Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40655-018-0035-x

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Open AccessAge-related differences in the acceptabilityof non-canonical word orders in Mandarin
ChineseShaoyun Yu* and Katsuo Tamaoka* Correspondence: s.yu@nagoya-u.jp
Graduate School of Humanities,
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

Abstract
Prior theoretical and experimental work has demonstrated that the subject-object-verb(SOV) word order is more restricted and more difficult to process than the objectsubject-verb (OSV) word order in Chinese. However, few studies have investigated theactual acceptability of non-canonical, verb-final word orders among native speakers. In
this study, we conducted a paper-based survey with a group of younger adults and agroup of older adults. Non-canonical sentences with and without animacy contrasts
were tested with three tasks: acceptability judgement, grammaticality judgement, andsubject selection. Our results have two main implications. First, contrary to previous
studies, the results suggested that animate-animate-verb (AAV) sentences generally
have very poor acceptability, and they may be mostly regarded as uninterpretable.
Second, and importantly, we found that while a preference for OSV over SOV wasobserved in younger adults, it was not evident in older adults. This suggests that thepreference for the OSV word order might be modulated by the factor of age.
Keywords: Word order, Animacy, Age, Acceptability, Grammaticality

1 Introduction
Chinese is canonically an SVO language.1 Sun and Givón’s (1985) survey of contemporary
written and spoken Mandarin Chinese reports that over 90% of the direct objects occurred in the canonical position after the verb. At the same time, the non-canonical SOV
and OSV word orders, with bare objects being placed in the sentence-medial orsentence-initial positions, are also possible in Chinese. For instance, 2a and 2b are the
SOV and OSV variants of 1, with their propositional meanings being identical to 1.
(1) 张三擦了黑板
zhāngsān__cā__le__heībǎn
zhangsan__wipe__PERF__blackboard
Zhangsan wiped the blackboard(2) a. 张三黑板擦了
zhāngsān__ heībǎn__ cā__lezhangsan__blackboard__wipe__PERF

(SVO)

(SOV)

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Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

b. 黑板张三擦了heībǎn__ zhāngsān__cā__leblackboard__zhangsan__wipe__PERF

Page 2 of 25(OSV)

While the OSV word order is generally considered to be the result of topicalizationof the object (Huang et al. 2009), the syntactic status and function of the SOV word
order are frequently debated. The prominent view holds that the object in the
SOV word order is the ‘focus’, and it is obligatorily associated with a contrastiveor emphatic reading (Ernst and Wang 1995; Shyu 1995, 2001). Paul (2002, 2005)
challenged this view by demonstrating the distinctness of the sentence-medial object and the pre-verbal lián ‘even’ focus. Thereupon, Paul argues for asentence-internal topic status for the sentence-medial object, whose function,
similar to the sentence-initial topic, is to ‘set the frame within which the main
predication holds’ (Paul 2015; Chafe 1976). More recently, Hsu (2008) has proposed that both the topic and the focus status are able to be assigned to thesentence-medial object.
Despite these debates, previous studies in theoretical linguistics have agreed that
SOV is more restricted than OSV in Chinese. In particular, two syntactic constraints
are known to be imposed on SOV but not OSV. First, as exemplified in the following
sentences, while resumptive pronouns in the post-verbal position are allowed in OSV,
they are prohibited in SOV (Huang et al. 2009).
(3) a. 张小姐i,我不想追她izhāng__xiǎojiě,__wǒ__bù__xiǎng__zhuī__tāzhang__Miss,__I__not__want__court__herMiss Zhang, I do not want to court her.
b. * 我,张小姐i不想追她iwǒ,__zhāng__xiǎojiě__bù__xiǎng__zhuī__tāI,__zhang__Miss__not__want__court__her(Adapted from Huang et al. 2009)

(OSV)

(SOV)

Second, while an object inside an embedded clause is able to be extracted and relocated to the sentence-initial position, it is not allowed to be placed in thesentence-medial preverbal position (Lu 1994; Ernst and Wang 1995; Paul 2005):(4) a.
wángwǔ__shuō__lǐsì__dú__wán__le__nà__běn__xiǎoshuō
wangwu__say__lisi__read__finish__PERF__that__CL__novel
Wangwu said that Lisi finished reading that novelb.
nà__běn__xiǎoshuō__wángwǔ__shuō__lǐsì__dú__wán__lethat__CL__novel__wangwu__say__lisi__read__finish__PERF
c. *wángwǔ__nà__běn__xiǎoshuō__shuō__lǐsì__dú__wán__lewangwu__that__CL__novel__say__lisi__read__finish__PERF(Lu 1994, from Ernst and Wang 1995)

Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

SOV is also considered to be subject to additional semantic constraints in comparison to OSV. Hou (1979) noticed that the SOV word order is not available for animate
objects. Sentences like 5c can only be interpreted as OSV, with a reversed reading of
the original SVO one.
(5) a. 他批评了
tā__pīpíng__le__nèi__ge__nǚhái
he__criticize__PERF__that__CL__girl
He criticized that girl他批评了b.
nèi__ge__nǚhái__tā__pīpíng__lethat__CL__girl__he__criticize__PERF批评了c. * 他
tā__nèi__ge__nǚhái__pīpíng__lehe__that__CL__girl__criticize__PERF
Intended reading: ‘He criticized that girl’(Adapted from Hou 1979)
However, it is crucial to point out that the subject of a sentence is also typically animate (Branigan et al. 2008), and the constraint on the SOV reading might arise fromthe lack of a contrast in the animacy of the arguments. Lu (1994) postulates that theobject can only be fronted to the sentence-initial position when both the subject andobject are animate. Qu (1994) further argues that when two preverbal nouns areequally likely to be the thematic agent, the non-canonical sentence is disambiguated as
OSV, which is the ‘default option’.

1.1 The processing of non-canonical word orders

While theoretical studies have examined the nature of non-canonical word orders with
an emphasis on their syntactic properties and deviational constraints, studies in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics have looked into the phenomena using experimentsthat investigate how these sentences are processed by comprehenders. When a comprehender is presented with a noun-noun-verb string, which of the two word orders (SOVor OSV) would be selected? Is there any difference in the processing of SOV and OSV?
The animacy of nouns has consistently been demonstrated to play a significant rolein the interpretation of non-canonical sentences. Studies based on the Competition
Model (Bates and MacWhinney 1981) have found that in Chinese, when a contrast ofanimacy in the preverbal nouns is displayed, there is an overwhelming tendency for the
animate noun to be identified as the subject and the inanimate noun to be identified as
the object (Miao 1981; Li et al. 1992; Li et al. 1993). These studies have measured thepercentage of the first noun being chosen as the agent of the sentence; we will refer tothis as the ‘NP1 percentage’. While the NP1 percentage indicates the likelihood of the
SOV interpretation, the complement of the NP1 percentage (i.e., the percentage of thesecond noun being chosen as the agent) indicates the likelihood of the OSV interpretation. In Miao (1981), animate-inanimate-verb (AIV) strings were interpreted as SOV
85.4% of the time, and inanimate-animate-verb (IAV) strings were interpreted as OSVPage 3 of 25

Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

85.4% of the time too. In the offline experiment of Li et al. (1992), 96.5% of the AIV
strings were interpreted as SOV, and 95.1% of the IAV strings were interpreted as OSV.
While the configuration of animacy (i.e., AIV or IAV) powerfully shifts the interpretation of non-canonical sentences, it is not the only force. In parallel to the theoreticalstudies that argued that SOV is more restricted than OSV, online sentence processing
studies have suggested that SOV is also more difficult to process than OSV. An online
experiment was reported in Li et al. (1992) as well as in Li et al. (1993). In this experiment, participants were given a maximum of 3s to choose the agent of a sentence; thereaction time for choices was measured in addition to the NP1 percentage. A slightasymmetry in the interpretation of AIV and IAV strings was discovered in the results.
According to the NP1 percentage reported in Li et al. (1993), 98% of the IAV strings
were interpreted as OSV; however, only 84% of the AIV strings were interpreted as
SOV. The results suggested that under time pressure, a SOV word order disadvantage
might exist. This factor might have caused a small portion of the responses to AIV
strings to favour the OSV interpretation, despite the fact that there is a mismatch of
the typical argument animacy in the OSV-interpreted AIV strings. Furthermore, according to Li et al. (1992) and Li et al. (1993), on average, it takes a longer time to decide the subject of AIV strings; the mean reaction time for the AIV strings (2162 ms)
was statistically significantly longer than that for the IAV strings (1958 ms). Recent
neurolinguistic studies also confirmed that there is a structural preference for OSV. In
the ERP (event-related potential) study reported in Wang et al. (2012) and Wang 王路明(2015), AIV strings with SOV readings elicited statistically significantly greater anterior
negativity when compared to IAV sentences with OSV readings in the 450–700 ms time
window post-verb onset, indicating that the SOV sentences are more difficult toprocess.
Another situation is the case of sentences without animacy contrast. In an
animate-animate-verb (AAV) string, ideally the animacy is uniform between the two
nouns, therefore any bias toward either the SOV or OSV interpretation should not be
accounted for by noun animacy. To our knowledge, the available data in the literatureare somewhat inconsistent. Miao’s (1981) offline experiment suggested a SOV preference for the interpretation of AAV, as the NP1 was chosen as the agent 68% of thetime. In contrast, the offline experiment from Li et al. (1992) revealed an OSV preference, with the NP1 being chosen as the agent 33.3% of the time. The online experimentreported in Li et al. (1992) and Li et al. (1993) closely replicated the offline results of Li
et al. (1992); 34% of the AAV strings were interpreted as SOV, while 66% of the AAV
strings were interpreted as OSV. Although Hou (1979), Lu (1994), and Qu (1994) havemade rather strong claims that OSV is the sole interpretation of AAV strings, the online and offline results of Li et al. (1992) and Li et al. (1993) are only partially compatible with their perspectives, let alone the counterexample from Miao (1981). Even if we
accept the results of Li et al. (1992) and Li et al. (1993), and agree that OSV is the preferred interpretation for AAV, there is still a reasonable amount of responses thatfavoured the opposite interpretation of SOV. Moreover, according to the data from Li etal. (1993), AAV strings on average took the longest time for participants to choose theagent (2662 ms). Taken together, it seems that rather than having a ‘default’ option in theirmind, people might have difficulties in identifying the subject from two animate nouns,
thus causing a considerable uncertainty in the interpretation of AAV strings and a

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prolonged decision time. And if the thematic and syntactic roles are not determinable in the first place, the acceptability of a sentence is also in question. However,this question was not answered in previous experimental studies, as acceptability
was not their main focus.

1.2 Age as a factor in language use and comprehension

Individual differences are seldom taken into account in studies on non-canonical word
orders in Chinese. Theoretical studies often overlook the possibility that the perceived
acceptability of a non-canonical word order might be systematically affected by certain
individual factors such as age and gender. A majority of experimental studies contain
only a single participant group (typically, young college students), and variables relevant
to individual differences are usually not presented.
Age can have a significant effect on a speaker’s use of language at various levels, suchas pronunciation, word choice, and syntactic preferences (Coulmas 2005; Wagner2012). As discussed by Meisel et al. (2013), while the core grammar of an individual ishighly stable after childhood, age-related changes can nevertheless occur within the
structural optionality provided by the grammatical system. Many studies in sociolinguistics have shown that speakers from different age groups can manifest quantitively
different uses of alternative syntactic structures. For example, French exhibits two
major variants to express future temporal reference, the inflected future (IF) and the
periphrastic future (PF). Wagner and Sankoff (2011) analysed the use of IF and PF
among Canadian French speakers and found that the conservative IF form is more frequently used by older speakers than by younger speakers. Moreover, they found thatboth groups of speakers have increased their use of IF as they age, suggesting an
age-grading pattern in the use of the two alternative forms.
Age also has profound effects on human cognitive abilities (Craik and Bialystok
2006). In general, older adults are considered to have relatively worse performance inonline sentence processing (Wlotko et al. 2010). Previous studies have demonstrated
that older adults are likely to have more difficulties in comprehending structures thatinvolve non-canonical word orders. In English, Stine-Morrow et al. (2000) found thatolder adults performed worse than younger adults in comprehension tasks for object
relative clauses, while no significant age-related differences were observed for subject
relative clauses. Caplan et al. (2011) also found that older adults’ processing performance of object clefts, in addition to object relative clauses, was worse than that of younger adults. In Korean, a SOV language with relatively free word order, there is also
evidence showing that older adults’ performance in the processing of the non-canonical
OSV word order is worse than that of younger adults (Oh et al. 2016; Sung 2017).
Developmental studies have revealed that both the use of non-canonical word orders and the preference for OSV over SOV in Chinese are not established until arather late stage in the L1 acquisition of Chinese speaking children, which is in
sharp contrast with their early and solid acquisition of the canonical SVO word
order (Miao et al. 1984; Chen 2009; Lee 2010; Li 2010). Considering the possible
effects of age on language use and sentence comprehension processing, it is natural
to question whether the relative acceptability of the SOV and OSV word orders
stays invariant throughout one’s entire adulthood.

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1.3 The present study

In this preliminary study, we conducted a paper-based survey focused on the acceptability of the non-canonical word orders in Chinese. In addition to the non-canonical
AIV, IAV, and AAV strings, canonical SVO sentences were also included in the survey
to serve as the baseline. We recruited a group of younger adults as well as a group ofolder adults to participate in the survey.
While studies based on the Competition Model have extensively studied theidentification of thematic roles in non-canonical strings, the task of deciding oneof the two nouns as the agent does not require a string of words to be fully acceptable. Although an acceptability judgement task was included in the ERP studyof Wang et al. (2012) and Wang 王路明 (2015), it was a dichotomous yes-or-notask, and AAV strings were not among the objects of their research. To obtain amore fine-grained evaluation of the acceptability of the non-canonical word orders,
we decided to assess the acceptability with a 7-point Likert scale. Because neutral
responses are allowed on a 7-point scale, a grammaticality judgement task that allows only dichotomous yes-or-no responses was also included as a secondary index
of acceptability.
Since an acceptable sentence requires the successful analysis of the syntactic
and thematic roles of the arguments, it is important to know how the stimuli areinterpreted by survey participants. Therefore, we added a subject selection task inour survey. As shown in previous studies based on the Competition Model, considerable uncertainty exists in the interpretation of AAV strings. We postulate that
there might not exist a default interpretation for non-canonical sentences when
the animacy of the two nouns is perfectly uniform, and this in turn would cause
difficulties in analysing the syntactic and thematic roles in AAV strings. To validate our hypothesis, we included a ‘cannot decide’ option in the subject selectiontask.
According to previous studies, we expected that AIV strings would be interpreted
as SOV, and IAV strings would be interpreted as OSV, with little to no responses
choosing ‘cannot decide’. We expected, however, that the acceptability of SOV
would be lower than that of OSV, as SOV is subject to more restrictions, and it
has been shown to be more difficult to process than OSV. On the other hand, for
AAV strings, we predicted that a considerable amount of responses would fall intothe ‘cannot decide’ option, as a result of failing to analyse the syntactic and thematic roles. Consequently, we predicted that AAV strings would have the lowest
acceptability rating.
Sociolinguistics studies have shown that age can play a significant role in modulating the use of alternative syntactic structures in a language. In addition, experimental studies have demonstrated that the processing of non-canonical word
orders could be more challenging for older adults. As optional structures with
non-canonical word orders in Chinese, SOV and OSV might be subject toage-related changes. However, little work has been done to investigate whether theuse or perception of SOV and OSV could change with age. By comparing the acceptability in the younger adults and the older adults, we were able to detect thepossible differences in their subjective perception of the well-formedness of theseword orders.

