Early Language Acquisition of Mandarin-Speaking Children (Chinese Linguistics) [1 ed.] 0367354802, 9780367354800

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Copyright © 2019. Routledge. All rights reserved.

Early Language Acquisition of Mandarin-Speaking Children

Compared with other subdisciplines in Chinese linguistics, children’s language acquisition is a significant field with relatively limited achievements. Based on data from a dynamic and developmental corpus, this book is a comprehensive exploration of the early development of Chinese-speaking children’s language acquisition. Anchoring the discussions regarding phonetics, semantics, and aspects of syntax in a cognitive and functional framework, the author conducts an in-depth analysis of many acquisition characteristics, such as the inevitable and incidental errors of their learning of initials; their ability to obtain the concept of time at a young age and the utilization of Le in the expression of the past tense; their understanding of subjectivity at a young age and the ability to express it; their learning of the degree of modality following the order from probability to necessity; and children’s acquisition of syntactic structures being impacted by genetics and also affected by the steps involved in syntactic processing. Although genetics, cognition, and experience all play a role in children’s language acquisition, this book focuses on the role of cognitive functions. By successfully explaining the acquisition rules based on some cutting-edge linguistic theories, the book will certainly be beneficial to scholars studying linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science and early childhood educators. Yunqiu Zhang is a professor of linguistics and applied linguistics at the School of Arts of Capital Normal University. Her main research interests include children’s language acquisition and research regarding cognitive grammar in Chinese.

Chinese Linguistics

The Chinese Linguistics series selects representative and frontier works in linguistic disciplines including lexicology, grammar, phonetics, dialectology, philology, and rhetoric. Mostly published in Chinese before, the selection has had far-reaching influence on China’s linguistics and offered inspiration and reference for the world’s linguists. The aim of this series is to reflect the general level and latest development of Chinese linguistics from an overall and objective view. Titles in this series currently include: Modern Chinese Parts of Speech Systems Research Guo Rui Prosodic Syntax in Chinese Theory and Facts Feng Shengli Prosodic Syntax in Chinese History and Changes Feng Shengli Early Language Acquisition of Mandarin-Speaking Children Yunqiu Zhang Research on Functional Grammar of Chinese Information Structure and Word Ordering Selection Zhang Bojiang, Fang Mei Research on Functional Grammar of Chinese Reference and Grammatical Category Zhang Bojiang, Fang Mei For more information, please visit www.routledge.com/Chinese-Linguistics/ book-series/CL

Early Language Acquisition of Mandarin-Speaking Children Yunqiu Zhang

First published in English 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business. © 2020 Yunqiu Zhang Translated by Tianlin Ford The right of Yunqiu Zhang to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. English Version by permission of The Commercial Press. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-35480-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-34418-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures vi viii List of tables Acknowledgmentsx   1 Introduction

1

  2 A phonetic investigation of the acquisition and development of primary vowels

13

  3 Deviation phenomena in the acquisition of initials

47

  4 Acoustic analyses of tone acquisition and related errors

79

  5 Acquisition of locative words relating to “up” and “down”

105

  6 The onset of time consciousness – the acquisition of Le 了

120

  7 Acquisition and development of expressions of subjectivization

131

  8 Early acquisition of degrees of modality

161

  9 Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction

191

10 Early acquisition and development of the ditransitive construction

209

11 Acquisition of simplex relative clauses

240

Bibliography Index

261 281

Figures

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7

2.8 2.9a 2.9b 2.10 2.11a 2.11b 2.12 2.13a 2.13b 2.14 2.15 2.16 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

Diagram of experimental procedure and control The overall developmental trajectory of the main acoustic features of the primary vowels Stages illustrating the development of primary vowels Extreme values of fundamental frequency and their relative variation range (male) – (female) Statistical significance of the development of F0 in primary vowels by gender Relative variation range of the extreme values of F0 in primary vowels (male) – (female) Significance of the development of F0 in primary vowels by gender The development of primary vowel [a]’s formants Two-tube resonator model simulation for [a] MRI scan of the articulation of [a] Developmental characteristics of primary vowel [i]’s formants Two-tube resonator model simulation for [i] MRI scan of the articulation of [i] Developmental characteristics of primary vowel [u]’s formants Two-tube resonator model simulation for [u] MRI scan of the articulation of [u] Formant development of primary vowels (F1–F4) Spatial plots of primary vowels for groups G0–8 Primary vowels’ development in acoustic space Developmental trajectory of the total number of deviations Types and numbers of deviation Illustration of position of the tongue for [n] and [l] Acquisition of yinping tone Acquisition of yangping tone Acquisition of shang tone Acquisition of qu tone Line graph of the correction rates for the four tones

16 18 19 21 21 22 23 29 30 30 33 34 34 37 38 38 41 43 44 53 54 62 86 86 86 86 87

Figures  vii 7.1 The development of the semantic meanings of “还 hai2” and its constraining mechanism 7.2 The developmental and constraining mechanisms of the semantic meanings of “也 ye3” (also) and “又 you4” (again) 8.1 Output quantity of words with various degrees of modality 8.2 Developmental trend of various degrees of modality by age (individual development and overall development) 9.1 Examples of experimental pictures 10.1 Three children’s acquisition trends of the ditransitive GEI construction (individuals on the left and average on the right) 10.2 Three children’s acquisition counts of the various types of GEI constructions 11.1 Examples of experimental pictures 11.2 Proportions of various types of clauses produced by Chinese children 11.3 The development of age and frequency of various types of relative clauses in Chinese children 11.4 Percentage of output of various types of RCs for Englishlearning children 11.5 Age and frequency development of various types of RCs for English-learning children

