Comprehension of Null and Pronominal Object Sentences in Japanese-speaking Children

ABSTRACT

In successful communication, it is critical to have the ability to identify what a speaker is referring to from previously mentioned information. This ability requires the identification of the topic initially introduced by lexical forms and its continuity in discourse expressed by anaphora such as null and pronominal forms in the subsequent sentences. While Japanese-speaking children are frequently provided with pronominal and null forms, especially the null form, in reference to previously mentioned topics, it remains unclear from what age they understand the anaphoric use of such referential forms. The current study investigated the age at which Japanese-speaking children are able to identify the presence of topic chains connecting null and pronoun anaphora to the topic referred to by a lexical form in the preceding sentence. We tested children’s comprehension of null and pronominal object sentences using an intermodal preferential-looking paradigm. The results demonstrated that the Japanese-speaking children aged 2;7 and 3;2 as a group looked at the target animation reliably longer after hearing the test sentences than before or during the test sentences. This finding provides evidence that Japanese-speaking children’s ability to track topic chains and understand anaphora in the discourse develop by 2;7 years of age. However, unlike the 3;2-year-old group, the 2;7-year-old group showed weaker performance in interpreting pronominal object sentences, suggesting a possibility that young children find the interpretation of null anaphora easier than that of pronoun anaphora.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ayako Sato, Loren Lugosch, Kelly Leung, Kanako Hirama, and Hisako Noguchi for assistance in creating animation clips, Makiko Hirakawa for conducting the pilot rating study on the transitive and the optionally transitive verbs with Japanese native speakers, Giulia Sato and Mika Ueno for assistance in testing children, and Natsuha Fujihara for assistance in analyzing eye gaze data. This study was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research of Canada.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The term “topic chain” has been used to describe a frequently used discourse structure which consists of a chain of clauses sharing the same topic in Chinese. According to the definition by Li and Thompson (1981, as cited in Li, 2004), “a topic chain is a chain of clauses in which a referent is referred to in the first clause, and then there follow several more clauses talking about the same referent but not overtly mentioning that referent” (p. 27). In the present paper, however, the term “topic chain” is used to describe a Japanese structure consisting of a chain of clauses sharing the same topic regardless of whether the referent is referred to by a null or a pronominal form in the clauses following the first clause with the overt topic.

² We selected “eat” and “read” as optionally transitive verbs for the present study based on Perez-Leroux et al. (2008) and the result of our pilot rating study with English and Japanese native speakers..

³ The deictic terms “kore,” “sore,” and “are” are part of the Japanese three-way ko so a demonstrative system; they are used to refer to inanimate objects relative to the speaker’s and listener’s territories or viewpoints (Seiho, 1981). When the speaker and listener stand in opposition to each other, the referents within the speaker’s territory are referred to by “kore,” those in the listener’s territory by “sore,” and those outside the speaker’s and the listener’s territories by “are.” When the speaker and listener share the same space with the same viewpoints, the referents in their shared territory are referred to by “kore,” those far away from their territory are referred to by “are,” and “sore” is used to refer to the referents in between. Acquisition of anaphoric use of “kore,” “sore,” and “are” in children is assumed to be based on the acquisition of their basic deictic meaning because these terms maintain the deictic meaning when they are used as anaphora in discourse contexts (Saito & Kuji, 1985). However, unlike “kore” and “are,” “sore” is typically used non-deictically in discourse contexts, similarly to the anaphoric use of “it” in English (Mikami, 1972, as as cited in Morizuka, 2003).

⁴ Although the analysis of the mothers’ use of pronominal arguments with nonverbal cues was originally done by Guerriero and her colleagues as indicated on page 845 of Guerriero et al. (2006), they reported only the result of null and pronominal forms combined in their paper. Thus, we reported the result of a separate analysis of mothers’ use of pronominal arguments with nonverbal cues in this paper.