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
Cited by 28 other publications
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. 
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.
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
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
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.
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.
HSU, Chun-Chieh
2023. Pseudo-relatives and restrictive-relatives in child Mandarin. Journal of Child Language 50:4 ► pp. 860 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.
Jia, Ruiting & Johanne Paradis
2020. The acquisition of relative clauses by Mandarin heritage language children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 10:2 ► pp. 153 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lau, Elaine
2016. The role of resumptive pronouns in Cantonese relative clause acquisition. First Language 36:4 ► pp. 355 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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Wang, Fang & Fuyun Wu
2020. Postnominal relative clauses in Chinese. Linguistics 58:6 ► pp. 1501 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.
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
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.
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.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 april 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.