141 150 177 178 202 226 227 244 247 247 252 252

Tables



1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3.1

3.2

3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 4.1 4.2 4.3

4.4

4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 5.1 5.2

Children’s corpus information 10 Data of main acoustic features for primary vowels [a], [i], [u] 17 Data chart of primary vowels’ F0 extreme values by gender 20 Results of t-tests on F0 by age (1) 24 Results of t-tests on F0 by age (2) 24 Examples of types of deviation, their pronunciations, and the age of occurrence 49 Initial deviations: types, numbers of occurrences, and percentage in corpus 52 Proportion of type of deviation by instances observed 54 Information about participants 55 Young children’s word list of initial pronunciation 56 Summary table of type and number of deviations by three children 59 Comparison graphs of character “bái” 82 Counts of correct pronunciation of the four tones 84 Comparison figures of target character dēng with yinping tone and léi with yangping tone 89 Comparison figures of target character xuě with shang tone and shì with qu tone 90 Error type and output frequency 91 Percentage table of substituting tones 92 Percentage table of substituted tones 93 Individual comparisons of “méi”, “měi1”, and “měi2” 94 Frequency counts of inaccurate pitch values across ages 95 Uncanonical members of the four tones 96 Analysis of exemplar characters for inaccurate yinping pitch values 97 Types of inaccurate yangping pitch values 98 Analysis of inaccurate yangping pitch values 99 Types of inaccurate shang pitch values 100 Analysis of inaccurate shang pitch values 101 Analysis of characters with inaccurate qu pitch values 102 Table of directional verbs in modern Chinese 106 Output frequency of children’s directional verbs “上、下 109 (up, down)”

Tables ix 5.3 Semantic types of directional verbs “上、下 (up, down)” 5.4 Frequency of the verbs that precede directional verbs relating to “上、下 (up, down)” for children 6.1 Time of first occurrence of “了” in participant children 6.2 Output counts of “了” structures by the participant child 6.3 Markedness relations between aspectual and temporal meanings 7.1 Some commonly used means of subjectivization 7.2 Timing of acquisition of means of subjectivization by SYY 7.3 Age of acquisition (AoA) and total frequency counts of 还 (hái) 7.4 Timing of acquisition of the various semantic meanings of “也 ye3” and “又 you4” 7.5 Developmental data of MLU and MLU5 and various means of expression of subjectivization for young children 8.1 Expressions of degrees of modality 8.2 Descriptive data of the acquisition of degrees of modality in three children (words, timing, and quantity) 8.3 Input on four modals for two children 9.1 Counts of “zai” construction as acquired by LXY before age 02;03 9.2 Acquisition of Z1, Z2, and Z3 by LXY at different age stages 9.3 Sentences in the picture-selection experiment 9.4 Experimental data of the picture-selection task 10.1 Descriptive data of three children’s acquisition of the ditransitive GEI construction 10.2 Three children’s order of acquisition of the key types of GEI constructions 10.3 Comparison of adult input and children’s output of the various types prior to the acquisition of ditransitive constructions 10.4 The formation of “GEI + R + O” 10.5 The example of the rules of generative derivation for regular single-object constructions 10.6 Three children’s acquisition data of the various types of ditransitive construction 10.7 Basic acquisition data of ditransitive construction with the four verbs 11.1 Three children’s timing and number of outputs of the various types of relative clauses 11.2 Types of the first 10 relative clauses produced by three children 11.3 Three children’s timing and quantity of output regarding complex relative clauses 11.4 Experimental data of Chinese children’s acquisition of relative clauses 11.5 Syntactic processing difficulty of Chinese and English relative clauses 11.6 Features of two types of word order and predictions of the accessibility of subject and object extraction

110 111 122 122 126 133 134 144 152 155 163 176 181 195 197 201 202 227 227 229 231 232 234 237 245 245 248 250 255 256

Acknowledgments

I am very honored that this monograph of mine can be translated into English and introduced to foreign readers for people to understand the research by Chinese scholars on their native language and also for the potential contribution it can make to the field of language acquisition by providing the data and thought on Chinese children’s language acquisition. However, what I would like to express most here is my gratitude. First of all, I would like to especially thank Professor Thomas Hun-Tak Lee. Due to the complexity of obtaining children’s corpus materials and the previous instability of research funding, I experienced periods of frustration and was greatly encouraged by Professor Lee. I am very grateful for his sponsoring my visit to the Language Acquisition Laboratory at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well as many academic exchanges. This book must ultimately be seen as the product of a collective effort. I need to thank my colleague Associate Professor Lizhi Zou and my students Xuebin Zhao, Sai Wang, Ruofan Li, and Chen Wang. They made great contributions to the writing and data collection of Chapter Five (Lizhi Zou), Chapter Two (Xuebin Zhao), Chapter Four (Sai Wang), and Chapter Eleven (Ruofan Li and Chen Wang). I would like to thank them sincerely. I would like to thank the Commercial Press for introducing this book, and I sincerely thank Mr. Hongbo Zhou, Ms. Jun Ye, and Ms. Chaofeng Guo for their selfless support and help in the translation of this book. I am also grateful to the School of Literature at the Capital Normal University for financially supporting the translation of this book. I thank Mr. Wei Wang at the Language Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences for his help in introducing the translator, Dr. Tianlin Wang, for this book. Dr. Tianlin Wang’s excellent translation makes the contents of this book better displayed to non-Chinese readers. I want to thank my classmate, Professor Fufang Wang, for giving me thorough help in the English materials and their translation. Thanks to my dear sister for silently serving our elderly father with great love and patience, so that I may have time to write the manuscript.

1 Introduction

This chapter first analyzes and defines the different interpretations of several basic concepts (acquisition, innate, input) in language acquisition research and then explains the theoretical framework of this book. It is not a single theoretical orientation: in the research of lexical and semantic development, it is mainly explained by cognitive and empirical factors, and the interpretation of syntactic development is equally split between empirical and innate factors. In terms of data, this book is eclectic in approach. It includes both spontaneously produced data and experimental data, since we believe that if the rules obtained via one type of data are true, then they should stand the test of any research method.

