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(1)What are the similarities and differences between SLI children and HFA childrenin the interpretation of noun phrases(NP),modifier phrases(ModP)and numeralphrases(NumP)focused by zhi(only)respectively?(2)What are the similarities and differences between SLI children and HFA childrenin the interpretation of inner modifier nominal(IMN)and outer modifier nominal(OMN)focused by zhi(only)?(3)What could be the causes of those similarities and differences?

CHAPTER TWOLITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Nature of focus particles

The representation of focus has been discussed heatedly in the literature.Jackendoff(1972)divides the information in a sentence into focus and presupposition.He refersto focus as the information in the sentence that is expected by the speaker not to beshared by him and the hearer and presupposition as the information that is expectedby the speaker to be shared by him and the hearer.Rooth(1985)regards focus as afeature marked on syntactic phrases which has correlated phonological/phonetic andsemantic/pragmatic interpretation.Focus is normally used to mark the presence ofcontextual alternatives to the statement in focus.He also claims that focus divides asentence into new information and old information in which the focused element islabeled as the former.In sum,focus is used to syntactically mark newly assertedinformation or to indicate that a contrast is to be made between current informationand its alternatives.

Linguistic focus can be signaled via prosody,focus particle,prior discoursecontext,or syntactic structure.Among them,focus particles such as only and even,areclosely associated with the assignment of contrastive focus.According to theAlternative Semantic Account by Rooth(1992),focus particles are semanticoperators.

2.2 Acquisition studies on restrictive focus particles

In the past few decades,most of the previous studies concentrating on theinterpretation of sentences with restrictive focus particles only achieved a consensusthat both English-speaking children and Mandarin-speaking children are VPorientation,but their opinions vary as to why children are VP-oriented.

Crain,Ni and Conway(1994)find that 3-to-6-year-old English-speaking childrenassign to sentences with only in pre-subject position like(6a)the meaning of(6b).(6)a.Only the cat is holding a flag.b.The cat is only holding a flag.

The majority of the children accept sentences like(6a)and(6b)as a true descriptionof a picture showing a cat holding a flag,a duck holding a flag and a balloon,and afrog holding a balloon.Crain et al.(1994)come up with the principle of learnability,which is also known as the Semantic Subset Principle(Crain and Philip 1993).According to the Semantic Subset Principle,children acquire a particular grammar onthe basis of positive evidence.The principle explains that learners first embrace theinterpretation that makes the sentence true in the smallest set of contexts,thereby avoiding potential learnability problems like semantic subset difficulties.Learners,therefore,begin with the most limited interpretation and add further interpretations totheir grammar based on positive information from the linguistic community so thatthey can fulfill the needs of learnability in lack of negat本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。