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2 Methods
2.1 Participants

A total of 58 native Chinese speakers participated in the survey of this study. They were divided into two groups: the younger native speakers group and the older native speakers
group (Fig. 1).
The younger group was comprised of 30 monolingually raised young native speakers
of Chinese. One participant was excluded because of evidence of low attentiveness(frequently choosing objects as subjects in canonical SVO sentences). As the result of
this exclusion, 29 participants were included in the final analysis. Their mean age was
25.8 years old, ranging from 22 to 32 years old. At the time of the survey, all participants of the younger group were students at Nagoya University, Japan.
The older group consisted of 28 middle- and older-aged monolingual native speakers ofChinese. Five participants were excluded because of evidence of low attentiveness. One participant frequently chose objects as subjects in canonical SVO sentences. Two participants frequently marked grammatical SVO sentences as ungrammatical. Two participants respondedwith an unnatural sequence of answers showing the same repetitious pattern in their responses. After this careful examination, 23 participants were included in the final analysis.
Their mean age was 56.6 years old, ranging from 49 to 65 years old. At the time of the survey,
all participants of the older group were residents of Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province, China.

2.2 Materials

The survey contained 120 test sentences, among which 40 were in the canonical SVO
word order and 80 were in non-canonical verb-final word orders. Each sentence wasformed with two nouns and one verb. All the nouns were double-character words. All theverbs were single-character words suffixed with the perfective aspect marker -了 -le.

Fig. 1 Age distribution of the participants. Individual data points (represented by x-shaped symbols) andthe mean values of each group (represented by rhombus-shaped symbols) are plotted over the boxplot

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Page 8 of 25

To generate the test sentences, we first prepared a list of 40 grammatical and naturalsentences that were in the canonical SVO word order and were in the active voice. For
30 of these sentences, the subjects were animate nouns (i.e., human names) and the objects were inanimate nouns, e.g., 小王喝了牛奶 xiǎo-wáng hē-le niúnǎi ‘xiao-wang2
drank the milk’. The semantics of the verbs in these sentences does not allow the thematic roles of the two nouns to be exchanged. Since the two nouns differed in animacy,an animacy contrast was formed in such sentences. We denote this as [+animacy contrast]. For the other ten sentences in the list, both the subjects and the objects were human names, e.g., 小赵骗了小张 xiǎo-zhào piàn-le xiǎo-zhāng ‘xiao-zhao deceived
xiao-zhang’. As the two nouns were both human names, it is possible to exchange thethematic roles of the nouns. Since the two nouns were perfectly uniform in terms ofanimacy, there was no animacy contrast in such sentences. We denote this as[−animacy contrast].
Then, we derived a total of 80 non-canonical verb-final sentences from the 40 original SVO sentences. As exemplified in Table 1, for each original sentence, two derived
sentences were generated by fronting the object before the verb. We denote a derived
sentence as ‘SOV’ if the object was moved to the sentence-medial position immediately
before the verb and as ‘OSV’ if the object was moved to the sentence-initial position.
The terms ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ are surrounded with quotation marks because they do notnecessarily represent how a verb-final sentence should be interpreted. Instead, they are
merely intended to keep track of how the object from the original SVO sentence waspositioned in a derived verb-final sentence. Different from Li et al. (1992) or Su (2001)
in which test sentences were constructed randomly from pools of candidate nouns andverbs, the derivative approach used in the present study ensured that the verb-final sentences are all potentially acceptable, because it is assured that they could be rearranged
as grammatical and natural SVO sentences.
The detailed composition of the 120 test sentences is shown in Table 2. The test sentences are cross-classified by two factors: animacy contrast and word order. As mentioned above, readers should be cautious that the word order factor in the present
study only represents how the position of an object was manipulated during the sentence derivation process. For the [−animacy contrast] sentences, both ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’
resulted in animate-animate-verb (AAV) strings, as the nouns were all human names
without any bias. For the [+animacy contrast] sentences, however, ‘SOV’ resulted inanimate-inanimate-verb (AIV) strings, and ‘OSV’ resulted in inanimate-animate-verb(IAV) strings. This is because in the original SVO sentences, the nouns for subjects
were animate, and the nouns for objects were inanimate. As one of our main interests
is to investigate how AIV and IAV sentences would differ in acceptability, the [+animacy contrast] sentences were given more weight in the survey. In the survey paper,

Table 1 Relationship between original SVO sentences and derived verb-final sentences
Animacy
contrast

Word order
SVO (original)

‘SOV’

‘OSV’

+

小王 喝了 牛奶

小王 牛奶 喝了牛奶 小王 喝了–小赵 骗了 小张小赵 小张 骗了小张 小赵 骗了‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ indicate how the object in an original SVO sentence is positioned in the derived verb-final sentence. Original
objects are marked in bold typeface

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Table 2 Detailed amount of the test sentences
Animacy
contrast

Word order
SVO (original)

‘SOV’

‘OSV’

Totals

+

30

30

30

90

–

10

10

10

30

Totals

40

40

40

120

the order of the test sentences was randomised, and additional manual adjustment wasmade so that sentences in derivational relationships would not appear sequentially.

2.3 Procedure

For each test sentence in the survey paper, participants were asked to complete threetasks about the sentence in the following order: (1) acceptability judgement, (2) grammaticality judgement, and (3) subject selection. In the acceptability judgement task,
participants were required to rate the acceptability of a test sentence on a 7-point
Likert scale. In the grammaticality judgement task, participants were required to decide
whether a test sentence was grammatical or not. In the subject selection task, participants were required to choose the subject out of the two NPs in a test sentence; a third
choice ‘cannot decide’ was also allowed. To ensure that the participants were paying attention to the subject selection task, for half of the tasks, the presented order of the
two NPs in the question was the reverse of their positions in the test sentences. Before
completing the survey, participants were instructed that there were no standard answers to the tasks and that they should base their answers on their first impressions.

2.4 Data analysis

The experimental design of the present study led to data with multiple measures per
participant per condition. To deal with this kind of data, mixed-effects models withcrossed random effects for participants and items (i.e., test sentences) were utilised in
the analysis (Baayen et al. 2008).
For the data from the acceptability judgement task, a mixed-effects linear regression
model was applied in the analysis (model 1). For the data from the grammaticality
judgement task, a mixed-effects logistic regression model was applied in the analysis(model 2). For the data from the subject selection task, two separate mixed-effects logistic regression models were applied in the analysis: one for the analysis of whether
decisions on the subject were made (model 3) and the other one for the analysis ofwhich NP was chosen, given that a decision on the subject was made (model 4).
The structure of fixed effects was the same across all models. This included thewithin-participants factors animacy contrast and word order, which cross-classify thetest sentences, the between-participants factor group, which indicates the group of aparticipant (younger or older), plus all the interactions between the three factors. The
deviation coding scheme was chosen for all the factors. With regard to random effects,
we employed the maximal random effects structure as proposed by Barr et al. (2013).
For the by-participant random effects, we tried to include the random intercept, therandom slopes for the factor animacy contrast and word order as well as the random slope
for their interaction. For the by-item random effects, we tried to include the randomYu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

intercept and the random slope for the factor group. Model 2 successfully converged withthe maximal specification of random effects, while other models required different degrees of simplification. Following Barr et al. (2013), we prioritised the preservation of random slopes during model simplification. The by-item random intercept in model 1 was
dropped. The by-item random correlation of the intercept and the slope was removed inmodel 3 and model 4. In model 4, the by-participant random slope for the interaction between animacy contrast and word order was also dropped due to the insufficient data.