1.1 Basic concepts of language acquisition research Children’s language acquisition is a very meaningful field of research. On the one hand, its significance is reflected in the external argumentation of linguistic theory; on the other hand, it is an indispensable part of linguistics, psychology, and even cognitive science, having important promoting effects on both linguistic research and cognitive psychology research. As Thomas H.-T. Lee has pointed out, contemporary linguists have provided a more precise description of human language; if, on this basis, we can make precise descriptions regarding the general rules and the particular phenomena of children’s language acquisition, it would then suggest that we have obtained a clear understanding of human cognitive development within a specific scope. Currently, there are two main theories in regard to children’s language acquisition research, namely, nativism and constructivism. Different theories also have different main methods of obtaining corpus data. Even their interpretations of some basic concepts are different, such as acquisition, innate, input, and so on. We will conduct initial discussions regarding these issues in the following. 1.1.1 What is acquisition? Children’s language acquisition refers to why and how children acquire a language. I  believe that different theoretical schools agree on this point. However, nativist theory focuses more on why children can learn language while other animals

2  Introduction cannot – what inborn qualities do children have that lead them to be able to use language almost like an adult within a mere three or four years; constructivist theory pays more attention to how children can progress from being unable to speak to being able to use language the same way as adults. In this process, what have children experienced that causes their language to approximate that of adults? The different concerns of the two schools lead to differing views on the initial state of children’s language. Nativist theory considers the initial state of children’s language to not be blank but rather an inborn knowledge of grammar, which is called Universal Grammar, or interlanguage, and it is regarded as the essential reason children acquire language. Constructivist theory believes that there is insufficient evidence to prove that Universal Grammar is genetically inherited and that children’s language is gradually constructed based on general cognitive abilities (such as the ability to interpret intention and discover patterns) through interactions with adults (i.e., use). The language input children receive during the interactions is an important driving factor for children’s language acquisition. The differences in these viewpoints also lead to variations in the judgment criteria for acquisition at the operational level – specifically, whether to use correct comprehension or correct production as the criterion. Nativist theory suggests that once children can understand the content of certain discourse, then they have acquired the discourse. If children can comprehend grammatical knowledge that has never been input (such as the principle of C-command), then it means that children are innately equipped with the grammatical knowledge embedded in the discourse structures. Using comprehension as the criterion for whether children have acquired certain grammatical knowledge usually involves obtaining supporting data from experimental methods, such as the truth value judgment task, action demonstration, or picture selection. Constructivist theory needs to observe the interactions between children and adults to see how children gradually construct language. It therefore often utilizes data generated by children (including spontaneous output data and elicited output data) to find the rules of construction (such as the island model). The problem is experimental data are constrained by the age factor of the children  – the younger they are, the less likely it is for them to participate in an experiment, and so it is rare to see experimental data of children around age 02;00. However, from spontaneous output corpora, many children around age 02;00– 02;06 already have a lot of grammatical knowledge (such as relativization, aspect, mood, and so on); however, subject to the maturity and training of the vocal organs, children’s output corpora (especially the spontaneous output corpora) may not truly reflect their linguistic ability. Language comprehension precedes production. Children can already understand the meaning of adult discourse when they cannot yet produce them (such as the ability to complete some of the instructions of passing a toy given by adults). The words in the single-word stage are not words but rather the expression of an event and a combination of denotation and declaration (e.g., “daddy” may refer to “daddy hug”, “daddy hug me and take me out”, “find daddy”). And sometimes, children imitate adults – even though they produce output, they have not yet comprehended the meaning. This shows that the

Introduction  3 two theories have certain flaws in their ways of obtaining supporting corpora data. Thus, there are issues in the judgment criteria of acquisition as well. Can we combine the two criteria for learning? This is likely to be futile. Different criteria are derived from different theories and their foci on distinctive issues (nativist theory focuses on the hereditary nature of Universal Grammar, and constructivist theory focuses on the construction process of children’s language). Therefore, without discussing the theories, it is difficult to reconcile the acquisition criteria. Yet the limited nature of human wisdom determines that we cannot have perfect theories, nor can we have flawless research methods. What we can do is to make up for the shortcomings of theories and research methods to the best of our ability. 1.1.2 What is innate? Whether genetic factors play a decisive role in children’s language acquisition is one of the essential differences between the two major views regarding language acquisition. Some scholars in the nativism camp proposed a dual mechanism theory based on the influence of the linguistic environment on language acquisition: Universal Grammar is obtained by children through inheritance, while the lexicon and their pragmatic markings are stored through memory (Pinker, 1999); some scholars put forth the maturation theory based on the fact that children’s grammar is different from adult grammar (Wexler, 1999). But in general, they all acknowledge that children are born with Universal Grammar, and under this premise, they mend the nativism view based on the challenges it faces. The obvious fact is that apart from humans, primates, including chimpanzees and bonobos, cannot learn to speak like children no matter how much input they receive. However, if children do not have a proper language environment after birth (i.e., input), it is equally impossible for them to speak. The cases of John Ssebunya and Genie are good examples that prove this point. As such, neither the innate genetic factors nor the empirical influence of language environment on language acquisition can be denied – they both are indispensable in language acquisition, and it is difficult for them to negate each other. The debate between the rationalist paradigm and the empirical paradigm of the study of language acquisition has been going on for a long time with the two views in diametric opposition. This way of thinking contrasts the innate influence with the environmental influence, even though the two are neither antagonistic nor parallel to each other. Therefore, this kind of argument may not be persuasive or lead to conclusions. In my opinion, the empiricist paradigm emphasizes the influence of the language environment, yet the effect of experience only occurs on humans but not on chimpanzees. Therefore, regardless of the intentional interpretation in interaction or the pattern discovery through interactive experience, they are abilities that only humans possess. So how do children come to have this cognitive ability? Is it inborn or learned? If the heritability of this cognitive ability cannot be denied, then the empirical paradigm cannot negate the natural attributes of language. Conversely, if the rationalist research paradigm recognizes the innateness of language

