Part of
The Acquisition of Relative Clauses: Processing, typology and functionEdited by Evan Kidd
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 8] 2011
► pp. 197–226
Edited by Evan Kidd
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 8] 2011
► pp. 197–226
Chapter 8. The acquisition of relative clauses in Cantonese and Mandarin
We discuss three typological characteristics relevant to the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs) in Cantonese and Mandarin: (i) the prenominal position of RCs; (ii) the availability of an internally-headed analysis for Cantonese object RCs; and (iii) Chinese RCs as a subset of noun modifying constructions (NMCs). Acquisition studies suggest that Chinese differs from languages with post-nominal RCs, which show a robust advantage for subject-gapped over object-gapped RCs. For Cantonese, some studies suggest an object advantage, which may be explained by the surface identity of object RCs and SVO main clauses and/or the internally-headed analysis. Finally, Chinese RCs can be analyzed as a subset of NMCs in which a modifying clause is attached to the head noun based on semantic-pragmatic relations.
Cited by (28)
Cited by 28 other publications
HSU, Chun-Chieh
2023. Pseudo-relatives and restrictive-relatives in child Mandarin. Journal of Child Language 50:4 ► pp. 860 ff. 
Lai, Jane, Angel Chan, Evan Kidd & Iftikhar Ahmed Khan
2023. Relative clause comprehension in Cantonese-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder. PLOS ONE 18:11 ► pp. e0288021 ff.
Wang, Haiyan & Haopeng Yu
2023. The repetition of relative clauses in Mandarin children with Developmental Language Disorder. Language Acquisition 30:2 ► pp. 139 ff.
Lam, Scholastica Wai Sze
2022. Acquisition of Chinese relative clauses by deaf children in Hong Kong. Language and Linguistics. 語言暨語言學 ► pp. 72 ff.
Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco
2021. Chapter 10. The on-line construction of meaning in Mandarin Chinese. In Building Categories in Interaction [Studies in Language Companion Series, 220], ► pp. 271 ff.
Chan, Angel, Stephen Matthews, Nicole Tse, Annie Lam, Franklin Chang & Evan Kidd
2021. Revisiting Subject–Object Asymmetry in the Production of Cantonese Relative Clauses: Evidence From Elicited Production in 3-Year-Olds. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Jia, Ruiting & Johanne Paradis
2020. The acquisition of relative clauses by Mandarin heritage language children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 10:2 ► pp. 153 ff.
Peeters-Podgaevskaja, Alla V., Bibi E. Janssen & Anne E. Baker
2020. The acquisition of relative clauses in Russian and Polish in monolingual and bilingual children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 10:2 ► pp. 216 ff.
Tan, Maryann & Anouschka Foltz
2020. Task Sensitivity in L2 English Speakers’ Syntactic Processing: Evidence for Good-Enough Processing in Self-Paced Reading. Frontiers in Psychology 11
Wang, Fang & Fuyun Wu
2020. Postnominal relative clauses in Chinese. Linguistics 58:6 ► pp. 1501 ff.
Tsoi, Elaine Yee Ling, Wenchun Yang, Angel Chan & Evan Kidd
2019. Mandarin–English speaking bilingual and Mandarin speaking monolingual children’s comprehension of relative clauses. Applied Psycholinguistics 40:4 ► pp. 933 ff.
Xu, Kunyu, Jeng-Ren Duann, Daisy L. Hung & Denise H. Wu
2019. Preference for Object Relative Clauses in Chinese Sentence Comprehension: Evidence From Online Self-Paced Reading Time. Frontiers in Psychology 10
CHAN, ANGEL, WENCHUN YANG, FRANKLIN CHANG & EVAN KIDD
2018. Four-year-old Cantonese-speaking children's online processing of relative clauses: a permutation analysis. Journal of Child Language 45:1 ► pp. 174 ff.
Rezaeian, Mehrdad, Firooz Sadighi, Mortaza Yamini & Mohammad Sadegh Bagheri
2018. The role of animacy and language proficiency in the comprehension of English restrictive relative clauses by Iranian EFL learners: an emergentist approach. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education 3:1
Brandt, Silke, Sanjo Nitschke & Evan Kidd
2017. Priming the Comprehension of German Object Relative Clauses. Language Learning and Development 13:3 ► pp. 241 ff.
Chan, Angel, Si Chen, Stephen Matthews & Virginia Yip
2017. Comprehension of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in a Trilingual Acquisition Context. Frontiers in Psychology 8
KIRJAVAINEN, MINNA, EVAN KIDD & ELENA LIEVEN
2017. How do language-specific characteristics affect the acquisition of different relative clause types? Evidence from Finnish. Journal of Child Language 44:1 ► pp. 120 ff.
Yan, Jing & Stephen Matthews
2017. Relative clauses in English-Mandarin bilingual children. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 8:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
HU, SHENAI, ANNA GAVARRÓ & MARIA TERESA GUASTI
2016. Children's production of head-final relative clauses: The case of Mandarin. Applied Psycholinguistics 37:2 ► pp. 323 ff.
KIM, CHAE-EUN & WILLIAM O'GRADY
2016. Asymmetries in children's production of relative clauses: data from English and Korean. Journal of Child Language 43:5 ► pp. 1038 ff.
Lau, Elaine
2016. The role of resumptive pronouns in Cantonese relative clause acquisition. First Language 36:4 ► pp. 355 ff.
AMBRIDGE, BEN, EVAN KIDD, CAROLINE F. ROWLAND & ANNA L. THEAKSTON
2015. The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition. Journal of Child Language 42:2 ► pp. 239 ff.
CHEN, JIDONG & YASUHIRO SHIRAI
2015. The acquisition of relative clauses in spontaneous child speech in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language 42:2 ► pp. 394 ff.
KIDD, EVAN, ANGEL CHAN & JOIE CHIU
2015. Cross-linguistic influence in simultaneous Cantonese–English bilingual children's comprehension of relative clauses. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 18:3 ► pp. 438 ff.
Özge, Duygu, Theo Marinis & Deniz Zeyrek
2015. Incremental processing in head-final child language: online comprehension of relative clauses in Turkish-speaking children and adults. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 30:9 ► pp. 1230 ff.
Matthews, Stephen & Virginia Yip
2014. Bilingual and Multilingual Acquisition of Chinese. In The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, ► pp. 493 ff.
Matthews, Stephen & Virginia Yip
2017. Noun-modifying clauses in Cantonese. In Noun-Modifying Clause Constructions in Languages of Eurasia [Typological Studies in Language, 116], ► pp. 105 ff.
RAHMANY, RAMIN, HAMIDEH MAREFAT & EVAN KIDD
2014. Resumptive elements aid comprehension of object relative clauses: evidence from Persian. Journal of Child Language 41:4 ► pp. 937 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 november 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.