3 Results
3.1 Acceptability judgement

An overall analysis of variance on model 1 revealed a three-way interaction of animacy
contrast × word order × group (F(2, 66.7) = 6.77, p = .002). Therefore, the results could not
be simply described by any constant main effect. To gain a detailed picture of the results,
we estimated the mean acceptability with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for each condition (see Fig. 2 and Table 3). Degrees of freedom of the estimates were determined by theSatterthwaite’s approximation (Kuznetsova et al. 2016). For pairwise comparison of morethan two levels, p values (p.adj) and CIs were adjusted with Tukey’s method.
As can be seen in Fig. 2, although the younger and older groups shared a similar pattern of the estimates for the [−animacy contrast] sentences (the right panel of Fig. 2),
their patterns of estimates seemed to diverge for the [+animacy contrast] sentences(the left panel of Fig. 2).
We will first examine the estimates under the [+animacy contrast] condition. As expected, in both groups, the acceptability of the canonical SVO sentences was very close

Fig. 2 Estimated acceptability

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Table 3 Estimated acceptability
Animacy
contrast

Word
order

Younger
Estimate

95% CI

Estimate

Older
95% CI

+

SVO

6.73

[6.45, 7.01]

6.47[6.20, 6.73]

+

‘SOV’

3.86

[3.32, 4.40]

4.23[3.65, 4.81]

+

‘OSV’

4.99

[4.51, 5.46]

4.12[3.62, 4.63]

–

SVO

6.76

[6.38, 7.14]

6.35[6.04, 6.66]

–

‘SOV’

2.35

[1.80, 2.90]

2.90[2.36, 3.43]

–

‘OSV’

2.41

[1.85, 2.96]

2.82[2.27, 3.37]

to the highest score of 7 (younger 6.73, 95% CI [6.45, 7.01]; older 6.47, [6.20, 6.73]).
The estimated difference between the two groups was 0.26, [− 0.09, 0.61], which did
not reach statistical significance, t(61.8) = 1.48, p = .144. The estimated acceptability ofthe ‘SOV’ sentences was also very similar in the two groups. The estimates were bothnear to the neutral score of 4 (younger 3.86, [3.32, 4.40]; older 4.23, [3.65, 4.81]), andthe estimated between-group difference was not statistically significant (− 0.37, [− 1.15,
0.41], t(53.9) = 0.95, p = .346). It was in the ‘OSV’ sentences where the two groups diverged noticeably. In the older group, the acceptability of the ‘OSV’ sentences was close
to the neutral score of 4 (4.12, [3.62, 4.63]). Also, the estimate did not deviate significantly from that of the ‘SOV’ sentences in the same group (estimated ‘SOV’ − ‘OSV’
difference in the older group: 0.11, [− 0.51, 0.73], t(59.9) = 0.42, p. adj = .908). In theyounger group, by contrast, the acceptability of the ‘OSV’ sentences tended reasonably
toward acceptance, with an estimated mean of 4.99, [4.51, 5.46]. The acceptability ofthe ‘OSV’ sentences was also significantly higher than the ‘SOV’ sentences in the younger group, by an estimated difference of 1.12, [0.51, 1.73], t(84.7) = 4.41, p. adj < .001.
The difference of the acceptability of the ‘OSV’ sentences between the two groups was
further confirmed by a between-group comparison. The acceptability in the younger
group was higher than that in the older group by a statistically significant difference of
0.86, [0.18, 1.54], t(54.5) = 2.54, p = .014.
Let us continue to examine the estimates under the [−animacy contrast] condition.
The patterns of the estimated acceptability were similar between the two groups. In
general, the acceptability of the canonical SVO sentences was near the highest score of7, and the acceptability of the non-canonical ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences was below theneutral score of 4. Recall that the nouns in the [−animacy contrast] sentences wereboth human names, and consequently, the derived non-canonical ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences were both animate-animate-verb (AAV) strings. Thus, they were merely two variants of the same kind, i.e., the AAV strings. Therefore, in principle, no difference
should be found in the acceptability of the ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences. This was
confirmed by the analysis. In the younger group, the estimated difference between theacceptability of the ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences was − 0.06, 95% CI [− 0.63, 0.52],t(126.2) = 0.23, p. adj = .971. In the older group, the estimated difference was 0.08, [− 0.32,
0.48], t(99.7) = 0.47, p. adj = .887. Neither of these differences reached statistical significance. Furthermore, there was no significant between-group difference found in the ‘SOV’or ‘OSV’ sentences. The estimated younger − older group difference at ‘SOV’ was − 0.54,[− 1.26, 0.17], t(58.9) = 1.52, p = .134. The estimated group difference at ‘OSV’ was − 0.41,[− 1.14, 0.32], t(58.6) = 1.12, p = .267. Neither was statistically significant.

Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

Under the [−animacy contrast] condition, however, there was one seemingly problematic result coming out from the SVO sentences. Although in both groups, the SVO
sentences were estimated to have very high acceptability (younger 6.76, 95% CI [6.38,
7.14]; older 6.35, [6.04, 6.66]), the estimated younger − older group difference wasfound to be statistically significant, 0.41, [0.01, 0.80], t(77.1) = 2.04, p = .045. Does this
imply that the two groups showed a substantial difference in their acceptability of thecanonical SVO sentences? We doubt it for four reasons. First, consider that the point
estimate of the between-group difference (0.41) was below 0.5, which was relatively
small in the context of a 7-point Likert scale, and that the 95% CI only marginally excluded zero ([0.01, 0.80]). We think it would be too soon to jump to the conclusionthat the difference was of practical significance. Second, the estimated difference suggested that, for the SVO sentences under the [−animacy contrast] condition, the acceptabilty in the older group was slightly but significantly lower than the younger group.
On the other hand, as described above, under the [+animacy contrast] condition, theestimated younger – older difference for the SVO sentences was of no statistical significance, 0.26, [− 0.09, 0.61], t(61.8) = 1.48, p = .144. Although they differed in statisticalsignificance, when the two between-group differences in SVO sentences (one under the[+animacy contrast] condition, the other under the [−animacy contrast] conditions)were contrasted with each other, no significant difference was confirmed, 0.15, [− 0.14,
0.43], t(116.3) = 1.03, p = .304. This means that the slight between-group difference in
SVO sentences under the [−animacy contrast] condition is hardly greater than that
under the [+animacy contrast] condition. Third, as previously shown in Table 2,
the amount of test sentences for the [−animacy contrast] condition (i.e., 30) was
comparatively less than the [+animacy contrast] ones (i.e., 90). This would contribute relatively more sampling error to the results under the [−animacy contrast]
condition, which might account for the unexpected statistical significance here.
Fourth and finally, in the grammaticality judgement task, as detailed in the next
section, there was no significant between-group difference found in the SVO sentences under both animacy conditions. Judging from the reasons above, we think
this minor between-group difference in the SVO sentences under the [−animacy
contrast] condition was more likely due to sampling error than a real linguistic
difference in the population.
In summary, regardless of the conditions of animacy, the acceptability of the SVO
sentences was close to the highest score in both groups, which was not surprising because SVO is the canonical word order in Chinese. Under the [−animacy contrast] condition, the non-canonical ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences (i.e., the AAV strings) weregenerally not acceptable in both groups. Under the [+animacy contrast] condition, theacceptability of the ‘SOV’ sentences (i.e., the AIV strings) was neutral in both groups.
However, the acceptability of the ‘OSV’ sentences (i.e., the IAV strings) was significantly
different in the two groups. In the older group, the acceptability of the ‘OSV’ sentences
was as neutral as the ‘SOV’ sentences. In the younger group, by contrast, the ‘OSV’ sentences were biased to be acceptable, and the acceptability was significantly higher thanthat of the ‘SOV’ sentences in the same group. Furthermore, a between-group difference for the ‘OSV’ sentences under the [+animacy contrast] condition was confirmed,
with the acceptability in the younger group being significantly higher than that in theolder group. It can be concluded that the older native speakers showed lower

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Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

acceptance toward the ‘OSV’ sentences under the [+animacy contrast] condition (i.e.,
the IAV strings) than the younger speakers.