4  Introduction acquisition, then it should be acknowledged that all components of language (whether it is UG or lexicon and pragmatic components that require environmental interaction) have natural attributes. In addition, vocalization of all of the components needs to be induced by the linguistic environment. As for whether the genetic information (or genes) related to the emergence of language is the result of evolution or genetic mutation, we will not discuss in depth here, since neither result can deny the inheritance of genetic constraints on language acquisition. 1.1.3 What is input? Nativist theory believes that the determinant of language acquisition is genetic inheritance. The strongest evidence of this view is that children’s language input is impoverished and incomplete in the process of learning a language. But in just a few years, children can complete language acquisition at an amazing speed and show a clear grasp of some language commonalities. Since this situation cannot be proved from the perspective of language input, “there must be innate linguistic knowledge that guides the process of language acquisition”, which means that linguistic knowledge (including certain elements, structures, and principles) is “inherently coded in human genes”, and they do not need to work through experience (Lee, 2000, 2002). Constructivism differs from nativism in regard to their views of the effect of input. It considers children to be the best learners. All of the language they have learned in the early days is from the input of the people around them. Input is extremely important for children’s acquisition of language, and it is also important that the early input children receive is not impoverished but, on the contrary, is amply rich. It should be noted that the meaning of input is interpreted differently by the two schools: The input in constructivist theory does not simply refer to children imitating adult speech but rather children’s interaction with people around them. Interaction is use. Through usage, children gradually understand the meaning of the speech from people around them and discover the rules of discourse. The acquisition of words is also included and considered to be based on interaction and language use (Tomasello, 2003). The input in nativist theory is the input of rules of language. According to nativism, children’s language input is completely different from the rule-input of adult second language learning. The former’s ruleinput is very impoverished, whereas the latter mainly consists of only the input of rules. Yet the speed of second language learning is far slower than even that of children with very impoverished rule-input. As far as the interactions between adults and children during their early childhood is concerned, the input of language rules that children receive is indeed extremely impoverished. This is because we tend not to teach young children how to speak, nor do we teach them abstract rules. When we can understand children’s intention and meaning, we even acquiesce and allow their “errors”. However, we still cannot deny the role of input in children’s language acquisition. First, it is impossible for children to learn to speak without being triggered by input. At least the input is an example for children’s target language in terms of parameter setting. Second, children have the ability to discover patterns, and they can find rules

Introduction 5 from the many sentences provided by adults. The learning phenomenon of overgeneralization is proof of this point. But with regards to the relationship between input and acquisition, we often first look at what components children produce and the amount and time of output, and then consider the input of the component. Rarely do we first examine what input children have acquired, and whether the language components from input can all generate output. The input data regarding the ditransitive constructions in chapter 10 of this book show that the input obtained by children is an important predisposing factor in the parameterization process of acquiring the target language. However, while there is input, there may not always be output. The components learned successively have no difference in their input quantity, yet there is a significant temporal characteristic in their time of acquisition. This indicates that although the effect of input is important, it is not the sole factor that triggers language acquisition. The triggering effect of input is likely to be subordinate to the inborn biological mechanisms. The innate mechanism stipulates when the input will work.

1.2 Theoretical framework 1.2.1  Interpretation of basic concepts Based on the discussion in the previous section, we can see that the two theories of language acquisition differ in terms of acquisition criteria and input connotation, and it is difficult to reconcile these differences. I will choose between them according to my own views of language acquisition. When considering the supporting materials for acquisition criteria, spontaneous output data is favored, which includes spontaneous output corpus and elicited output corpus, but they are also supplemented with experimental data when necessary. When considering the effect of input as a variable, I regard input as the specific sentences produced by adults rather than abstract rules. When the timing of acquisition of the same type of linguistic components (with their semantic interpretation and syntactic processing being roughly the same) is obviously different, the influence of the input is prioritized. If we treat the ability to interpret intentions, discover patterns, understand words and sentences, and detect rules through interaction and language use as an ability that only humans possess, which is to say, the experience of acquiring language is a solely human experience, and such experience is only effective on humans, then I am a thorough nativist, even though my understanding of innate and what is innate may differ from that of nativist theory. At the same time, we do not need to pose rationalism and empiricism of language acquisition completely against each other. They may be in parallel rather than in opposition. In a more open nativist view, they could be two sides of the same issue. Thus, we do not need to get entangled regarding the stance of nature or nurture. This book mainly explains research of lexical and semantic development using cognitive and empirical factors and interprets research on syntactic development based on both empirical and innate factors. This is done precisely because of these considerations.

6  Introduction 1.2.2 Constraints on language development This book does not intend to dwell too much on the strengths and weaknesses of the different views of acquisition but to pay more attention to an important and practical issue, which is that all language components need to be triggered by the linguistic environment to be produced as speech, including Universal Grammar. However, the information provided by language input is often rich  – why are children selective when they produce? Such that there are significant timing differences when various linguistic items are produced. According to Wexler (1999), this can be explained by the maturation theory. We agree that language acquisition is a process of maturation. Although currently we are still not able to clearly describe the correspondence between the order of gene expression and language growth, as a theoretical hypothesis, it can be established. But what is innate? We can have different opinions. The innate principles of the generative view have been criticized by constructivists for their abstractness, their lack of thorough proof, and their unfalsifiability. In addition, given the current status of Generative Grammar in the field, regarding the Minimalist Program, the previously sought-after commonalities for Principles and Parameters have not been found, and therefore researchers have turned their attention to the Merge Principle. My view is that the most fundamental principle should be parsimony, and it should be the same for linguistics. Contemporary linguistic typological studies consider that there is a limit to the variation of human languages in both meaning and form. Therefore, the types of human languages are expressed as the variations of commonality. This is to say that the surface of human languages is diverse, but the grammatical rules behind them are limited. Therefore, human languages have commonalities: some are unrestricted universals, while more are implicational universals, which indicates that the existence of one principle implies the existence of another principle, and not vice versa. The development of linguistic typological studies has provided a very rich linguistic sample. Combined with the application of big data methods, we can discover many credible language universals. If there are universals behind the diverse human languages, then can the universal or the hypothesis of universals induced from typological corpora be seen as a common principle of languages? If it can be considered as such, is the overly abstract Universal Grammar more convincing than people’s sense of their language? The commonalities of languages are the universal rules of language. If the universal rules of human language are correct, we should be able to predict the patterns of children’s language acquisition. Conversely, the developmental patterns of children’s language can also be used as an external argument for universal rules. To this end, we propose rules regarding children’s language development, especially regarding rules of syntactic development, based on language universals: The characteristics of children’s language development are dependent upon the universal characteristics of the syntactic item in human language.1 In human languages, the more a syntactic item belongs to the unrestricted universals, the more widely spread it is and the earlier it is acquired; the more it is part of the

