鄧湘君
MPhil graduate 2010; PhD graduate 2014
匆匆六年，畢業之際，回首來時路，幸未忘初心，且超越昨日之自己。感謝中大語言學及現代語言系給我的這段有笑有淚的深刻經歷。難忘與我系同學指點語言學派、激昂各國文字的午飯時光。繁忙的學習、工作中我們互相激勵，共同走過一段激情燃燒的歲月。在這個值得慶祝的季節，蒲公英的種子即將出發，將為學的精神傳播到四方，靜待明日的碩果累累。
我的研究方向是兒童語言習得。自2002年冬參與李行德教授的研究項目跟拍一個普通話兒童的語言發展以來，我已經在這個領域學習、研究了近十年的時間。來中大前我還局限于兒童語言的表層現象，在中大受到的理論訓練幫助我透過現象看到本質。在這裡，通過上葉彩燕、李行德老師的語言習得課，以及擔任多位老師的助教，我有機會瞭解到語言習得的各種理論：天賦論，基於使用的習得論，內在規則加分佈學習論，等等。再加上扎實的基礎課訓練：顧陽、黃正德、李豔惠老師的句法課，李行德、張志恒老師的語義課，蔣平老師的音系課。老師們的風采和關懷為我終身追求之境界及感謝之源泉。這些課給我的研究提供了基礎支持，使我的兒童句法語義習得研究得以深入進行。我的博士論文是從事件語義學的角度探討普通話兒童如何習得空間概念在語言中的編碼。正是這些理論提供的視角，使我能從以前看似毫不相關的語言現象，以及繁雜的兒童語料中理清一條思路，讓我看到漢語普通話確實有異於其他語言的個性，卻也體現了一些語言深處的共性。這在兒童語言發展中體現為：語言共性很早就被掌握，語言的個性和不規則性則會造成習得的困難。同樣的困難，在二語習得中也得到印證。正常單語兒童的語言發展為雙語兒童語言發展、語言障礙兒童的診斷提供了基準線，也給對外漢語教學帶來啟示。雖然辛苦十年，只得3部學位論文，但是我覺得自己的研究是對後人有用的，因此所有的辛苦都是值得的。最後，感謝中大語言學及現代語言系給予我的一切。祝你十周歲生日快樂！
Six years have elapsed in the blink of an eye. I’m grateful for the experiences in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at CUHK. What I enjoyed most were the lunchtime exchanges with fellow students in the department about various schools of thought in linguistics, and interesting phenomena in a variety of languages. We would encourage each other when under pressure from study and work, and experienced many memorable moments together.
My research area is child language acquisition. I have been in the field for 10 years since I began working with Prof. Thomas Lee recording the language development of a Mandarin-speaking child in 2002. Thanks to the systematic theoretical training that I received in CUHK, I developed a deep understanding of language development. Here, I had the opportunity to take courses taught by Prof. Virginia Yip, Prof. Thomas Lee and other professors, as well as work as a teaching assistant for many courses. I was exposed to various acquisition theories: nativism, usage-based theory, innate principles, and distributional learning. I also received solid training in foundational courses: I sat in the syntax classes of Prof. Gu Yang, Prof. James Huang, and Prof. Audrey Li, the semantic classes of Prof. Thomas Lee and Candice Cheung, and the phonological class of Prof. Jiang Ping. All these courses have provided theoretical and technical support for my research, and enabled me to go deeper into the research on child syntactic and semantic development. My doctoral dissertation explores how Mandarin-speaking children acquire the linguistic encoding of space from the perspective of event semantics. With these theories in mind, I was able to find a thread to connect phenomena that were previously thought of as unrelated, and account for mountains of child data. These theories also enabled me to observe language universals underlying the superficial differences, alongside the language-specific properties. The dichotomy of universals and specificities is evidenced in child language development: structures that are governed by universal principles are acquired early, while irregularity and specificity pose difficulties for language acquisition. The same difficulty is echoed in second language acquisition. The language development of typically developing monolingual children serves as the baseline for that of bilingual children, and atypically developing children with language disorders. It also has implications for teaching Chinese to foreigners. I have written 3 theses during these 10 years, and my efforts have paid off in the end as the findings are of theoretical and practical significance. I would like to thank the members of the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre for their stimulating discussions and warm support. Lastly, I thank the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at CUHK for everything I have learned over the years. Happy 10th anniversary!
Deng Xiangjun, MPhil graduate 2010 and PhD graduate 2014