On the Representation of Implicit Arguments in Child Grammar: Short Passives in Mandarin and English

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate whether Mandarin short passives contain an implicit external argument (EA; such as an agent or experiencer). Syntactic tests yield inconclusive results in Mandarin. We employ intervention effects as a diagnostic tool and demonstrate that, unlike English, Mandarin short passives do not syntactically project an implicit EA. Our findings are based on spontaneous language data from the CHILDES corpora, encompassing 1182 children aged 2–6 years, and experimental data from 78 Mandarin-speaking children aged 3–6 years. This cross-linguistic structural difference explains the earlier acquisition of short passives in Mandarin compared to English and also raises a learnability question, which we briefly address: how do children know to project an implicit EA or not in their language?

Keywords

• acquisition
• passives
• intervention effects
• implicit argument
• featural Relativized Minimality
• Mandarin