Referent accessibility and referential choice in Mandarin mother–child conversation: The incremental effect of accessibility

Abstract

This study investigated whether the referential choices made by Mandarin-speaking children and mothers were related to referent accessibility, in particular, to the incremental effect of accessibility. Two hypotheses were tested. First, it was hypothesized that both the children and the mothers would show sensitivity to the incremental effect of accessibility in their referential choices. Second, it was hypothesized that the children would be less informative than their mothers in their referential choices. Eight hours of Mandarin-speaking mother–child (2;2–3;1) conversation data were analyzed in terms of three types of referential forms and nine categories of accessibility features. In addition, analysis was conducted to determine the accessibility value for each referent and to examine the distribution of referential forms in relation to accessibility values. It was found that the children’s and mothers’ referential choices reflected the incremental effect of accessibility, which supported the first hypothesis. It was also evidenced that the children used more null forms and less nominal and pronominal forms than their mothers did for referents with the same degree of accessibility, which confirmed the second hypothesis. The findings of the study were further discussed in relation to children’s linguistic and cognitive development and the characteristics of mother–child interaction.