The generative literature presents diverse viewpoints on the relationship between children’s syntax acquisition and semantics acquisition. This study explored the issue by examining Mandarin-speaking children’s production of recursive relative clauses under different semantic conditions. A 4 (syntactic types) × 2 (semantic conditions) × 10 (age) design was utilized. The syntactic types include: subject-gapped relative clauses within object-gapped relative clauses, object-gapped relative clauses within object-gapped relative clauses, object-gapped relative clauses within subject-gapped relative clauses, and subject-gapped relative clauses within subject-gapped relative clauses. Each syntactic type was tested under both irreversible and reversible internal semantics (IIS and RIS, respectively). Participants were exposed to speech-visual stimuli providing specific irreversible external semantics (IES). The study included 359 Mandarin-speaking children aged 3 to 11, along with 80 adult controls. The results show that children produced the four types of recursive relative clauses in the IIS-IES condition 1 to 3 years earlier than those in the RIS-IES condition. Our findings support a refined syntax-semantics interface theory, involving a two-stage developmental path in language acquisition: The language acquisition device starts with a syntax-IIS interface and progresses to a syntax-IES interface.
AbendO.KwiatkowskiT.SmithN. J.GoldwaterS.SteedmanM. (2017). Bootstrapping language acquisition. Cognition, 164, 116–143.
2.
AdaniF.ForgiariniM.GuastiM. T.Van der LelyH. K. (2014). Number dissimilarities facilitate the comprehension of relative clauses in children with (Grammatical) Specific Language Impairment. Journal of Child Language, 41(4), 811–841.
3.
AdaniF.Van der LelyH. K.ForgiariniM.GuastiM. T. (2010). Grammatical feature dissimilarities make relative clauses easier: A comprehension study with Italian children. Lingua, 120(9), 2148–2166.
4.
AmaralL.LeandroW. (2018). Relative clauses in Wapichana and the interpretation of multiple-embedded “uraz” constructions. In AmaralL.MaiaM.NevinsA.RoeperT. (Eds.), Recursion across domains (pp. 230–242). Cambridge University Press.
5.
AmbridgeB. (2010). Children’s judgments of regular and irregular novel past-tense forms: New data on the English past-tense debate. Developmental Psychology, 46(6), 1497.
6.
AmbridgeB.RowlandC. F. (2013). Experimental methods in studying child language acquisition. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 4(2), 149–168.
7.
ArcodiaG. F. (2017). Towards a typology of relative clauses in Sinitic: Headedness and relativization strategies. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, 46(1), 32–72.
8.
ArnonI. (2010). Rethinking child difficulty: The effect of NP type on children’s processing of relative clauses in Hebrew. Journal of Child Language, 37(1), 27–57.
9.
AvramL.SevcencoA.TomescuV. (2020). The acquisition of recursively embedded noun modifiers in Romanian by Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics, 22(1).
10.
BabyonyshevM.GangerJ.PesetskyD. M.WexlerK. (2001). The maturation of grammatical principles: Evidence from Russian unaccusatives. Linguistic Inquiry, 32(1), 1–44.
11.
BaudiffierV.CaplanD.GaonachD.ChesnetD. (2011). The effect of noun animacy on the processing of unambiguous sentences: Evidence from French relative clauses. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 1896–1905.
12.
BéjarS.DennissJ.KahnemuyipourA.YokoyamaT. (2019). Number matching in binominal. The Grammar of Copulas Across Languages, 73, 90–113.
13.
BenteaA.DurrlemanS.RizziL. (2016). Refining intervention: The acquisition of featural relations in object A-bar dependencies. Lingua, 169, 21–41.
14.
BerwickR. C.FriedericiA. D.ChomskyN.BolhuisJ. J. (2013). Evolution, brain, and the nature of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(2), 89–98.
15.
BeverT. G. (1970). The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In HayesJ. R. (Ed.), Cognition and the development of language (pp. 279–362). John Wiley & Sons.
16.
BolhuisJ. J.TattersallI.ChomskyN.BerwickR. C. (2014). How could language have evolved?PLoS Biology, 12(8), e1001934.
17.
BorerH.WexlerK. (1987). The maturation of syntax. In RoeperT.WilliamsE. (Eds.), Parameter setting (pp. 123–172). D. Reidel.
18.
BoudewynM. A.BlalockA. R.LongD. L.SwaabT. Y. (2019). Adaptation to animacy violations during listening comprehension. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 19, 1247–1258.
19.
