From the perspective of pragmatic tolerance, this study investigates L1-Mandarin Chinese L2-English speakers’ derivation of scalar implicatures, with a focus on L2 speakers’ pragmatic tolerance when facing a violation of pragmatic principle. Results from a graded judgment task show that L2 speakers have native-like pragmatic tolerance of underinformative sentences. More importantly, this pragmatic tolerance does not differ between L2 speakers’ native and second languages. This study aims to provide insight for experimental design in semantics-pragmatics research, as well as for second language acquisition of scalar implicatures.
China has experienced an upsurge in child abandonment since the late 1970s in parallel with its one-child policy (OCP) and market reforms. Due to the scarcity of individual-level data, the literature focuses on informal adoption and child trafficking. This study first demonstrates the spatial-temporal trends of child abandonment across over 100,000 self-reported cases spanning 40 years in China collected from an internet platform. We then examine how the OCP and the long-established clan culture influence the incidence of child abandonment at the provincial level. We further compare whether the influences vary across genders. The results indicate that a tougher OCP penalty increases child abandonment, particularly the abandonment of girls. The influence of the OCP on girl abandonment is weaker in provinces with a strong clan culture, where sex ratios at birth are more unbalanced due to an increased incidence of gender-selective abortions.