Introduction  7 implicational universals, the more it is in a relatively deferred position in the hierarchical sequence and is thus not widely distributed and acquired later. This situation holds regardless of whether the syntactic item is a lexical item of the syntactic category or an argument structure and underlying element. That is to say, the general rules of children’s syntactic development follow the language universals, including the unrestricted and implicational universals. Specifically, 1 The characteristics of language development are determined by the distributional patterns of linguistic components in human language. The broader the distribution of a component, especially a grammatical component, the more prioritized it is during acquisition. This is to say that the universal principle of children’s language development follows the universal characteristics of language, which includes the unrestricted and implicational universals. We can borrow the term “parameters” from generative grammar to denote specific grammatical rules. If the specific linguistic parameters acquired by children are set in a sequence, then based on the language universals of children’s language development, the grammatical parameters that are first set should be the unrestricted universals of human language, such as the ubiquitous word classes (nouns and verbs), simple argument structures (subject-predicate structure and verb-object structure),2 and intonational words that express basic emotions, such as words of emotional intonation (e.g., “哎、嗯、咦、噢” in Chinese). On the basis of the initial parameters, children further set various parameters of the target language in turn, and their acquisition characteristics of a certain parameter regarding its timing of acquisition in the sequence should be consistent with the possible implicational universals. For instance, cross-linguistic data from children’s acquisition of relative clauses prove the association between the characteristics of children’s grammatical development and the implicational universals. The formation of the implicational universals is interpretable. Based on the relationship between language acquisition and language universals, explanations for the implicational universals can also be regarded as the constraining factors of children’s language acquisition. Of course, explanations for the implicational universals may be functional, cognitive, or innate. And from a functional perspective, at least the following factors are related to the implicational universals and children’s language development: 2

The difficulty of comprehending and producing linguistic components. The more simplistic a task is, the more prioritized it becomes during acquisition, and it is also more probable for it to be in a frontal position in the sequence of implicational universals; the more complex a task is, the later it is comprehended and produced, and it is also more likely for it to be in a posterior position in the sequence of implicational universals, for instance, pronunciation difficulty as related to the mechanism of tongue movements, cognitive difficulty associated with meaning interpretation, syntactic difficulty linked with processing steps, and so on.

8  Introduction In the absence of extremely particular circumstances, the order of language development is at least related to these two factors. We can regard these two factors as the fundamental constraints of language development. A large portion of our research will prove the preceding hypotheses. In addition, we can also put forth the developmental pattern of children’s grammar on this basis. Grammar can be divided into an event schema system composed of argument structures and a background component system consisting of temporal aspect, modality, and mood (Dirven  & Verspoor, 1998). There are simple and complex divisions within the two subsystems. For instance, the distribution of the verb-complement structure in human languages is not as wide as that of the subject-predicate structure. Diachronically, it appeared later, and its processing may involve compression of two structures, so it is more complicated than the subject-predicate structure. In a relative clause, a modifier-head construction functioning as the attributive is more complex to process grammatically than a simple modifier-head construction. Another example is that aspectual markers tend to be attached to predicates. It involves the interpretation of time and action processes and is more complex than modals or mood words that can be used alone. Children acquire subject-predicate structures, simple modifier-head structures, and modals or mood words that can be used independently a bit earlier. Children’s acquisition begins with the simplest component of the two subsystems and then the overlapping parts of the two subsystems, which are filler sentences. This pattern of development can be regarded as a learning pattern that is discretely merged.

1.3 Data description Regarding the current linguistic research on Chinese children, although it started late and has yet to produce rich results, some linguists have already conducted excellent investigations regarding children’s language acquisition. For instance, mainland scholars such as Yuming Li, Lingda Kong, Guoguang Zhou, Jianhua Hu, and Xiaolu Yang have generated meaningful research regarding topics such as the system of interrogative sentences, content words, basic sentence structure, and focus marking of Modern Chinese. Hong Kongese scholars such as Thomas H.-T. Lee and Virginia Yip have produced excellent research in areas such as negation, quantification, domain, bilingual acquisition, and theory of acquisition. Taiwanese scholars such as Hintat Cheung and Jane S. Tsay, and some Chineseheritage and non-heritage foreign scholars such as Jiansheng Guo, Ping Li, and M. Erbaugh, as well as scholars in the field of psychology, have all produced fruitful research regarding various aspects of Chinese children’s language acquisition. However, whether from the perspectives of the size of the research teams, theoretical preparations, or the breadth or depth of research, current research is still far from enough. Therefore, there is a lot of potential for research regarding Chinese children’s language acquisition. The basis of children’s language acquisition research is reliable data, and any theoretical explanation of the characteristics of children’s language acquisition

Introduction  9 also requires reliable data to support. This necessitates that we obtain data on children’s language acquisition and conduct credible quantitative analyses of the data. In the following, I will give a brief introduction to the data of children’s language acquisition in this book. 1.3.1 Production data Using the Chinese children’s spontaneous output corpus to observe and summarize some rules of children’s language development has generated some sound results in the past twenty years, but because of the lack of conventional quantitative analysis, some of the previous studies have established less-than-thorough acquisition rules and theoretical explanations. Therefore, the construction of the dynamic corpus of Chinese children’s language development has become very important for the study of children’s language acquisition. Thankfully, in recent years, some scholars have followed the standard of the internationally accepted Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) and have established corpora for Chinese Mandarin children and Cantonese children. My colleagues, our graduate students, and I  have also built the Capital Normal University (CNU) Mandarin Children’s Dynamic Development Corpus (MCLDDC) over eight years. The book examines the characteristics and rules of Chinese children’s language acquisition based on observations of the corpus. The Capital Normal University Mandarin Children’s Dynamic Development Corpus (CNU-MCLDDC) includes a diachronic developmental corpus of at least six children. They are exposed to an almost purely Mandarin environment with normal hearing and development and no cognitive impairment. The collection period of the corpus is generally one time per week, one hour of uninterrupted audio and video recording, so as to ensure that the sample size of the corpus is as sufficient as possible and the sample of different time periods is as balanced as possible. Based on this, the statistical data could then be as authentic, accurate, and reliable as possible. The corpus should be labeled and present as much linguistic information as possible, including phonetics, vocabulary, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, and language errors. We mainly coded using the CHILDES system in CHAT.3 According to the needs of the study, the children’s corpus used in this book includes three children’s diachronic developmental corpora over a long period of time, as well as the corpora of four other children over specific time periods. The children’s corpus information is in Table 1.1. The use of corpus is based on the diachronic corpus of the previous cases in order to more clearly observe the dynamics of children’s language. 1.3.2 Experimental data Observing corpus-based language development in children is a very important method in the research of children’s language acquisition. Otherwise, there would not have been so many scholars who participated in the construction of the CHILDES database. The advantages of corpus-based research are obvious. On the one hand, it can be less affected by the requirements of external experimental tasks,