BrandtS.KiddE.LievenE.TomaselloM. (2009). The discourse bases of relativization: An investigation of young German and English-speaking children’s comprehension of relative clauses. Cognitive Linguistics, 20(3), 539–570.
20.
BrownV. (2021). An introduction to linear mixed-effects modeling in R. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 4(3), 2515245920960351.
21.
BridgesA. (1980). SVO comprehension strategies reconsidered: The evidence of individual patterns of response. Journal of Child Language, 7(1), 89–104.
22.
BryantD. (2006). Koordinationsellipsen im Spracherwerb. Studia, 64, 80–101.
23.
ChaoY.-R. (1997). Making sense out of nonsense. The Sesquipedalian, 5, 32.
24.
ChenG. (2012). Numeral “yi” ‘one’ as a relativizer in Beijing dialect. Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies, 2, 244–250.
25.
ChomskyN. (1957). Syntactic structures. Mouton.
26.
ChomskyN. (1981a). Lectures on government and binding. Language, 60(2), 670–699.
27.
ChomskyN. (1981b). On the representation of form and function. The Linguistic Review, 1(1), 3–40.
28.
ChomskyN. (1995). The Minimalist Program. MIT Press.
29.
ChomskyN. (2000). Minimalist inquiries: The framework (MITOPL 15). In MartinR.MichaelsD.UriagerekaJ. (Eds.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik (pp. 89–155).
30.
ChomskyN. (2005). Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry, 36(1), 1–22.
31.
ChomskyN.SeelyT. D.BerwickR. C.FongS.HuybregtsM. A. C.KitaharaH.SugimotoY. (2023). Merge and the strong minimalist thesis. Cambridge University Press.
32.
ChungY.Rabe-HeskethS.DorieV.GelmanA.LiuJ. C. (2013). A nondegenerate penalized likelihood estimator for variance parameters in multilevel models. Psychometrika, 78, 685–709.
33.
ClarkR. G.BlanchardW.HuiF. K.TianR.WoodsH. (2023). Dealing with complete separation and quasi-complete separation in logistic regression for linguistic data. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, 2(1), 100044.
34.
CuervoM. C. (2003). Datives at large [Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. MIT Libraries.
35.
De VilliersJ. G.de VilliersP. A. (1973). Development of the use of word order in comprehension. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2(4), 331–341.
36.
DeDeG. (2015). Effects of animacy on processing relative clauses in older and younger adults. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(3), 487–498.
37.
Del GobboF. (2003). Appositive at the interface [PhD dissertation, University of California at Irvine, California].
38.
DiesselH. (2004). The acquisition of complex sentences. Cambridge University Press.
39.
FanselowG. (2001). Features, θ-roles, and free constituent order. Linguistic Inquiry, 32(3), 405–437.
40.
FitchW. T.HauserM. D. (2004). Computational constraints on syntactic processing in a nonhuman primate. Science, 303(5656), 377–380.
41.
FriedericiA. D. (2013). Is there a brain basis of recursion?. In LowenthalF.LefebvreL. (Eds.), Language and recursion (pp. 101–113). Springer New York.
42.
FriedmannN.BellettiA.RizziL. (2009). Relativized relatives: Types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies. Lingua, 119(1), 67–88.
43.
FukuiN. (2017). Merge in the mind-brain: Essays on theoretical linguistics and the neuroscience of language. Routledge.
44.
GennariS. P.MacDonaldM. C. (2009). Linking production and comprehension processes: The case of relative clauses. Cognition, 111(1), 1–23.
45.
GibsonE. (1998). Linguistic complexity: Locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition, 68(1), 1–76.
46.
GibsonE. (2000). The dependency locality theory: A distance-based theory of linguistic complexity. In MarantzY. M. A.O’NeilW. (Eds.), Image, language, brain: Papers from the first mind articulation project symposium (pp. 94–126). MIT Press.
47.
GleitmanL. (1990). The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition, 1(1), 3–55.
48.
GómezR. L.GerkenL. (1999). Artificial grammar learning by 1-year-olds leads to specific and abstract knowledge. Cognition, 70(2), 109–135.
49.
HaendlerY.KlieglR.AdaniF. (2015). Discourse accessibility constraints in children’s processing of object relative clauses. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 860.
50.
HaiderH. (2010). The syntax of German. Cambridge University Press.
51.
HauserM. D.ChomskyN.FitchW. T. (2002). The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?Science, 298(5598), 1569–1579.
52.
