Classifiers as Count Syntax: Individuation and Measurement in the Acquisition of Mandarin
The distinction between mass nouns (e.g., butter) and count nouns (e.g.,table) offers a test case for asking how the syntax and semantics ofnatural language are related, and how children exploit syntax-semanticsmappings when acquiring language. Virtually no studies have examined thisdistinction in classifier languages (e.g., Mandarin Chinese) due to thewidespread assumption that such languages lack mass-count syntax. However,Cheng and Sybesma (1998) argue that Mandarin encodes the mass-count at theclassifier level: classifiers can be categorized as “mass-classifiers” or“count-classifiers.” Mass and count classifiers differ in semanticinterpretation and occur in different syntactic constructions. The currentstudy is first an empirical test of Cheng and Sybesma’s hypothesis, andsecond, a test of the acquisition of putative mass and count classifiers bychildren learning Mandarin. Experiments 1 and 2 asked whethercount-classifiers select individuals and whether mass classifiers selectportions of stuff or groups of individual things. Adult Mandarin-speakersindeed showed this pattern of interpretation, while 4- to 6-year-olds hadnot fully mastered the distinction. Experiment 3 tested participants’syntactic sensitivity by asking them to match two syntactic constructions(one that supported the mass or portion reading and one that did not) totwo contrasting choices (a portion of an object and a whole object). Adevelopmental trend in syntactic knowledge was observed: adults were nearperfect and the older children were more likely than the younger childrento correctly match the contrasting phrases to their correspondingreferents. Thus, in three experiments we find support for Cheng andSybesma’s analysis, but also that children master the syntax and semanticsof Mandarin classifiers much later than English-speaking children acquireknowledge of the English mass-count distinction.