10  Introduction Table 1.1 Children’s corpus information Child’s Name

Age of Corpus

City and Language Environment

Parental Education

SYY LXY JBS LPC WSY

01;08–04;104 01;02–04;07 01;00–05;00 02;02–03;01 01;09–03;10

Middle School Master’s Doctorate Master’s Master’s

CQF

01;11–02;10

HTH

01;10–02;01

Beijing, Mandarin Beijing, Mandarin Beijing, Mandarin Beijing, Mandarin Beijing, Mandarin, and Xiang Beijing, Mandarin, and Xiang Beijing, Mandarin

Master’s Bachelor’s

which is very beneficial for the investigation of early childhood language development. On the other hand, corpus-based research can clearly show the vertical or diachronic development of children’s language. However, just as no research method can be perfect, the corpus method could also have issues related to not being able to reflect children’s authentic language ability. Therefore, according to the needs of the research and the possibility of children participating in experiments, this book also utilizes experimental data: In the study of phonetics, we use induced imitation, and then researchers discriminate and code the speech sounds; in the study of syntax, the book uses experimental methods such as picture selection, induced imitation, and induced output. 1.3.3 Acquisition assessment criteria The experimental method tests children’s comprehension or perception of language. Therefore, if we use the experimental data and corpus data to verify each other, we need to solve the theoretical premise regarding what is acquisition? Is it comprehension or production? Or both comprehension and production? Or production without comprehension? This is an argument that has been debated by the academic community, and is also not an issue that this book can presently solve. I prefer to incorporate one point from each view, such that the correct output produced by children in the appropriate context indicates acquisition.5 Hence, this book conducts an exhaustive statistical count of the language components that children acquire based mainly on the children’s dynamic development corpus. These data are then quantified. Experimental data are collected and quantified according to the needs of the research and the feasibility of running experiments.

1.4 Main research content This book studies the developmental patterns and acquisition characteristics of Chinese children’s early language from three aspects: phonetics, lexical semantics, and syntax. The second to the fourth chapters respectively examine the

Introduction  11 acquisition and development of Chinese children’s phonetics, including the developmental characteristics of basic vowels, initials, and tones. The fifth to eighth chapters respectively explore the acquisition and development of ­Chinese children’s lexical semantics, including the initial development of locative category and temporal category, the means of subjective expressions, the developmental characteristics of subjectivity, and the path of quantification of modal semantics; chapters nine through eleven mainly investigate the development of children’s syntax, including the acquisition of ZAI constructions, the initial development of ditransitive constructions, and the acquisition of simplex relative clauses. In addition, the analysis of children’s acquisition data in this book is not limited to a specific theory. For instance, regarding the development of children’s speech, we mainly apply acoustic analyses and consider that the developmental characteristics revealed by acoustic analyses are more likely subject to the underlying physiological factors. Regarding the developmental characteristics of lexical semantics, we mainly explain from the perspectives of cognition and function and believe that the role of cognition and function (such as interactive input) in the development of lexical semantics is significant. Regarding the acquisition characteristics of syntax, we mainly explain the results from the perspectives of cognitive, functional, and processing difficulty. We consider that the difficulty of meaning interpretation and the difficulty and steps of syntactic processing are closely related to the acquisition characteristics of syntax, but they are also related to the influence of the innate universal rules. We regard children’s language acquisition as the result of a combination of genetic factors and cognitive functions. This is because the simplest fact is that only humans can speak and acquire language, and children who speak different languages exhibit strong universal patterns when acquiring language. This situation can be likened to planting a crop. If the seed is corn, then its genes stipulate that it must grow into corn regardless of where it is planted. As long as the external growth condition (such as temperature, humidity, photosynthesis, and so on) are appropriate, then it can be predicted that leaves and fruits will be produced according to a foreseeable time sequence. This aspect shows that children’s language acquisition has genetic attributes, but it also suggests that empirical factors are important as well – that is, genetic factors and cognitive functions work together to enable children to acquire language. This research examines the occurrence and development of children’s language in the framework of cognition and function. On the one hand, the current scientific development cannot clearly inform us what the genetic characteristics that dictate language acquisition are or how they decide the acquisition of language and through what kind of mechanism. On the other hand, because of my training and the more open view of the concept of nativism mentioned in section 1.2.1, it is more practical for me to carefully examine what empirical factors, such as cognition and function, affect the acquisition and development of language. In doing so, we do not deny the innate attributes of language, but are merely describing the other aspect of nature.

12  Introduction

Notes

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1 In the 1960s, Jakobson (1968) proposed a universal theory to explain the temporal characteristics of children’s phoneme acquisition. There was some debate after the theory was put forth. The rules of children’s syntactic development proposed in this book have referenced this theory, yet they are also different in various aspects. 2 As far as the subject-predicate and the verb-object structures are concerned, the subjectpredicate structure SV should appear earlier. This is because based on word-order universals, SV is more general and unifying, and the verb-object structure is manifested as two universals (i.e. VO and OV). 3 Detailed introductions of CHILDES and its software CLAN can be found in B. MacWhinney (2000). The CHILDES project: Tool for analyzing talk (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associate. 4 The recording of SYY’s corpus began at age 01;08. The first two months were not systematic and mainly came from the child’s parents’ journal records. 5 “Correct output in the appropriate context” refers to children being able to autonomously or responsively produce speech that is appropriate in the context of the conversation. Of course, even if the correct output and appropriate context are the criteria for acquisition, there are different opinions regarding how many cases of specific use can be considered successful acquisition. This book takes the stance that as long as it is not an isolated case, it is appropriate.

