普通话儿童三类告知语法手段的涌现

The emergence of three informing grammar devices in child Mandarin acquisition

儿童早期由请求语法过渡到告知语法,面临习得辨识、架构、表达等三类告知语法手段的挑战。本研究利用儿童历时跟踪自发语料考察了两名普通话儿童三类告知语法手段的涌现过程,发现三类告知语法手段在儿童进入双词阶段后很快就出现,但经历了一个偏误产出与正确产出并存的过程。这一从无到有、由不完善到完善的涌现过程可以从功能需求的角度得到解释:从语言外部的功能或用途来说,功能需求越紧迫的语法手段习得越早;从语言内部对“形-义”配对进行区分的功能需求来说,形式意义越简单的语法手段习得越早。对儿童告知语法涌现过程的考察可以深化人们对于沟通互动塑造语言结构的理解。

The early transition from requesting grammar to informing grammar in child Mandarin acquisition faces the challenge to acquire grammatical devices of identifying,structuring and expressing.This study investigates the emergence of these three devices in two Mandarin-speaking children using children's longitudinal spontaneous corpus.The paper suggests that the three devices appear soon after the two-word stage.However,they are acquired in a piecemeal way,which can be explained from the perspective of functional demand.In terms of language extermal functions,the more urgent a demand is,the earlier the grammatical device is acquired;In terms of internal need for the distinction of form-meaning pairs,the simpler the form and meaning a grammatical device has,the earlier it is acquired.Such studies on the emergence of child's informing grammar would deepen our understanding of how communication can shape the language structure.