The Acquisition of Mandarin Aspects and Modals: Evidence from the Acquisition of Negation

This paper investigates three Mandarin-speaking children's corpora (1;9 through 2;1) to study their acquisition of aspects and modals. Their perfect distinction and use of the aspectual and modal negators, mei and bu, suggest the existence of AspectP and ModalP, which supports the Strong Continuity Hypothesis (Lust 1999). 1 argue that the lack of overt aspect markers and modals in their affirmative sentences is due to their aspect- and rnodal- marking mechanisms that are different from the adults', i.e. movement vs. licensing and overt operator vs. covert operator, which, however, are possible dialectal and cross-linguistic variations. The findings are consistent with the Principles-and-Parameters approach to child language development (Hyams 1986).