The Acquisition of de: Investigating Recursive Possession in Mandarin-Speaking Kids

Abstract

Recursive grammar is the sole cognitive mechanism unique to human languages. This study investigates three aspects of the acquisition of the recursive possessive marker de by Mandarin-speaking children: the feasibility of recursive possessive (RP) levels, performance in both cognition and competence, and the age at which these abilities emerge. Following a development theory of recursive possessives in language acquisition, we conducted two tasks—comprehension and production—each comprising 12 questions. The comprehension task involved a truth-value judgment, while the production task consisted of a question-and-answer session. Forty-eight preschoolers, aged three to five, were recruited from a kindergarten and divided into three age groups. Additionally, 16 adults were randomly recruited to serve as a baseline for comparison. The results revealed that significant effects of levels of recursive possessiveness were observed only in five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children, not in their three- and four-year-old counterparts. The comprehension task was significantly easier for all participants compared to the production task, suggesting that understanding the material was not challenging for any group, with no substantial differences noted among them. The results demonstrated that age effects were critical for younger children in adopting RPs. Specifically, three- and four-year-old Mandarin-speaking children demonstrated the ability to comprehend multiple levels of RP but struggled to produce them. In contrast, five-year-olds exhibited adult-like comprehension and the ability to produce Level 1 RP.