The Acquisition of Anaphora in Child Mandarin

This book investigates the acquisition of the long-distance binding of the reflexive ziji in child Mandarin at the interface between syntax and theory of mind in developmental psychology. The experimental studies as demonstrated in this book show that children around four years of age begin to be sensitive to the person feature disagreement between the subjects of clauses, and also around the same age begin to understand the false belief of others. Based on the author’s findings, the book proposes an account integrating children’s acquisition of the reflexive binding with their understanding of other’s beliefs, which is central in theory of mind.

Dr. Ruya Li is an associate professor of Linguistics at the College of Foreign Languages, Tianjin Normal University, and her research interest is on child language acquisition and cognitive development. She has researched on a variety of topics concerning children’s acquisition of syntax and semantics, such as the reflexive binding, null arguments, elliptical structures, quantification, focus, bare noun phrases, and so on.