Evidence for the role of frequency in the acquisition of lexicalization patterns of Chinese-English bilingual children
频率作用在汉英双语儿童词汇化模式习得中的佐证
Elena Nicoladis; Hui Yin 印辉

Abstract 摘要
Children have been shown to acquire path satellite constructions early in development across a number of different languages. One possible explanation is that children start to form concepts of path of motion before they even begin to speak. It is also possible that path satellites are highly frequent in parents’ language to children. To explore the role of frequency, we examined how path, manner, and resultative satellite constructions were used by Chinese-English bilingual children and adults. By looking at bilingual children, we can dissociate how the children’s linguistic knowledge and age factor in their acquisition. Four Chinese-English bilingual children between the ages of 1;9 and 3;3 were videotaped in free-play sessions in both English and Chinese. It was found that the adults used motion + path constructions more often than any other kind of verb complexes and the children encoded motion + path earlier, too. In Chinese, the children heard more resultatives than manner constructions whereas the reverse was true in English. The children’s production of these constructions followed the frequency in the input. The adults’ use of lexicalization patterns was not uniform with the children’s age and/or linguistic level. We conclude that researchers must look at how adults use lexicalization patterns with their children in order to understand children’s acquisition of these patterns.

儿童在多种不同语言的早期发展中显示出习得路径卫星语言结构。一个可能的解释是，儿童甚至在会说话之前就开始形成运动路径的概念。也有可能是因为路径卫星结构在父母对孩子的语言中非常频繁。为了探讨频率的作用，我们研究了汉英双语儿童和成年人是怎样使用路径，方式以及结果卫星结构的。通过观察双语孩子，我们可以区分儿童的语言知识和年龄因素在习得中的作用。四个汉英双语，年龄介于一岁九个月至三岁三个月的儿童在自由玩耍时分别被用英文和中文进行了录像。结果发现，成人使用运动 + 路径结构多于任何其他种类的动词复合结构，儿童也更早使用运动 + 路径结构。在拍摄到的中文里，孩子们听到的结果结构多于方式结构，而在拍摄到的英文里情况却正好相反。孩子们使用这些结构的频率遵循了接受到的频率。成人使用的词汇化模式随着儿童的年龄和/或语言程度不同而变化。我们的结论是研究人员必须观察成人是如何对他们的孩子使用词汇化模式的以便了解儿童对这些模式的习得。

Keywords 关键词

Lexicalization patterns 词汇化模式 Children’s acquisition 儿童习得 Cross-linguistic comparison 跨语言比较

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