3.2 Grammaticality judgement

An overall analysis of deviance on model 2 revealed a three-way interaction of animacy
contrast × word order × group (χ2(2) = 17.79, p < .001). Therefore, the results could not be
simply described by any constant main effect. To gain a detailed picture of the results, weestimated the mean probabilities of sentences being judged as grammatical (the ‘grammatical probability’) with 95% CIs for each condition (see Fig. 3 and Table 4). Because of thenature of logistic regression, the estimates were originally in logarithmic scale and they
represented the log odds of probabilities. To make them intuitive to understand, we transformed the log odds to probabilities with the inverse logit function. For the estimates on
differences, however, we left them in their original logarithmic scale, as they were onlyused for statistical significance tests here. For pairwise comparison of more than twolevels, p values (p.adj) and CIs were adjusted with Tukey’s method.
First, let us examine the results for the SVO sentences. As shown in Fig. 3 andTable 4, the point-estimated probabilities of the SVO sentences being judged grammatical were above 99% for both groups under both animacy conditions, with a slight variance in their 95% CIs. There was no significant between-group difference for the SVO
sentences in either animacy condition (estimated younger – older group difference
under the [+animacy contrast] condition 0.21, 95% CI [− 1.05, 1.47], z = 0.33, p = .742;
under the [−animacy contrast] condition 1.46, [− 0.52, 3.45], z = 1.45, p = .147). These

Fig. 3 Estimated grammatical probability

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Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

Page 14 of 25

Table 4 Estimated grammatical probability
Animacy
contrast

Word
order

Younger
Estimate

95% CI

Older
Estimate

95% CI

+

SVO

99.4%

[98.2, 99.8]

99.3%[97.9, 99.8]

+

‘SOV’

37.5%

[16.4, 64.8]

58.2%[28.6, 82.9]

+

‘OSV’

82.6%

[61.8, 93.3]

47.7%[21.8, 75.0]

–

SVO

99.8%

[97.9, 100.0]

99.1%[94.1, 99.9]

–

‘SOV’

2.9%

[0.6, 13.0]

10.3%[2.1, 37.6]

–

‘OSV’

1.8%

[0.4, 8.8]

8.1%

[1.6, 32.2]

results are expected since SVO is the canonical word order. In the following, we discuss
the results for the non-canonical sentences.
Under the [−animacy contrast] condition, the non-canonical ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences (i.e., the AAV strings) were generally judged as ungrammatical, as their estimated grammatical probabilities were considerably low. The point-estimatedprobabilities were all below 11%. The upper limits of the 95% CIs were all below the
50% point; therefore, the tendency of ungrammatical judgement was not merely bychance. Although the estimated probabilities in the older group were relatively higher
than those in the younger group, the margins of the 95% CIs in the older group werealso appreciably wider, indicating larger uncertainty in the estimates. No significant difference was found in the between-group comparisons for either the ‘SOV’ or the ‘OSV’
sentences (estimated younger − older group difference at ‘SOV’ − 1.34, 95% CI [− 3.41,
0.73], z = 1.27, p = .205; at ‘OSV’ − 1.56, [− 3.64, 0.53], z = 1.47, p = .143). Also, there
was no significant difference between the two variants of AAV strings in both groups(estimated ‘SOV’ – ‘OSV’ difference in the younger group 0.48, [− 1.07, 2.03], z = 0.73,
p. adj = .748; in the older group 0.26, [− 1.04, 1.57], z = 0.47, p. adj = .884).
Under the [+animacy contrast] condition, the grammatical probability of the ‘SOV’
sentences (i.e., the AIV strings) was estimated to be near 50% in both the younger andthe older groups. The 95% CIs were broad, indicating a high level of uncertainty in theestimates, which in turn indicated a high individual variance in the judgement. Neitherof the CIs excluded the 50% point, therefore these probabilities could not be considered
to be beyond the chance level. Although the point-estimated probabilities differed tosome extent in the two groups, no significant between-group difference was found(estimated younger – older group difference − 0.84, 95% CI [− 2.48, 0.80], z = 1.01,
p = .314). These results are well understandable: with the acceptability being neutral, but with the sentences needing to be dichotomously judged as grammatical or
ungrammatical, the overall grammatical probability of the ‘SOV’ sentences will
average around 50%, with high variance among the judgements.
For the ‘OSV’ sentences under the [+animacy contrast] condition (i.e., the IAV
strings), again, a remarkable divergence was observed between the two groups. In theolder group, the point-estimated grammatical probability was very close to 50%(47.7%). The 95% CI was broad, and did not exclude the 50% point ([21.8, 75.0]). Thus,
the probability could not be considered to be beyond the chance level. Also, there wasno significant difference between the ‘OSV’ and ‘SOV’ sentences in the older group(estimated ‘SOV’ − ‘OSV’ difference 0.42, 95% CI [− 0.82, 1.65], z = 0.80, p. adj = .705).
In the younger group, by contrast, the grammatical probability was fairly high, with a

Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

point estimate of 82.6%. The 95% CI was relatively narrower, and excluded the 50%
point by a reasonable margin ([61.8, 93.3]). This means that the tendency of grammatical judgement was significantly above chance. In the younger group, the grammaticalprobability for the ‘OSV’ sentences was also significantly higher than the ‘SOV’ sentences (estimated ‘OSV’ − ‘SOV’ difference 2.07, [0.93, 3.20], z = 4.26, p. adj < .001).
Moreover, the estimated younger − older group difference was shown to be significant(1.65, [0.08, 3.21], z = 2.06, p = .039). As demonstrated by the results, the younger groupjudged the ‘OSV’ sentences under the [+animacy contrast] condition (i.e., the IAV
strings) as grammatical at a considerably high probability, whereas in the older group,
the grammatical probability of these sentences was merely at the chance level.
In general, the results of the grammaticality judgement task were in line with the results of the acceptability judgement task.

