语法和语义线索对儿童动词习得的影响

Effects of grammatical and semantic clues on verb acquisition in Chinese-speaking children

口语词汇习得过程中存在语法促进和语义促进效应,而语法又包含了句法和词法。本研究采用优先指向范式考察了语法和语义线索对汉语儿童动词习得的影响。实验1发现,5岁儿童可以利用单个句法线索词习得动词。实验2发现,4岁儿童可以在增加句法线索词或语义线索词条件下习得动词;实验2a发现,4岁儿童更倾向于将单音节词判定为动词,实验2b发现,在增加语义线索词条件下,3岁儿童更倾向于将双音节词判定为名词。结果表明,5岁儿童可以利用单个句法线索词习得动词,4岁儿童可以通过多重线索习得动词。本研究拓展了以往关于汉语儿童动词习得的结果,提示语言习得研究应考虑语法线索的独特性和可靠性。

Numerous studies have underscored the ability of young children to infer the meaning of novel words;however,the learning mechanisms in these children remain unknown.Although Chinese-speaking children acquire verbs at a younger age than their English-speaking counterparts,evidence suggests that they encounter greater challenges in verb acquisition compared with English-and Japanese-speaking children.Chinese children can acquire verbs with the aid of syntactic clues until the age of 5,though the effective clues for these children remain inadequately understood.This study investigated the grammatical and semantic clues that can facilitate verb acquisition in children,focusing on Chinese-specific markers such as word length and syntactic cues.To mitigate the effect of potential confounding factors,participants for each experiment were recruited from the same kindergarten.The sample sizes for Experiments 1,2a,and 2b were 49,51,and 53,respectively,with all participants being native Chinese speakers.In both experiments,the Preferential Pointing Paradigm was employed to explore the impact of grammatical and semantic clues on children’s verb acquisition.This paradigm encompassed a learning phase and a testing phase.During the learning phase,the participants were presented with a standard event featuring an actress performing an unfamiliar action with an unfamiliar object,all while hearing an audio cue repeated as“Look,she is X.Look,she is X!”In the testing phase,the participants were tasked with selecting between two events displayed on the screen:an object-same event where“X”referred to the object (a noun) and an action-same event where “X” referred to the action (a verb). Accuracy was consideredthe dependent variable in this study.The results indicated that 5-year-old children could use a single syntactic clue for the acquisition of novelverbs, whereas those aged 4 years demonstrated the ability to utilize double clues, encompassing either doublesyntactic clues or one syntactic clue coupled with one semantic clue, in their verb learning process. However,3-year-old children did not exhibit this capability. Furthermore, the length of words had an impact on verbacquisition among 3- and 4-year-old children. In Experiment 2a, 4-year-old children were more inclined toidentify monosyllabic words as verbs, whereas in Experiment 2b, 3-year-old children displayed a greatertendency to recognize disyllabic words as nouns when semantic cues were introduced.As far as we know, this study is the first to examine Chinese participants, unveiling distinct verbacquisition mechanisms not previously observed in Western languages. Additionally, this study shows that4-year-old children could learn verbs successfully with the introduction of semantic and more dependablesyntactic clues, contradicting previous assumptions that only 5-year-old children possess this ability.Furthermore, the study highlights word length as a potential Chinese-specific factor affecting verb learning,particularly among children aged < 4 years. These findings provide a robust foundation for future investigationsinto the unique mechanisms of verb learning in Chinese children and emphasize the importance of consideringlinguistic distinctiveness and the reliability of syntactic clues in word acquisition research.