HollebrandseB.HobbsC.De VilliersJ.RoeperT. (2008). Second order embedding and second order false belief. In GavarroA.FreitasJ. (Eds.), Language acquisition and development (pp. 268–278). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
53.
HollebrandseB.RoeperT. (2014). Empirical results and formal approaches to recursion in acquisition. In RoeperT.SpeasM. (Eds.), Recursion: Complexity in cognition (pp. 179–219). Springer.
54.
HsiaoY.DawsonN. J.BanerjiN.NationK. (2022). The nature and frequency of relative clauses in the language children hear and the language children read: A developmental cross-corpus analysis of English complex grammar. Journal of Child Language, 50(3), 555–580.
55.
HsiaoY.MacDonaldM. C. (2013). Experience and generalization in a connectionist model of Mandarin Chinese relative clause processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 767.
56.
HuS.GavarróA.GuastiM. T. (2016). Children’s production of head-final relative clauses: The case of Mandarin. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(2), 323–346.
57.
HuybregtsM. A.BerwickR. C.BolhuisJ. J. (2016). The language within. Science, 352(6291), 1286–1287.
58.
HyamsN. (1986). Language acquisition and the theory of parameters. D. Reidel.
59.
JackendoffR. (1995). The Minimalist Program. MIT Press.
60.
JackendoffR. (1996). The Architecture of the Language Faculty. MIT Press.
61.
JägerL. A.EngelmannF.VasishthS. (2017). Similarity-based interference in sentence comprehension: Literature review and Bayesian meta-analysis. Journal of Memory and Language, 94, 316–339.
62.
KarlssonF. (2007). Constraints on multiple center-embedding of clauses. Journal of Linguistics, 43(2), 365–392.
63.
KiddE.BrandtS.LievenE.TomaselloM. (2007). Object relatives made easy: A cross-linguistic comparison of the constraints influencing young children’s processing of relative clauses. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22(6), 860–897.
64.
KinsellaA. R. (2010). Was recursion the key step in the evolution of the human language faculty? In van der HulstH. (Ed.), Recursion and human language (pp. 177–192). De Gruyter Mouton.
65.
LandauB.GleitmanL. R. (1985). Language and experience: Evidence from the blind child. Harvard University Press.
66.
LauE.TanakaN. (2021). The subject advantage in relative clauses: A review. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 6(1): 34.
67.
LiD.YangX.RoeperT.WilsonM.YinR.KimJ.MerrittE. J.Fernando GuerreroD.TeroA. (2020). Acquisition of recursion in child Mandarin. In BrownM. M.KohutA. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 44th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 294–307). Cascadilla Press.
68.
LimbachM.AdoneD. (2010). Language acquisition of recursive possessives in English. In FranichK.IsermanK. M.KeilL. L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Boston University conference on language development (pp. 281–290). Cascadilla Press.
69.
LinJ.-W. (2003). Temporal reference in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 12(3), 259–311.
70.
LinJ.-W. (2006). Time in a language without tense: the case of Chinese. Journal of Semantics, 23(1), 1–53.
71.
LuB.-F. (1983). Conditions of infinite recursion and finite segmentation. Chinese Language Learning3, 23–29.
72.
MacdonaldR.BrandtS.TheakstonA.LievenE.SerratriceL. (2020). The role of animacy in children’s interpretation of relative clauses in English: Evidence from sentence–picture matching and eye movements. Cognitive Science, 44(8), e12874.
73.
MarcusG. F.VijayanS.RaoS. B.VishtonP. M. (1999). Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science, 283(5398), 77–80.
74.
MartinsM. D.FitchW. T. (2014). Investigating recursion within a domain-specific framework. In LowenthalF.LefebvreL. (Eds.), Language and recursion (pp. 15–26). Springer.
75.
McElreeB.ForakerS.DyerL. (2003). Memory structures that subserve sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 48(1), 67–91.
76.
NaiglesL. (1990). Children use syntax to learn verb meanings. Journal of Child Language, 17(2), 357–374.
77.
Natalie HsuC.-C.HermonG.ZukowskiA. (2009). Young children’s production of head-final relative clauses: Elicited production data from Chinese children. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 18, 323–360.
78.
NelsonD.VihmanV.-A. (2018). Bringing the toys to life: Animacy, reference, and anthropomorphism in Toy Story. International Journal of Language and Culture, 5(2), 203–223.
79.
NingC. Y. (1993). The overt syntax of relativization and topicalization in Chinese [Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Irvine]. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
80.