3.3 Subject selection

As mentioned previously, the analysis for the data of the subject selection task wasdone with two separate mixed-effects logistic regression models, i.e., model 3 andmodel 4. Model 3 was intended to analyse whether decisions on the subject were made.
Specifically, it was used to analyse the ‘decision probability’, which represents the probability of not choosing the ‘cannot decide’ option. Model 4 was intended to analyse
which NP was chosen, given that a decision on the subject was made. Specifically, it
was used to analyse the ‘NP1 probability’, which represents the conditional probabilityof the first NP being chosen as the subject. In contrast to models 1–3, which worked
with the full set of the final data, model 4 only worked with a subset of the data, i.e.,
the responses where decisions on the subject were made.
We will first examine the results of model 3.
3.3.1 Decision probability

An overall analysis of deviance was performed on model 3. Although the three-way interaction animacy contrast × word order × group did not reach significance (χ2(2) = 1.44,
p = .487), two significant two-way interactions were identified: the animacy × group interaction (χ2(1) = 6.43, p = .011) and the animacy × word order interaction (χ 2 (2) = 18.95,
p < .001). Because of the interactions, the results could not be simply described by any
constant main effect. To gain a detailed picture of the results, we estimated the mean decision probabilities with 95% CIs for each condition (see Fig. 4 and Table 5). As withmodel 2, we had transformed these estimates from log odds to probabilities for intuitive
interpreting, but left the estimates on differences in logarithmic scale for simplicity. For
pairwise comparison of more than two levels, p values (p.adj) and CIs were adjusted with
Tukey’s method.
Under the [+animacy contrast] condition, the decision probabilities in both groups
were close to the ceiling for all the levels of word order, with most of the point estimates being above 99%. In the younger group, while there was no significant difference
between the estimated decision probabilities for the canonical SVO and thenon-canonical ‘OSV’ sentences (1.31, 95% CI [− 1.20, 3.82], z = 1.22, p. adj = .440), theestimate for the ‘SOV’ sentences (95.5%, [83.1, 98.9]) was slightly lower than the othertwo cases (estimated SVO – ‘SOV’ difference 3.46, [1.17, 5.75], z = 3.54, p. adj = .001;

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Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

Page 16 of 25

Fig. 4 Estimated decision probability

estimated ‘OSV’ – ‘SOV’ difference 2.15, [0.14, 4.17], z = 2.50, p. adj = .033). For
non-canonical sentences, if decisions on the subject were made solely based on the animacy contrast, then there should be no significant difference between the decision
probabilities of the ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences, since they only swapped the positions of
the two nouns. The moderately lower decision probability for the ‘SOV’ sentences inthe younger group might be an indication that the group has a preference for the OSVword order. As a consequence, a small fraction of the responses might have chosen the‘cannot decide’ option because these responses had considered SOV as just uninterpretable. In the older group, on the other hand, there was no significant difference among
the decision probabilities for the SOV, ‘SOV’, and ‘OSV’ sentences (estimated SVO –‘SOV’ difference 2.42, [− 1.40, 6.25], z = 1.49, p. adj = .297; estimated SVO – ‘OSV’
difference 1.16, [− 2.72, 5.05], z = 0.70, p. adj = .763; and estimated ‘SOV’ – ‘OSV’ difference − 1.26, [− 4.03, 1.51], z = − 1.07, p. adj = .533).

Table 5 Estimated decision probability
Animacy
contrast

Word
order

Younger
Estimate

95% CI

Older
Estimate

95% CI

+

SVO

99.9%

[99.1, 100]99.9%

[98.9, 100]

+

‘SOV’

95.5%

[83.1, 98.9]

99.4%[95.5, 99.9]

+

‘OSV’

99.5%

[96.5, 99.9]

99.8%[98.2, 100]

–

SVO

99.7%

[97.1, 100]

99.4%

[94.8, 99.9]

–

‘SOV’

20.5%

[5.9, 51.6]

5.0%[0.9, 23.0]

–

‘OSV’

17.9%

[3.0, 60.6]

1.6%[0.1, 16.3]

Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

Under the [−animacy contrast] condition, the decision probabilities of the SVO sentences were also extremely high, with point estimates above 99%. However, there was ahuge drop in the estimates for the non-canonical ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences (i.e., theAAV strings) in both groups. The point estimates in the younger group were 20.5% and17.9%, with the upper limits of 95% CIs being no higher than 61%. The point estimatesin the older group were 5.0% and 1.6%, with the 95% CIs being far below 50%. This
demonstrates a difficulty in choosing subjects in AAV strings. Although the estimatesin the younger group appeared to be higher than the older group, the 95% CIs werealso much broader, indicating larger uncertainty in the estimates. No significant
between-group difference was found (estimated younger – older group difference at‘SOV’ 1.59, 95% CI [− 0.57, 3.76], z = 1.45, p = .148; at ‘OSV’ 2.60, [− 0.44, 5.63], z = 1.68,
p = .093). There was also no significant difference between the two variants of AAV stringsin both groups (estimated ‘SOV’ – ‘OSV’ difference in the younger group 0.16, [− 0.92,
1.25], z = 0.35, p = .933; in the older group 1.17, [− 0.49, 2.83], z = 1.65, p = .225).
The high decision probabilities for the ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences under the[+animacy contrast] condition (i.e., AIV and IAV strings) show that people have little tono difficulty in deciding the subject in non-canonical sentences with animacy contrast.
In sharp contrast with this, the decision probabilities for the non-canonical sentences
under the [−animacy contrast] condition (i.e., AAV strings) were considerably low, indicating a difficulty in analysing the syntactic and thematic roles in such strings.

3.3.2 NP1 probability

An overall analysis of deviance was performed on model 4. All the interactions that
contained the factor group, along with the main effect of the group itself, were shown
to be non-significant (animacy contrast × word order × group χ2(2) = 2.83, p = .243; animacy contrast × group χ2(1) = 3.11, p = .078; word order × group: χ2(2) = 1.16, p = .560;
group χ2(1) = 0.30, p = .581). Thus, it can be inferred that there was no significant
between-group difference in any condition. There was, however, a significant two-way
interaction of animacy contrast × word order (χ2(2) = 60.64, p < .001). Because of theinteraction, the results still could not be simply described by any constant effect of animacy contrast or word order. To gain a detailed picture of the results, we estimated themean NP1 probabilities with 95% CIs for each condition (see Fig. 5 and Table 6). As
with model 2 and model 3, we had transformed these estimates from log odds to probabilities for intuitive interpreting but left the estimates on differences in logarithmic
scale for simplicity. For pairwise comparison of more than two levels, p values (p.adj)
and CIs were adjusted with Tukey’s method.
Under the [+animacy contrast] condition, the NP1 probabilities of the SVO and‘SOV’ sentences were close to the ceiling in both groups, with all their point estimates
being above 97%. No statistically significant difference was found between the SVO and‘SOV’ sentences in both groups (estimated SOV − ‘OSV’ difference in the younger
group 1.28, [− 0.42, 2.99], z = 1.76, p. adj = .182; in the older group 0.03, [− 2.22, 2.29],
z = 0.03, p. adj = .999). The high NP1 probability was not surprising for the
non-canonical ‘SOV’ sentences (i.e., the AIV strings), because the animate nouns,
which were also the original subjects, were positioned at the beginning of thesesentences. On the other hand, the NP1 probability of the ‘OSV’ (i.e., the IAV

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Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

Page 18 of 25

Fig. 5 Estimated NP1 probability

strings) sentences was remarkably low. In the younger group, the estimate was
25.6%, 95% CI [4.3, 72.4]; in the older group, the estimate was 24.6%, [2.9, 78.2].
Because the animate nouns (also the original subjects) were positioned as the second nouns in the ‘OSV’ sentences, the low point estimates of the NP1 probabilities
were expected. However, it is interesting that the point estimates did not hit thebottom, and the 95% CIs were broad. This implies that there was a relatively highindividual variance in the sample, and a reasonable amount of responses had taken
the first, inanimate nouns as the ‘subject’. The almost identical estimates in theyounger and older groups means that this was the same situation for both groups.
The explanation for this outcome might largely lie in the very term ‘subject’ that
we used in this task. The distinction of subject and topic is rather controversial in
Chinese (Shi 2001), and some renowned linguists such as Zhu Dexi even consider
all sentence-initial nouns as the subject (Zhu 朱德熙 1982: 95–96). It is possible

Table 6 Estimated NP1 probability
Animacy
contrast

Word
order

Younger
Estimate

95% CI

Older
Estimate

95% CI

+

SVO

99.3%

[98.1, 99.8]

99.4%[98.1, 99.8]

+

‘SOV’

97.6%

[93.5, 99.1]

99.4%[97.4, 99.9]

