Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the performances of children between four to six years old in the acquisition of VP ellipsis constructions and null object constructions (NOC) in Mandarin Chinese. Four comprehension experiments are conducted to explore the children's performance of VP ellipsis constructions and null object constructions. This study also compares children's performance with adults' performance to further explore how children acquire these two constructions. In the four experiments, reflexives and pronouns are examined in these two constructions, respectively. Our results show: (1) Four-year-old children have already had the linguistic knowledge of VP ellipsis constructions and null object constructions. (2) Children differentiated these two constructions in interpreting reflexives, while in interpreting pronouns, they did not. (3) Adults' performance was inconsistent with syntactic theories; adults' interpretation of the reflexives in null object constructions (Experiment Ⅱ) shows only the sloppy interpretation is acceptable in Chinese adult grammar. (4) Children in Experiment Ⅱ accepted the strict interpretation 33% of the time, and the performance between children and adults is significant. Concerning the significant difference between children and adults, this study interprets from the previous studies of "scalar implicature." As for adults, a pragmatic principle- Cooperative Principle entreats them to be as informative as possible. Adults rejected the target sentences in Experiment Ⅱ because they were under-informative. Children's performance can be attributed to a lack of pragmatic competence. Once children acquire the pragmatic principles or their processing capacity reaches adult-like levels, they perform as adults do.