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Acquisition of focus in a cross-linguistic perspective

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posted on 2024-08-16, 01:50 authored by Hui-Ching Chen

Successful communication is often explored by people throughout their life courses. To effectively transfer one’s own information to others, people employ various linguistic tools, such as word order information, prosodic cues, and lexical choices. The exploration of these linguistic cues is known as the study of information structure (IS). Moreover, an important issue in the language acquisition of children is the investigation of how they acquire IS. This thesis seeks to improve our understanding of how children acquire different tools (i.e., prosodical cues, syntactical cues, and the focus particle only) of focus marking in a cross linguistic perspective.

History

Table of Contents

1 Introduction -- 2 Understanding prosodic focus marking in Mandarin Chinese - data from children and adults -- 3 Comprehension of focus structures in a cross-linguistic perspective - evidence from five-year-old Mandarin and German-learning children -- 4 Understanding the focus particle ‘zhiyou’ (‘only’) in Mandarin - evidence from five-year-olds -- 5 General discussion -- Reference

Notes

Cotutelle thesis in conjunction with the University of Potsdam

Awarding Institution

Macquarie University

Degree Type

Thesis PhD

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Department, Centre or School

School of Psychological Sciences

Year of Award

2022

Principal Supervisor

Barbara Höhle

Additional Supervisor 1

Stephen Crain

Rights

Copyright: The Author Copyright disclaimer: https://www.mq.edu.au/copyright-disclaimer

Language

English

Extent

145 pages

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