2 A phonetic investigation of the acquisition and development of primary vowels

In this chapter, speakers from nine age groups and both sexes are selected as experimental participants. The fundamental frequency, formant, formant pattern, and phasic developmental characteristics of the acoustic space of the primary vowels of the participants from all nine age groups and both sexes are measured. Based on this, we investigate the similarities and differences of the primary vowels produced by children in comparison to adults in regard to their various acoustic features. The data show that even for those primary vowels that are perceptually close to adults’ pronunciations, their various acoustic features are still not identical to those of adults. They exhibit their own tendencies. This chapter argues that the physiological factors underlyingly constrain the developmental characteristics of the primary vowels and provide preliminary analyses and explanations using the quantitative theory.

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2.1 Research object and research background It is well known that vowels are phones that human languages must possess.1 Vowels also have been very important components in acquisition research regarding phonetics, phonology, and phonetic learning. Research on acquisition and development of vowels can not only help us understand the processes and mechanisms of children’s learning of their native phonological systems but also provide assistance in probing the courses regarding the ontogenesis, development, and evolution of human phonetics and thus have a profound impact. Based on previously established research, we mainly investigated three primary vowels,2 [a], [i], and [u], in Mandarin in terms of their development in isolated environments. We obtained their main acoustic parameters in order to examine the characteristics and patterns during the process of their acquisition and development. There are several reasons for choosing primary vowels: firstly, in phonetics and phonology, they are considered primary vowels for cardinal vowels and are therefore a fundamental component for vowels in any phonological system. In the phonological system of Modern Mandarin, the likelihood for them to appear as a final is 76.7%, and it has a ratio of 41.6% in the overall phonological system. Other research has shown that in 100 syllables, [a] appears 28.21% of the time, [i] occurs 35.47% of the time, and it is 22.28% for [u].

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14  A phonetic investigation of primary vowels Secondly, from a typological perspective, [a], [i], and [u] are commonly found in human languages. Though there exist vast differences in terms of the number of vowels that different languages possess, even the simplest vowel system contains these three vowels.3 Thirdly, from the perspective of children’s phonetic acquisition and development, the vowels that are learned relatively early are these three primary vowels. They also tend to exhibit a stable status once acquired and rarely involve pronunciation mistakes. Fourthly, from an acoustic perspective, [a], [i], and [u] demonstrate rather stable characteristics and are vowels that provide the landmarks for a language’s acoustic vowel space. Finally, in practice, because of the constraints from the amount of recording and data processing, it is difficult to record and process the entire Mandarin vowel system and especially difficult to record in the low age group. There have been some results on children’s phonetic acquisition from abroad. However, most of them still just focused on the order of children’s phonetic acquisition (Locke, 1983, 1986, 1993; Kent, 1984, 1992; MacNeilage & Davis, 1990, 1993) and rarely from the perspectives of physiology and acoustics. To this end, Raymond Kent and Giuliana Miolo (1995) conducted an important study to examine infants’ phonetic abilities in their first year of life; Esling (2008) also performed physiological research on the appearance of speech sounds as well as voice production during infants’ first year of life. China’s research on children’s speech started relatively late, with early research originating mostly from areas of developmental psychology. Li (1994) studied sound production in young infants (one- to 120-day-old infants). Wu and Xu (1979), as well as Xu (1996), tracked children up to three years of age to study their language development and acquisition. Li and colleagues (2000) conducted experimental research on large samples of Mandarin-speaking children’s phonetic acquisition. Si (2006) executed a case study on one child (age 2 to 5). Under the framework of the sound pattern theory for vowels, Shi and Wen (2007) focused on the accuracy rate of vowel acquisition and the order of general acquisition via acoustic analyses and discussed in detail the systematic changes and deviations related to the theoretical issues of vowel acquisition. In Taiwan, Li (2007) used acoustic analysis to establish a case study on children’s vowel development in Southern Min. Shi (2008) studied the difference of vowel acquisition of Mandarin-learning children from the perspective of dialectal contrasts.

2.2 Data description 2.2.1  Age and group assignment The present research data were obtained from the Capital Normal University kindergarten and the Sound Library at the Peking University Linguistics Laboratory.4 We selected nine different age groups for data collection. All participants were native speakers of Mandarin and had no intellectual, auditory, speech production, or voice production impairments. Among the groups, G0 was the toddler group (1.8–2 years old), G1 was the young child group (5–6 years old), G2 was the big

A phonetic investigation of primary vowels  15 child group (9–10 years old), G3 was the early teen group (13–14 years old), G4 was the late teen group (17–18 years old), G5 was the young adult group (20– 22 years old), G6 was the adult group (31–45 years old), G7 was the middle-aged group (46–60 years old), and G8 was the senior group (60 years old and above).5 The goal of dividing them into groups and collecting data separately was to gain comprehensive descriptions of the developmental characteristics of primary vowels. We also wanted to reveal the acoustic features of the three vowels in children’s acquisition through comparison, including group-level qualities of groups G0 and G1 for children, as well as the groups for children and adults, respectively. 2.2.2 Equipment, software, and data processing The main hardware equipment involved in this research include the following: A Laptop computer (IBM-X41); B Omni-directional microphone (SONY Electret Condenser Microphone ECM44B), adhered to the upper side of the participant’s collar; C Mini mixer (Behringer Eurorack UB502, 4 Channels), to amplify sound frontally; D External sound card (Creative Soundblaster Audig Y2NX), to obtain highquality sound; E Electroglottograph (EGG Model 6103, KAY), to collect EGG signals for impedance on the vocal cord.

