Comprehension correlates of the occurrence and deletion of “de” in Mandarin “N1 (de) N2” structures

Based on corpus materials and on-line semantic judgment surveys, this paper investigates the comprehension differences related to the occurrence and deletion of “de” in the Mandarin “N1 (de) N2” structure. By applying PCA and LME modellings on a set of semantic survey data, this study provides a multi-level database of semantic measurements for a set of Chinese “N1 (de) N2” structures as well as a quantitative analysis regarding the correlation between structure-level and constituent-level semantic features. The research shows that:(1) The “de”-occurring structure is more likely to be interpreted as indefinite than the “de”-deletion structure. (2) Animacy of N1 is positively related to the grammaticality of the “de”-occurring structure, while animacy of N1 is negatively related to the grammaticality of the “de”-deletion structure. The research findings provide evidence for prototype effects in the process of language comprehension. We propose that in natural comprehension, there is a high-animacy bias for N1 regarding the “de”-occurring structure; while a low animacy interpretation for N1 is more prototypical for the “de”-deletion structure. Accordingly, the “de”-occurring structure tends to be interpreted as a possessive, while the “de”-deletion structure is more likely to be interpreted as a modifier-head structure.