Disjunction acquisition in Mandarin Chinese: A developmental trajectory from conjunction to inclusive and exclusive.

The present study investigated the developmental trajectory of Mandarin disjunction huò 'or' comprehension in Chinese children aged 3 to 12 using a Truth Value Judgment Task. Previous studies have presented conflicting arguments regarding how children comprehend disjunction, with some proposing a conjunctive interpretation and others an inclusive one. Our results indicate that younger children predominantly interpret huò conjunctively, and children's comprehension may shift from conjunction to exclusive interpretation and then to inclusive interpretation, while adults interpret huò inclusively or exclusively, with the latter being dominant. Additionally, we observed a delay in children's acquisition of disjunction, with 11- to 12-year-olds still not attaining adult-like comprehension of disjunction. This suggests that scalar implicatures of disjunction are more challenging for children to acquire than those of numerals and quantifiers.