The definite and demonstrative description in Mandarin and the acquisition of definitness in English by L1 Mandarin learners

Abstract

Definiteness, a universal semantic concept that plays a central role in discourse coherence and interpretation, is marked morphosyntactically by the articles (e.g., the) in some languages (e.g., English) but not in others (e.g., Mandarin Chinese). This dissertation investigates how definiteness is expressed in Mandarin, how it contrasts with English, and how Mandarin-speaking learners acquire English definiteness distinctions. The research has three primary objectives: (i) to understand the ongoing debate on whether bare nouns and demonstrative descriptions are acceptable in anaphoric definite contexts in Mandarin; (ii) to understand the definiteness marking differences between English and Mandarin and the interpretation differences between English and Mandarin definite plural forms; and (iii) to understand the L2 acquisition of English definites by L1-Mandarin speakers, focusing on the role of L1 transfer in their use and interpretation of the definite article and demonstrative descriptions. Six experiments were conducted to address these goals. Experiments 1 and 2 tested the acceptability of Mandarin bare nouns in anaphoric contexts and found that they are generally acceptable, with ratings comparable to demonstrative descriptions. Experiment 3 examined native speaker preferences and revealed a strong preference for demonstratives over bare nouns in anaphoric contexts. Experiment 4 used a comprehension task to explore the interpretation of definite plural forms in both languages and found that Mandarin bare nouns and demonstrative plurals are more flexible in interpretation than their English counterparts. Building on these findings, Experiments 5 and 6 investigated the acquisition of English definite forms by Mandarin-speaking learners. Results show that L2 learners, particularly at intermediate proficiency levels, did not consistently differentiate between definites and demonstrative descriptions in the same way as native English speakers, both in usage and interpretation. L2 leaners, at advanced proficiency levels, though behave almost target-like in using these forms, they fail to fully distinguish between the definite plurals (the Xs) and the demonstrative plurals (those Xs) in interpretation. L2 leaners’ non-target-like behaviors occur precisely where predicted if learners are mapping Mandarin demonstratives (e.g., na/na-xie ‘that/those’) to English the and that/those. This dissertation refines our understanding of how definiteness is encoded and interpreted in Mandarin and provides new empirical support for the influence of L1 transfer on the acquisition of definiteness in L2 English. It contributes to linguistic theory by clarifying the status of Mandarin definiteness, advances cross-linguistic typologies of definiteness marking, and offers practical insights for second language instruction, particularly for learners from article-less language backgrounds.