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Part of
Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research: Selected papers from the 7th Meeting of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Edited by Tania Ionin and Matthew Rispoli
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 63] 2019
► pp. 107–124

The interpretation of disjunction in VP ellipsis in Mandarin Chinese

| Beijing Language and Culture University
| Macquarie University
| Tsinghua University
| Macquarie University

This study investigated the interpretation assigned to disjunction by Mandarin-speaking children and adults in negative sentences with either overt or covert disjunction. In one condition, both negation and disjunction were phonologically realized in the second conjunct of a coordinate structure. In a second condition, disjunction was elided from the verb phrase. Children and adults differed in scope assignments when both negation and disjunction were phonologically realized. However, negation took scope over disjunction for both groups when disjunction was elided. The findings invite the inference that adults, but not children, analyze disjunction as a Positive Polarity Item in negative sentences, but this polarity sensitivity is cancelled in sentences with verb phrase ellipsis. In this linguistic structure, both groups assign the same interpretation.

Keywords: verb phrase ellipsis, disjunction, scope assignment, child Mandarin
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The interpretation of disjunction in child and adult language
  • 3.Verb Phrase (VP) ellipsis
  • 4.The experiment
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Procedures
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.63.06gao
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