This study examines the "ba" and "bei" constructions in Mandarin using data from the Tong corpus, a new multimedia longitudinal child language corpus. A unified aspectual account of the two constructions is proposed: both require telic predicates, and should thus correlate with the perfective rather than imperfective aspect for…

This study investigates 2-5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's interpretation of the disjunction word "huozhe" ("or") in two positions in "ruguo" ("if")-conditional statements, i.e., in the antecedent clause versus in the consequent clause. The findings from three experiments show that the meanings…

Using Scotton's model of codeswitching based on markedness theory, this paper examines a type of register variation known as "babytalk," defined as ambiguous talk of babies or young children and talk to babies or young children. It is argued that babytalk and the voice of authority are motivated by Chinese cultural assumptions about…