Abbreviations

AD:adults

ANOVA: analysis of variance

ASP: aspectual marker

ASSOC: associative de, genitive/adjectival/adverbial marker

AUX: auxiliary verb

BA: literally ‘to manipulate, to handle’; marker of the BA construction

CH: Chinese

CHILDES: Child Language Data Exchange System

CL: classifier

CM: caused motion

DEF: definite article

DUR: durative aspectual marker zhe

EN: English

M: mean

Mdn: median

NP: noun phrase

PAST: past tense

RVC: resultative verb compound

SVC: serial verb construction

UD: utterance density

V1: the first constituent verb in an RVC; or the first verb in a serial verb construction

V2:the second constituent verb in an RVC; or the second verb in a serial verb construction

V3:the optional third constituent verb in an RVC

VERB:verb root or verb compound in an utterance

VM:voluntary motion

VP:verb phrase

zhe:particle indicating a syntactically complex serial verb construction expressing the temporal simultaneity of two events

1sg:first person singular

3p:third person singular ta in Chinese

The following symbols are used in transcription:

* ungrammatical sentence or phrase

? marginally acceptable sentence