The Early Development of Adverb Hai2 in Mandarin-speaking Children
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Huang, Miao-Ru
Abstract
The present study investigated Mandarin-speaking children’s early development of hai2, with special attention on hai2you3 and hai2yao4. The research question addressed was whether hai2you3 and hai2yao4 are initially learned as “chunks” by rote memory rather than as “combinations of two lexical elements”. Data examined in the study was the spontaneous speech from four children, with age range from 1;5 to 3;9. As the basis for the following analyses, children’s use of hai2, you3, and yao4 were first examined in terms of the communicative functions. Three analyses were then conducted: The first one examined the overall use of hai2 to clarify the productivity of the adverbial rule “hai2+V”. It was found that children tend to produce hai2 only in hai2you3 and hai2yao4. Other combinations of “hai2+V” appear much later. The examination on adult input also showed that the hai2you3 and hai2yao4 are quite frequently used by adults, suggesting that the high input frequency may contribute to its early emergence in children’s production. The other two was functional analyses to clarify whether the functions of hai2you3 and hai2yao4 developed their own functions in early stage. Specifically, the second analysis concerned that emerging order of the functions of you3 and yao4 when used with or without hai2. It was found that existential you3 first appears in hai2you3 rather than in you3. However, the function “requesting for objects or actions” occurs in yao4 before in hai2yao4. The third analysis examined the composition of the major function of hai2you3 and hai2yao4. Most of hai2you3 is used to express “the existence of another instance,” which is not composed of the stand alone use of hai2 and you3. The function of hai2yao4 is mainly used to “make request for repeated objects or actions,” which cannot be composed of independent use of hai2 and yao4. It seems that when using hai2you3 and hai2yao4, children might first memorize them as chunks rather than compositional elements. With enough linguistic experience, children may start to compare these “hai2+V” and segmented hai2 out. The adverbial rule of hai2 would also be generated in the process of segmentation.
Subjects
lexical acquisition
word segmentation
Mandarin
adverbs
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