A Small Fan and a Small Handful of Fans Exploring the Acquisition of Count-mass Distinction in Mandarin

The count-mass distinction often served as a test case for asking how syntax and semantics are related, whether knowledge of one helps the acquisition of the other. Virtually no studies examined this distinction in classifier languages which supposedly lack the distinction. However, Cheng and Sybesma (1998) argued Mandarin as a classifier language encodes this distinction at the classifier level: classifiers can be categorized as “mass-classifiers” or “count-classifiers,” which categories denote different semantic meanings and occur in different syntactical constructions. The current study undertook Cheng and Sybesma’s framework to compare Mandarin adults’ and children’s interpretation of classifiers. Experiment 1 and 2 asked whether count-classifiers select individuals and mass classifiers non-individuals and sets of individuals. Adult data indicated that there is indeed such distinction in Mandarin, but 4to 6-year-olds had not fully mastered the distinction. Experiment 3 tested participant’s syntactic sensitivity. Participants saw two contrasting pictures and had to match the “one-ADJ-CL-de-N” mass phrase to one and the “one-CLADJ-N” neutral phrase to the other. Adults were near perfect whereas six-year-old children were evenly split between those who were at-chance and those who knew the syntax. Our experimental data with children suggests that the mastery of the distinction appears quite late (6or 7-years of age) relative to English-speaking children.