3. The mean proportions of looking time to the matched screen in the verb trials.

hug feed de fo

Control Trial % of Match

(SD)

49.27

(14.778)

49.993

(28.321)

52.70

(22.197)

51.85

(16.586)

Test trial % of Match

(SD)

50.20

(17.384)

57.08

(30.465)

56.67

(28.929)

46.66

(31.823)

The mean proportions of looking time to the matched screen (i.e. first N as agent)

in the verb trials were presented in Table 3. A 2x2 ANOVA was administered in the

two familiar verb blocks and the two novel verb blocks. The between group factor

was gender (boy vs. girl) and the within-group factor was trial (control trial vs. test

trial). Examining the results of familiar verbs, we only found an interaction effect of

trial and gender in the verb feed (F(1,14)=6.971, p<.05). The interaction effect in the

verb feed resulted from girls’longer looking time on the matched side in the test trial.

Neither an interaction effect nor any main effects were found in the familiar verb hug.

In the novel verb blocks, again we found no significant effects.

Subsequent analysis for the interaction effect in the verb feed was conducted.

Since the girl participants in this study had larger vocabulary size than boys, it was

possible that these girls were linguistically more advanced and thus they were more

readily to exploit their structural knowledge in interpreting NNV sequence. To further

explore this possibility, the factor of vocabulary size was put into the analytical design.

All the children were classified into three vocabulary levels (high, mid, and low)

based on their vocabulary size. Their descriptive characteristics of the three subgroups

were displayed in Table 4. A 2 (gender) x 3 (vocabulary level) x 2 (trial) ANOVA was

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carried out. Again, we found an interaction effect of trial and gender (F (1,10)=5.799,

p<.05). No interaction effect of vocabulary level and trial (F(2,10)=.231, p=.798) was

found, thus excluding the possibility that a preference of match in girls might be

confounded by their larger vocabulary size.

Table 4. The descriptive data of children in different vocabulary levels

High Mid Low

No. of subject 5 5 6

Voc size (SD) 540.4 (95.587) 302 (101.499) 57.67 (62.962)

Range 648~435 401~176 145~3

IV. Discussion

In our study, two-year-old children identified the NNV clauses as reflecting

subject-object-verb (SOV) relations when familiar verbs were given. However, they

did not extend the same SOV interpretation to the NNV sequences with novel verbs,

nor did they show a preference for OSV interpretation.

In each block of the familiar verb trials, toddlers were shown two videos in which

the same character (e.g. the bunny) performed different actions to the other character

(e.g. the duck). This was to test how children would react to a non-canonical word

order when the meaning of the verb was clear to them. In the verb feed, children had a

preference for SOV interpretation, and this preference was even stronger in girls. Of

course it was arguable that children in our study chose sides based on their

understanding of the verb semantics. Due to their familiarity with the verb feed, they

chose the scene that denoting the action of feeding; and the choice had nothing to do

with the assignment of thematic roles. However, if this was true, then we would find

the same result in the other familiar verb hug. But actually, the two familiar verb

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stimuli showed different results. In the verb hug, children showed preference for

neither scene. This couldn’t be accounted for by the lack of verb semantics in

children’s knowledge, since records on children’s CDI showed that all the participants

in our study had acquired the word hug. One possible explanation was that the verb

hug may not be representing a typical causal event; instead, it denotes a reciprocal

action. Therefore, it was hard for children to assign thematic roles to the NNV

sequence with the verb hug. In sum, two-year-old children showed an SOV preference

in the familiar verb trials, particularly when the verb denotes a typical causal event.

The SOV interpretation could be due to children’s sensitivity for the SOV word order.

However, an alternative account is that children made use of “first-N-as-agent”

strategy to interpret these NNV sentences. These two accounts would need to be

tested in a future study.

What we had discovered in the familiar verb trials seemed to imply that children

might assign a SOV reading to NNV sequences; nonetheless, in the two novel word

blocks, toddlers did not show preference for any word order interpretation. This

seemed to counter to the bootstrapping hypothesis, which suggests that children

actively make use of syntactic clues in sentence interpretations, and in this study, the

NNV sequence with novel verbs. Instead, our finding favored the usage-based view.

Although Mandarin-speaking children showed sensitivity to the SOV word order, it

was likely lexical-based. Mandarin-speaking toddlers might not yet develop abstract

structural knowledge that could be productively applied to interpret

newly-encountered sentences.

The emergence of productivity in grammar is still open to debate. Reports on

English-speaking children’s understanding of word order knowledge are valuable but

are limited in their scope of coverage. To solve the debate, cross-linguistic study

should be carried out. Specifically, it would be much helpful to investigate the

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word-order knowledge in children acquiring a language with variable word order.

Mandarin could be an instance of such language. In this study, we examined

2-year-old Mandarin’s comprehension of NNV sequence. It was found that children

preferred an SOV interpretation for NNV when the verb was familiar to them and

denoted a typical causal action. However, children did not extend this SOV

interpretation to NNV that contained a novel verb. Here we should be cautious with

our conclusion, since we have not examined children’s comprehension to all possible

NNV clauses, including the NNV structure of the ba-construction (with SOV

interpretation) and the bei-construction (with OSV interpretation). Moreover, the use

of NNV sequence is highly constrained by the pragmatic contexts (Li and Thompson,

1981). For example, NNV sequence without ba is often used to express contradiction

to expectation. And NNV sequence without bei is used when the object is topicalized.

Therefore, future studies should be implemented not only to examine

Mandarin-speaking toddlers’ comprehension of the ba-construction and

bei-construction, but also to explore the influence of contextual cues in interpreting

NNV sentences. And the overall findings of this series of Mandarin learners’

word-order study may contribute to our understanding of the emergence of

productivity.

Acknowledgements— We thank Letitia Naigles for her assistance in constructing test

materials. Our study also used her coding procedure. This work was supported by a

National Science Council grant 96-2411-H-002-068-MY3

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