by Wai-Hoo Au Yeung. / Thesis submitted in 1997. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves i-v (3rd gp.)). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Acknowledgments / Abstract / Contents / Abbreviations & Tables / Chapter 1. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1. --- What is a parameter? / Chapter 1.2. --- Parameter resetting in SLA / Chapter 1.3. --- Parameter as feature checking / Chapter 1.4. --- Research goals and outline of the thesis / Chapter 2. --- PARAMETERIZATION IN CHINESE NOMINALS --- p.18 / Chapter 2.1. --- DP-analysis and its parameterization / Chapter 2.2. --- Evaluation of the four models of Chinese nominal structures / Chapter 2.3. --- Parameterization in Cantonese and Mandarin nominals / Chapter 2.4. --- The Lexical CL Parameter / Chapter 3. --- METHODOLOGY --- p.86 / Chapter 3.1. --- The subject / Chapter 3.2. --- Timing of recording / Chapter 3.3. --- What is recorded / Chapter 3.4. --- The corpus / Chapter 3.5. --- Criteria of counting utterances and point of acquisition / Chapter 4. --- THE ACQUISITION OF CANTONESE NOMINALS --- p.92 / Chapter 4.1. --- Overall development of Cantonese nominal structure / Chapter 4.2. --- Acquisition of Cantonese-specific CLP properties / Chapter 4.3. --- Comparison with native Cantonese children's data / Chapter 4.4. --- Acquisition by resetting the Lexical CL Parameter / Chapter 5. --- AN INFORMAL EXPERIMENT ON GENERIC di AND di-N PHRASES --- p.118 / Chapter 5.1. --- Design of the experiment / Chapter 5.2. --- Materials / Chapter 5.3. --- Procedures and results / Chapter 5.4. --- Comparison between Ching's and native children's results / Chapter 6. --- CONCLUSION --- p.134 / Chapter 6.1. --- Theoretical and acquisition findings / Chapter 6.2. --- Further evidence for parameter resetting / Chapter 6.3. --- Implications for future research / Chapter 6.4. --- Concluding remarks / References / Appendix A: 3 sample files of the corpus