语言发展理论和汉语儿童语言

Theoretical Issues in Language Development and Chinese Child Language

本文对儿童母语习得中文研究成果从语音、语法、语义和语用等方面作一理论性和技术性的评述，目的在于探讨这些研究成果对从事第一语言习得研究的理论意义。文中所讨论的研究大多是汉语口语（即普通话或国语）的习得问题。

This paper reviews findings from the first language acquisition of Chinese that have contributed to discussions of general issues of language acquisition and linguistic theory Data from the acquisition of consonants and vowels in Mandarin and Cantonese have revealed certain inadequacies in Jakobsonian laws of irreversible solidarity Research on Cantonese infant babbling has demonstrated children's early sensitivity to the phonetic properties of their mother tongue Studies of tonal acquisition have revealed a complex pattern In syntax, selected studies have tested children's sensitivity to the notion of subject Reports of naturalistic data have observed errors in the assignment of word classes Some studies showed children adhered to the basic SVO word order rigidly early on; their grasp of non canonical word orders associated with the passive BEI and BA constructions came later Studies of pro drop in the child speech of Mandarin and Cantonese have shed light on Universal Grammar and parametric differences between pro drop languages and non prodrop languages Research on the development of coordination structures in Mandarin has pointed to children's sensitivity to the principal branching direction of their language Studies of how Chinese children interpret sentences containing relative clauses have shown that four year olds had no problem in interpreting relative clauses, but experienced difficulty in comprehending complex sentences containing relative clauses modifying the subject or the object Work on Chinese children's understanding of reflexives and pronouns has shown that they obey Principle A of BT by age four, showing a preference for the local antecedent However, there was a developmental delay in their knowledge of Principle B of BT Scholars have examined the issue of definiteness and referentiality in relation to word order in Chinese Their results support parallel findings in English and French, showing the definiteness distinction to be a late development Research on children's knowledge of how quantifier scope is determined from surface syntax shows that Chinese children do not develop a firm grasp of the isomorphic principle until they are six or seven Children's use of verbal aspect reflects sensitivity to the link between aspect and verb semantics Studies have shown that children understand perfective aspect better with telic verbs than with activity verbs They understand the progressive aspectual marker better with activity verbs than with telic verbs A cluster of studies on sortal classifiers has shown that while the syntax of classifiers seems to be acquired early, the inventory of classifiers whose semantic properties four year olds are in command of is very small Children showed overgeneralization errors in their gradual mastery of the types of nouns various classifiers go with There is some evidence that A not A questions occur later than the onset of wh questions, and the early A not A questions of children show interesting omission errors Experimental work on children's comprehension of wh questions reflects a clear electivity according to verb type and a subject object asymmetry Scholars have also examined the development of spatial and temporal terms in the context of semantic complexity theory While a large amount of work has been done in the first language acquisition of Chinese, systematic and detailed work on Chinese children's understanding of salient properties of the language, such as topic prominence, sentence final particles and serial verb constructions, remains to be carried out