Language evolution seminar

Speaker: Yajun Liu (University of Edinburgh)

Title: Comprehension and production don’t align: Evidence from referential forms in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract: This study investigates the relationship between comprehension and production of referential forms in adult Mandarin speakers.

Mandarin allows both null and overt pronouns, e.g. Xiaohong chadian zhuangshang Xiaozi, (ta) xia-le yi tiao ‘Xiaohong almost fell onto Xiaozi, and (she) was startled’. We ran two experiments where participants were asked either to interpret sentences featuring null/overt pronouns (i.e. deciding whether the antecedent is the subject or object of the preceding context sentence), or to produce sentences demonstrating whether a null/overt pronoun has to re-refer to the subject or object of the context sentence.

In comprehension, both pronoun types exhibit a strong subject bias, but null pronouns were more likely to co-refer with subject antecedents and less likely to co-refer with object antecedents than overt pronouns. By contrast, these comprehension preferences are not observed in production: speakers do not preferentially use null pronouns when the antecedent is the subject, and in fact numerically use more overt pronouns for subject antecedents (albeit not statistically significant).

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Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

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• Centre for Language Evolution