4—6岁儿童掌握汉语量词水平的实验研究

AN EXPERIMENT ON THE USE OF CLASSIFIERS BY 4 TO 6-YEAR-OLDS

本研究用实物图片对说普通话、粤语和双语儿童掌握常用量词的情况作了测查以及用人造词命名新奇物品的方法探讨了儿童掌握量词的概括过程。结果表明,4岁儿童掌握量词还很差,但整个学前期掌握量词水平迅速提高,到学前期末已能较为正确地运用一些常用量词,方言和外国语的语言环境是影响汉语量词掌握的重要变量,儿童掌握量词水平的发展是跟抽象概括的认知能力的提高紧密联系的。

In the present study, 4 to 6-year-old children speaking mandarin or Cantonese and bilingual overseas Chinese children in the same age group were tested for their ability to use some of the common classifiers with the objects shown to them through pictures. This was followed by another test for their ability to generalize four classifiers among a number of novel objects called by pseudo names. The results show that the. 4-yearTolds’ ability to use classifiers was poor, but their ability improved quickly with age. The usage of basic common classifiers was learned by the end of the preschool period. Dialect and foreign language both as important variables had strong effects on the children’s ability. And the development of such ability was also found to be closely related to the cognitive development of abstract thinking and the power of generalization.