Syntactic Cues to Individuation in Mandarin Chinese

When presented with an entity (e.g., a wooden honey-dipper) labeled with anovel noun, how does a listener know that the noun refers to an instance ofan object kind (honey- dipper) rather than to a substance kind (wood)?While English speakers draw upon count-mass syntax for clues to the noun’smeaning, linguists have proposed that classifier languages, which lackcount-mass syntax, provide other syntactic cues. Three experiments testedMandarin- speakers’ sensitivity to the diminutive suffix -zi and thegeneral classifier ge when interpreting novel nouns. Experiment 1 foundthat -zi occurs more frequently with nouns that denote object kinds.Experiment 2 demonstrated Mandarin-speaking adults’ sensitivity to ge and -ziwhen inferring novel word meanings. Experiment 3 tested Mandarin three- tosix-year-olds’ sensitivity to ge. We discuss differences in thedevelopmental course of these cues relative to cues in English, and theimpact of this difference to children’s understanding of individuation.