+

‘OSV’

25.6%

[4.3, 72.4]

24.6%[2.9, 78.2]

–

SVO

99.8%

[98.1, 100]

100%

[99.6, 100]

–

‘SOV’

14.4%

[1.5, 64.8]

61.8%[4.6, 98.2]

–

‘OSV’

9.7%

[0.4, 74.9]

82.7%[6.7, 99.7]

Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

that some of the responses had confused the concept of subject with the concept
of topic and, therefore, took the topicalized object as the ‘subject’.
Under the [−animacy contrast] condition, the NP1 probability of the SVO sentences
was extremely high, with the point estimates being above 99%. This was expected as
SVO is the canonical word order. For the non-canonical ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences(i.e., the AAV strings), there were great uncertainties in the estimates. In the younger
group, the point estimates were below 15%, but the upper limits of the 95% CIs could
be as high as 74.9%. In the older group, the point estimates were 61.6% and 82.7%, but
the 95% CIs ranged from below 10% to above 98%. In an AAV string, the two nouns
were both human names; therefore in principle, they were equally likely to be chosen
as the subject. The point-estimated NP1 probabilities suggested that based on the sample, there might be an NP2 preference in the younger group and an NP1 preference inthe older group. However, the 95% CIs were so broad in the two groups that no definite
conclusions could be drawn. Indeed, there was no statistically significant
between-group difference in any case, as already shown by the overall analysis of deviance. Also, in both groups, no significant difference between the two variants of the
AAV strings was found (estimated ‘SOV’ – ‘OSV’ difference in the younger group 0.45,[− 2.87, 3.78], z = 0.32, p. adj = .946; in the older group − 1.09, [− 5.76, 3.58], z = 0.55, p.
adj = .849). The high level of uncertainty in the estimates of the ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ sentences could be an indication of a great degree of individual variance in the interpretation of AAV strings. Meanwhile, the insufficiency of data was also a cause. As
mentioned previously, the amount of available data for model 4 was determined bywhether a decision on the subject was made. Recall that the AAV strings were the only
case where the decision probability was remarkably low. This means that for these sentences, only a small portion of the data were available for the analysis of NP1 probability. Take the ‘SOV’ sentences for example. In the raw data, only 34% (99 out of 290) of
the responses was available from the younger group, and only 22% (51 out of 230) was
available from the older group. The small size of the data would lead to a larger marginof error in the estimates of the AAV strings.

4 Discussion
This preliminary study examined the acceptability of non-canonical word orders in
Chinese with a group of younger adults and a group of older adults. We found that thetwo groups showed congruent results under almost all our experimental conditions, except for the IAV strings.
The baseline SVO sentences were, with no surprise, judged as highly acceptable inboth groups. Animacy contrast did not manifest any influence on the results of SVO
sentences. Irrespective of the condition of animacy contrast, SVO sentences were estimated to be between 6 and 7 points in our 7-point scale acceptability judgement task.
In our grammaticality judgement task, SVO sentences were estimated to be judged as
grammatical over 99% of the time. The results from our subject selection task further
guaranteed that people have no difficulty in analysing the syntactic relations in SVO
sentences. The decision probability (i.e., the probability of not choosing the ‘cannot decide’ option) was estimated to be above 99% in all the cases of SVO, and over 99% of
the time the first noun would be chosen as the subject. All the estimates have comePage 19 of 25

Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

with remarkably narrow margins of error when compared to non-canonical test sentences, which is evidence for a high consistency among individuals.
Prior work with theoretical and experimental approaches has demonstrated that the
SOV word order is subject to more restrictions and is more difficult to process compared to the OSV word order. For AAV strings (the ‘SOV’ and ‘OSV’ strings under the[−animacy contrast] condition), where no animacy contrast exists, theoretical studies
such as Hou (1979), Lu (1994), and Qu (1994) have made strong claims that OSV isthe sole interpretation. Nevertheless, the experimental studies of Miao (1981), Li et al.
(1992), and Li et al. (1993) have shown that the OSV interpretation of AAV strings is
far less dominant than expected. More interestingly, their results in fact contradictedeach other, with Miao (1981) suggesting a SOV preference and Li et al. (1992) and Li etal. (1993) suggesting an OSV preference. We postulated that, contrary to previous studies, there might not exist a default interpretation for non-canonical sentences when the
animacy of the two nouns are perfectly uniform, such as the AAV strings in the present
study. Our results have supported this hypothesis. AAV strings were the only case thatthe decision probability was estimated to be below 21%, while other cases all had thedecision probability above 95%. Even for the responses where decisions on the subject
were made, a great level of inconsistency existed in both groups, rendering it impossible to infer any structural preference. In addition, AAV strings are generally regarded
as unacceptable. In both groups, the acceptability of AAV strings was estimated to be
between 2 and 3, which is significantly below the neutral score of 4. And it is well beyond the chance level that AAV strings would be judged as ungrammatical. The possibility of AAV strings being judged as grammatical was estimated to be below 11%.
Because the decision probability was considerably low for AAV strings, the poor acceptability of AAV strings should be a direct result of their uninterpretable status.
In regard to non-canonical sentences with animacy contrast, recall that the ‘SOV’ and‘OSV’ strings under the [+animacy contrast] condition in the present study are equivalent to AIV and IAV strings respectively. For these cases, the estimated decision probabilities of the subject selection task were all above 95%, which indicates that thesyntactic and thematic relations are resolvable in AIV and IAV strings. However, being
interpretable is not equal to being fully acceptable. In our data, the acceptability of AIV
and IAV strings was always estimated to be lower than that of canonical SVO sentences. For AIV strings, the acceptability was only around the neutral point in bothgroups (3.86, 95% CI [3.32, 4.40] in the younger group; 4.23, [3.65, 4.81] in the older
group). The probability of AIV strings being judged as grammatical was also not significantly different from the chance level of 50% in both groups (37.5%, [16.4, 64.8] in theyounger group, 58.2% [28.6, 82.9] in the older group). The younger group and the older
group did not significantly differ from each other either by the measurement of acceptability or by the measurement of grammaticality.
The only case where the younger group and the older group differed significantly is in
the acceptability and grammaticality of IAV strings. Crucially, we found that the older
group expressed significantly lower acceptance toward IAV strings when compared to theyounger group. The acceptability of IAV strings in the younger group was biased to be acceptable (4.99, 95% CI [4.51, 5.46]), and it was significantly higher than the acceptabilityof AIV strings in the same group (p.adj< .001). In the older group, however, the acceptability of IAV strings had dropped to the neutral level (4.12, [3.62, 4.63]), and it did not

