There have been apparently conflicting claims over the syntax-semantics relationship in child acquisition. However, few of them have assessed the child's path toward the acquisition of recursive relative clauses (RRCs). The authors of the current paper did experiments to investigate 3- to 11-year-olds' most-structured elicited production of eight Mandarin RRCs in a 4 (syntactic types)*2 (semantic conditions) design. The four syntactic types were RRCs with a subject-gapped RC embedded in an object-gapped RC (SORRCs), RRCs with an object-gapped RC embedded in another object-gapped RC (OORRCs), RRCs with an object-gapped RC embedded in a subject-gapped RC (OSRRCs), and RRCs with a subject-gapped RC embedded in another subject-gapped RC (SSRRCs). Each syntactic type was put in two conditions differing in internal semantics: irreversible internal semantics (IIS) and reversible internal semantics (RIS). For example, "the balloon that [the girl that _ eats the banana] holds _" is SORRCs in the IIS condition; "the monkey that [the dog that _ bites the pig] hits_" is SORRCs in the RIS condition. For each target, the participants were provided with a speech-visual stimulus constructing a condition of irreversible external semantics (IES). The results showed that SSRRCs, OSRRCs and SORRCs in the IIS-IES condition were produced two years earlier than their counterparts in the RIS-IES condition. Thus, a 2-stage development path is proposed: the language acquisition device starts with the interface between (irreversible) syntax and IIS, and ends with the interface between syntax and IES, both abiding by the syntax-semantic interface principle.

翻译：关于儿童习得中句法-语义关系的研究存在明显相互矛盾的观点，然而其中极少有研究评估儿童习得递归关系从句的发展路径。本文作者通过实验，采用4（句法类型）×2（语义条件）的设计，考察了3至11岁儿童在高度结构化情境下对八类汉语递归关系从句的诱发产出情况。四种句法类型包括：主语空位关系从句嵌入宾语空位关系从句的递归关系从句、宾语空位关系从句嵌入另一宾语空位关系从句的递归关系从句、宾语空位关系从句嵌入主语空位关系从句的递归关系从句，以及主语空位关系从句嵌入另一主语空位关系从句的递归关系从句。每种句法类型均设置两种内部语义条件：不可逆内部语义条件和可逆内部语义条件。例如，“[吃香蕉的_女孩]拿着_的气球”属于不可逆内部语义条件下的主语-宾语递归关系从句；“[咬猪的_狗]打_的猴子”属于可逆内部语义条件下的主语-宾语递归关系从句。针对每个目标句，实验为参与者提供构建不可逆外部语义条件的视听刺激。结果显示，在不可逆内部语义-不可逆外部语义条件下，主语-主语递归关系从句、宾语-主语递归关系从句和主语-宾语递归关系从句的产出时间比可逆内部语义-不可逆外部语义条件下的对应结构早两年。据此，本研究提出两阶段发展路径：语言习得机制始于（不可逆）句法与不可逆内部语义的接口，最终达成句法与不可逆外部语义的接口，整个过程遵循句法-语义接口原则。