Li Peggy, Barner David, Huang Becky H
Department of Psychology, Harvard University.
Lang Learn Dev. 2008 Oct 1;4(4):249. doi: 10.1080/15475440802333858.
The distinction between mass nouns (e.g., butter) and count nouns (e.g., table) offers a test case for asking how the syntax and semantics of natural language are related, and how children exploit syntax-semantics mappings when acquiring language. Virtually no studies have examined this distinction in classifier languages (e.g., Mandarin Chinese) due to the widespread assumption that such languages lack mass-count syntax. However, Cheng and Sybesma (1998) argue that Mandarin encodes the mass-count at the classifier level: classifiers can be categorized as "mass-classifiers" or "count-classifiers." Mass and count classifiers differ in semantic interpretation and occur in different syntactic constructions. The current study is first an empirical test of Cheng and Sybesma's hypothesis, and second, a test of the acquisition of putative mass and count classifiers by children learning Mandarin. Experiments 1 and 2 asked whether count-classifiers select individuals and mass classifiers select nonindividuals and sets of individuals. Adult Mandarin-speakers indeed showed this pattern of interpretation, while 4- to 6-year-olds had not fully mastered the distinction. Experiment 3 tested participants' syntactic sensitivity by asking them to match two syntactic constructions (one that supported the mass or portion reading and one that did not) to two contrasting choices (a portion of an object and a whole object). A developmental trend was observed for the syntactic knowledge from 4-year-old children into adulthood: adults were near perfect and the older children were more likely than the younger children to correctly match the contrasting phrases to the objects. Thus, in three experiments we find support for Cheng and Sybesma's analysis, but also find that children master the syntax and semantics of Mandarin classifiers much later than English-speaking children acquire knowledge of the English mass-count distinction.
物质名词（如黄油）和可数名词（如桌子）之间的区别为探讨自然语言的句法和语义如何关联，以及儿童在习得语言时如何利用句法 - 语义映射提供了一个测试案例。由于普遍认为诸如汉语等量词语言缺乏物质 - 可数句法，实际上几乎没有研究考察过这类语言中的这种区别。然而，郑礼珊和 Sybesma（1998）认为，汉语在量词层面编码了物质 - 可数：量词可分为“物质量词”或“可数量词”。物质量词和可数量词在语义解释上不同，并且出现在不同的句法结构中。本研究首先是对郑礼珊和 Sybesma 假设的实证检验，其次是对学习汉语的儿童习得假定的物质量词和可数量词的检验。实验1和2询问可数量词是否选择个体，物质量词是否选择非个体和个体集合。说汉语的成年人确实表现出这种解释模式，而4至6岁的儿童尚未完全掌握这种区别。实验3通过要求参与者将两种句法结构（一种支持物质或部分解读，另一种不支持）与两种对比选项（一个物体的一部分和一个完整物体）进行匹配，来测试参与者的句法敏感性。从4岁儿童到成年人观察到了句法知识的发展趋势：成年人几乎完美，年龄较大的儿童比年龄较小的儿童更有可能正确地将对比短语与物体匹配。因此，在三个实验中，我们发现了对郑礼珊和 Sybesma 分析的支持，但也发现儿童掌握汉语量词的句法和语义比说英语的儿童获得英语物质 - 可数区别的知识要晚得多。
