Domain restriction in child Mandarin: Implications for quantifier spreading

Abstract

AbstractThis study explores Mandarin children’s competence with quantifier domain restriction. We present results from two experiments in which adults and four- to five-year old children evaluated two possible candidates for the domain selection associated with the distributive operator dou ‘all’ in Mandarin Chinese. In the first experiment, we investigated whether children and adults are capable of selecting an appropriate domain when two candidate NPs both appear inside dou’s quantification scope; i.e., both of the NPs c-command dou. In the second experiment, still two candidate NPs were presented, but one within dou’s scope and the other outside its scope. Our results indicate that four- to five-year-old children are capable of basic distributive computation associated with dou, but they may choose an NP that adults do not usually choose as the domain of dou, resulting in non-adult interpretations of distributive computation in certain cases. Based on the results, we propose that four- to five-year-old children are less certain about the domain restriction associated with dou-quantification. This proposal has important implications for the current debate on the acquisition of universal quantifiers, specifically, the problem of quantifier spreading. We explain children’s uncertainty about the domain restriction with a universal grammar-based statistical acquisition model.