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significantly differ from the acceptability of AIV strings (p.adj = .908). The different tendencies between the two groups were also confirmed by the results of the grammaticality
judgement task. In the younger group, the probability that IAV strings are judged as grammatical was as high as 82.6%, [61.8, 93.3], which was also significantly higher than thegrammatical probability of AIV strings in the same group (p.adj < .001). By contrast, theprobability of IAV strings being judged as grammatical was only around the chance levelin the older group (47.7%, [21.8, 75.0]), and it did not significantly deviate from that of
AIV strings (p.adj = .705). Moreover, between-group comparison reaffirmed that the acceptability of IAV strings in the younger group was significantly higher than that of theolder group (p = .014). And it was also true for the between-group comparison of grammaticality (p = .039). Although the ambiguity of the concept of subject and topic in
Chinese (Shi 2001) might have caused some confusion to the participants in bothgroups when performing the subject selection task, previous studies have clearlyshown that AIV strings are basically interpreted as SOV, and IAV strings are basicallyinterpreted as OSV (Miao 1981; Li et al. 1992; Li et al. 1993). In addition, the AIV
and IAV strings in the present study were directly derived from corresponding SVO
sentences in which the animacy contrast exists and the thematic roles of nouns are
not exchangeable. Therefore, the acceptability of the AIV and IAV strings could beinterpreted as the acceptability of SOV and OSV.
Previous studies (Li et al. 1992; Li et al. 1993; Lu 1994; Ernst and Wang 1995; Paul
2005; Huang et al. 2009; Wang et al. 2012; Wang 王路明 2015) have illustrated that
there is a preference for OSV over SOV in Chinese. However, few studies have considered that the preference for a particular word order might systematically vary with certain individual factors. We found that while a bold advantage of OSV over SOV existed
in the younger group, it had ceased to be visible in the older group. Although uncontrolled factors such as the difference of educational backgrounds between the twogroups3 might play a role, we think it is less likely because the stimuli in this study arevery simple, and non-canonical sentences with bare objects are more frequent inspoken Chinese (Sun and Givón 1985). Another concern might be the fact that the participants in the younger group were also learners of Japanese with JLPT N1 level (thehighly proficient level). However, no evidence for L2 influence was found in the present
study because SOV is far more frequent than OSV in Japanese, with a reported
SOV:OSV ratio of 17:1 (Kuno 1978). If the younger group’s perception of word orders
in Chinese were influenced by Japanese, higher acceptability for the AIV (SOV) strings
should be observed, which as shown by our data is not true. Judging from the above,
we consider this difference to be age-related.
Now the question comes that why age-related differences were found only in the
OSV-interpreted IAV strings but not the AIV and AAV strings. First, we think that
there might be little or no room for age-related changes in the acceptability of AIV andAAV strings (i.e., floor effects). The results of the present study strongly indicate thatthe acceptance of non-canonical word orders in Chinese is dependent on the resolvable
syntactic relations of the pre-verbal nouns, which in turn rely on the existence of semantic cues such as animacy contrast. For AAV strings, the lack of animacy contrast
hinders a comprehender from further interpreting these strings. This directly leads tothe poor acceptability of AAV strings and leaves no room for age to play a role. For
AIV strings, the animacy contrast makes it possible to analyse the syntactic relations ofPage 21 of 25

Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

the pre-verbal nouns. Thus, they should at least have a random chance to be judged as
acceptable. Meanwhile, the use of the SOV word order is known to be rather restricted
in Chinese. As we have seen, the acceptability and grammaticality of AIV strings in theyounger group did not go beyond the neutral or chance level. It is possible that theoverall neutral judgement is both the least and the most that AIV strings can have; as aresult, age can impose little effects on the acceptability of these strings. The IAV strings
are similar to the AIV strings in the sense that the syntactic relations of the pre-verbal
nouns can be resolved with the help of animacy cues. An important difference, however, is that the OSV word order is less restricted than the SOV word order both syntactically and semantically in Chinese. In addition, OSV has also been demonstrated tobe easier to process than SOV. Because of the properties of the OSV word order, theOSV-interpreted IAV strings should have the potential to be judged as more acceptable.
Therefore, the possible overall acceptability of IAV strings is not constrained to the neutrallevel but can range from merely neutral to somewhere on the more acceptable side.
The striking difference in the acceptability of IAV strings between the younger adults
and the older adults suggests that there must be some changes in the use or perceptionof OSV sentences between the two age groups. One possible change is that younger
adults might have more frequent use of the OSV word order than older adults, thus
giving rise to the higher acceptability in the group. As discussed by Wagner (2012),
younger adults’ language is relatively free from normative pressures while older adults
might employ more standard forms of speech. The OSV word order is an optional construction in spoken Chinese which involves the topicalization of the object. The subjective acceptability of OSV can depend on how frequently speakers from an age groupuse topicalized OSV sentences in their linguistic environment. Do younger adults use
topicalized sentences more frequently, or do older adults adhere more to the canonicalword order? For now, the lack of corpus studies on the language use in younger andolder adults in the Chinese linguistic literature means that we have no direct answer.
However, we should not refrain from consulting studies of other languages. In spoken
French, for example, the left and right dislocations of a noun or pronoun serve as devices to introduce topics (Ashby 1982; Ashby 1988; Katz and Blyth 2007). Ashby’s(1982) corpus-based study found that both the left and right dislocations are significantly more frequent in the discourse of younger speakers (60%) than that of older
speakers (32%). This example of spoken French shows that quantitatively different usesof the topic construction between age groups is possible. The question whether a similar situation exists in the use of the OSV word order in Chinese calls for further
corpus-based investigations.
Another possibility is that the lower acceptability of OSV in the older adults might berelated to cognitive ageing. Older adults are generally found to have relatively worse
performance during online sentence processing (Wlotko et al. 2010), recent studies
have provided compelling evidence that native Chinese speakers are no exception (Xuet al. 2017; Z. Zhu et al. 2018). Previous studies in English and Korean report that age
effects are most pronounced in the processing of structures with non-canonical word
orders, such as object relative clauses and object clefts in English (Stine-Morrow et al.
2000; Caplan et al. 2011) and the OSV word order in Korean (Oh et al. 2016; Sung
2017). In a similar vein, considering that OSV is a non-canonical word order in
Chinese, it is possible that older native speakers of Chinese might also have more

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Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

difficulties when processing OSV sentences relative to younger adults. Although acceptability judgements can only be made after the processing of a sentence and therefore
are not directly linked with processing performance, subjective acceptability and processing performance measures can often be correlated, as is evident in the data of
Wang et al. (2012) and Wang 王路明 (2015). Hence, it also seems worthwhile toscrutinize whether the lower acceptability of OSV in the older adults is associated withage-related differences in the processing of OSV by using experimental methods, which
has not yet been done in the literature.

5 Conclusions
The present study provides valuable data on the acceptability of non-canonicalword orders among younger and older native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Previous theoretical and experimental studies demonstrated that OSV word order is preferred over SOV word order in Chinese. However, our results suggest that thispreference for OSV can be modulated by the factor of age and therefore is not invariant. Specifically, whereas OSV was judged significantly more acceptable than
SOV in the younger adults, the acceptability of OSV in the older adults was only
neutral and did not significantly deviated from that of SOV. While only speculations are allowed with the data available at the moment, there must be an underlying cause for this striking difference. On one hand, the difference can be anindication of a possible quantitative difference in the use of OSV between different
age groups. On the other hand, it also seems possible that the reduced acceptability of OSV in the older adults can be associated with age-related differences insentence processing. Future corpus-based and experimental work are required to
examine the possible explanations proposed in the present study.
6 Endnotes1
We consider SVO as the only canonical word order in Chinese for its overwhelmingly
high frequency in use.
2
The prefix xiǎo- ‘small-’ in human names is used to refer to a person who is younger
than the speaker with a sense of familarity (Sun 2006).
3
It was very difficult to control the educational background of the two groups because of the difficulty of recruiting older adults with higher education experience. Due
to historical reasons, many of them did not have the chance to receive higher education
at their younger ages.
Abbreviations
AAV: Animate-animate-verb; AIV: Animate-inanimate-verb; CI: Confidence interval; CL : Classifier; ERP: Event-related potential;
IAV: Inanimate-animate-verb; IF : Inflected future; NP: Noun phrase; OSV: Object subject verb; PERF: Perfect aspect;
PF : Periphrastic future; SOV: Subject-object-verb; SVO: Subject-verb-object
Acknowledgements
We sincerely thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Availability of data and materials
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Authors’ contributions
SY and KT designed the study and developed the methodology. SY collected the data and performed the analysis withsupport from KT. Both the authors contributed to writing the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Yu and Tamaoka Lingua Sinica(2018) 4:3

Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s NoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Received: 12 May 2018 Accepted: 2 August 2018

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