PanH. H. (2001). Is there a finite vs. nonfinite distinction in Chinese?Linguistics, 39(6), 1117–1148.
81.
Pérez-LerouxA. T.Castilla-EarlsA. P.BejarS.MassamD. (2012). Elmo’s sister’s ball: The problem of acquiring nominal recursion. Language Acquisition, 19(4), 301–311.
82.
Pérez-LerouxA. T.PetersonT.Castilla-EarlsA.BéjarS.MassamD.RobergeY. (2018). The acquisition of recursive modification in NPs. Language, 94(2), 332–359.
83.
PerkinsL.LidzJ. (2021). Eighteen-month-old infants represent nonlocal syntactic dependencies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(41), e2026469118.
84.
PickeringM. J.FerreiraV. S. (2008). Structural priming: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin, 134(3), 427.
85.
PinkerS. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Harvard University Press.
86.
RizziL. (2004). Locality and left periphery. In BellettiA. (Ed.), Structures and beyond: The cartography of syntactic structures (pp. 223–251). Oxford University Press.
87.
RoeperT. (1978). Linguistic universals and the acquisition of gerunds. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 3(2), 3–36.
88.
RoeperT. (2014). Strict interface principles and the acquisition engine: from unlabeled to labeled and minimal modular contact. Language Sciences, 46, 115–132.
89.
RoeperT. (2020, January17). Minimal interfaces and cross-modular notation: How do different grammars and different modules achieve compatibility [Conference presentation]. Linguistics Colloquium Series, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.
90.
RowlandC. F.ChangF.AmbridgeB.PineJ. M.LievenE. V. (2012). The development of abstract syntax: Evidence from structural priming and the lexical boost. Cognition, 125(1), 49–63.
91.
SchollB. J.TremouletP. D. (2000). Perceptual causality and animacy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(8), 299–309.
92.
SimpsonA. (2002). On the status of modifying DP and the syntax of Chinese DP. In LiuC. S.TangS. W. (Eds.), On the formal way to Chinese languages (pp. 260–290). CSLI.
93.
SlobinD. I. (1966). Grammatical transformations and sentence comprehension in childhood and adulthood. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 5(3), 219–227.
94.
StromswoldK. (2006). Why children understand and misunderstand sentences: An eye tracking study of passive sentences (Technical Report TR-85). Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science.
95.
TangZ.-D. (2008). A typological survey of relative clause constructions in Yongshou dialect: Based on spontaneous discourse data and a typological analysis. Dialect, 3, 244–251.
96.
TerunumaA.IsobeM.NakajimaM.OkabeR.InadaS.InokumaS.NakatoT. (2017). Acquisition of recursive possessives and locatives within DPs in Japanese. In BlomE.CornipsL.SchaefferJ. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st annual Boston University conference on language development (pp. 626–636). Cascadilla Press
97.
VogelsJ.KrahmerE.MaesA. (2013). When a stone tries to climb up a slope: the interplay between lexical and perceptual animacy in referential choices. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 154.
98.
WexlerK. (1998). Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua, 106(1–4), 23–79.
99.
WexlerK.CulicoverP. W. (1980). Formal principles of language acquisition. MIT Press.
100.
YangC.-M.HuY.-F.FanJ.-B.DongX.JeschullL. (2022). An experimental study of Mandarin-speaking children’s acquisition of recursion under a formal definition/classification system for recursion. Lingua, 271, 103228.
101.
YangC. M.MaoT. Y.BaiB. (2020). A reconsideration of the syntax of Chinese Relative Structure. Lingua, 240, 102834.
102.
YuanS.FisherC. (2009). ‘Really? She blicked the baby?’ Two-year-olds learn combinatorial facts about verbs by listening. Psychological Science, 20(5), 619–626.
103.
YuanS.FisherC.GertnerY.SnedekerJ. (2007, March). Participants are more than physical bodies: 21-month-olds assign relational meaning to novel transitive verbs [Paper presentation]. Biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Boston, MA, United States.
104.
ZhuJ.FranckJ.RizziL.GavarróA. (2022a). Do infants have abstract grammatical knowledge of word order at 17 months? Evidence from Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 49(1), 60–79.
105.
ZhuY.XuM.LuJ.HuJ.KwokV. P.ZhouY.YuanD.WuB.ZhangJ.WuJ. (2022b). Distinct spatiotemporal patterns of syntactic and semantic processing in human inferior frontal gyrus. Nature Human Behaviour, 6(8), 1104–1111.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