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The experiment recorded participants one at a time. During recording, the sampling rate was 22 kHz and 16 bits. For signal processing, fundamental frequency synchronization and linear prediction coding (LPC) in frequency-domain analysis were adopted. The main software employed in this research include the following: A Recoding software (Adobe Audition v1.5), to record and monitor in real time; B Speech marking software for recording samples (Wavefinal speech processor v0.5)6 to mark fundamental frequency in layers and to mark formants, and bandwidth; C Using self-programmed codes7 under Matlab 7.4.0 (R2007a), parameters were extracted and analyzed. They include Vowel_Export.m for extracting parameters regarding fundamental frequency, formants, and bandwidths and Vowel_SpacePlot.m for plotting the acoustic space of vowels; D Data were stored using Microsoft Excel 2007 (.XLS) in order to store all original parameters that were extracted; E The software for statistical analysis was SPSS12.0. It was used for data description as well as analyses. During data processing, we performed descriptive analyses of all means and standard deviations for each gender and by age groups; t-tests were carried out

16  A phonetic investigation of primary vowels on the fundamental frequencies for each gender and by age groups; t-tests were also conducted on the first and second formants for each age group. The overall process of the experimental procedure and control is illustrated in Figure 2.1. 2.2.3 Basic acoustic data on the acquisition and development of primary vowels We first extracted the main acoustic features of Mandarin primary vowels [a], [i], and [u] from the nine age groups by gender (see Table 2.1). These main acoustic features include fundamental frequency F0, first through fourth formants F1–F4, and bandwidths of first to fourth formants B1–B4. All frequency units in the table are based on hertz. Numbers 0–8 indicate nine different age groups (Group). M refers to male, and F refers to female. Lowercase m indicates the group mean of an age group averaged across gender. The values in the table are the means of the corresponding items as computed by SPSS 12.0 (4 speakers for each group, N = 4), and the subscript values are the standard deviations σ for each mean (Std. Deviation). The data source of Figure 2.2 is the mean (m) of the corresponding measurement items in Figure 2.1. From Figure 2.2, we can see that from age ranges 2 to 60 and above (G0–8), the main acoustic parameters (fundamental frequency, the first four formants) exhibit a trend of being steady overall and with many parameters showing a downward developmental trend. This trend of an overall steady development shows that vowel acquisition and development are relatively stable processes in an individual’s language development throughout life. Developmental characteristics of the toddler and the young child groups can be seen clearly in Figure 2.2. Effective vowel frequency for the G0–G1 groups occupy the 100–5,000 Hz range, with the relatively higher-order formants centralized around the 2,500–5,000 Hz range, while the relatively lower-order formants are near the 300–2,000 Hz range, and the fundamental frequency is in the 310–350 Hz range. The narrow frequency band centered around 2,000 Hz is not

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Recorded Data Adjusted Computer Data Analyses

Computer for Data Backup Storage

Program Analysis via Matlab2007a

Marking Process via WaveFinal

Situationally Computer

Teacher

Data Storage

Subject

Sony Mic Mini Mixer

Data Inventory Recording via Audition 1.5v

External Sound Card

Experimenter Recording Room

Subjects Waiting

Figure 2.1 Diagram of experimental procedure and control

B4

F0

F1

F2

F3

F4

B1 B2

B3

B4

F1

F2

F3

F4

B1 B2

B3

B4

29031 40474 804116 3165377 4564401 5941 8068 16577 144103 30261 37247 80090 3079541 4213677 4636 7513 312114 17168 296 388 802 3122 4389 52 78 238 157

31156 38735 84289 3395300 4579250 3836 6220 18985 13561 34323 36317 75334 3133642 4300443 2011 3916 321197 183154 327 375 798 3264 4439 29 51 255 159

32127 34935 75072 3555461 4910102 3022 6122 24888 19798 33619 439137 80594 3788236 4894244 3322 8237 19582 13787 329 394 777 3671 4902 31 72 221 167

33452 38155 75098 3867402 4852132 3229 4930 20276 11367 32510 33812 73354 4174155 509191 116 7847 12181 14787 330 359 742 4021 4972 21 64 162 130

F0

u

14569 8156 9531 8638 120 83

15129 30565 2161236 288889 3826225 2915 9831 10066 10732 23025 42237 2684101 361576 4496258 4420 119147 10632 9673 191 364 2423 3251 4161 37 109 103 102

7637 13918 33179 2224129 2922188 3747140 4820 5830 140105 22824 40776 255870 3220126 4558314 5814 9667 108 183 369 2391 3071 4153 53 77

8 M 16032   71689 1689101 2865325 3724201 7244   6131 10237 12187 F 22837   86384 1266151 3054272 3660277 5327   5921 8234 13869 m 194   790 1177 2959 3692 62   60 92 129

7 M 12619   75065 113955 2673382 3554257 5431   4211 9562 F 21231   85374 1327148 3128250 4184263 5530   6828 8434 m 169   801 1233 2900 3869 55  55 89

15533 38735 752127 2645170 3668332 6939 8837 10272 7643 21231 44775 76579 2877429 3791361 2913 7359 214147 185172 183 416 759 2761 3729 49 81 18 131

13919 35144 63638 2947482 3775347 7629 7227 12986 219110 22630 41392 78686 3057229 4171378 4614 5035 13353 14759 182 382 711 3002 3973 61 61 131 183

14623 34939 70550 2719310 3878372 4419 7141 132100 12156 27434 36573 66070 2984252 3930176 4530 4929 155114 127110 210 357 683 2852 3904 44 60 143 124

6 M 14131   74443 114781 2582203 3820183 5224   4819 189120 9646 F 22634   967136 1310109 3269118 4036131 8940   5202 9137 10236 m 184   855 1228 2926 3928 70   50 140 99

15322 32627 2110147 3268369 3999326 3514 117117 13988 9739 25834 32129 2697263 3458265 4223155 5024 8218 9423 8034 205 323 2404 3376 4111 43 100 116 88

16620 36525 70972 2730341 3768281 4419 8170 19550 11686 26422 37789 77691 2787384 4167484 4017 4420 276134 21094 215 371 743 2758 3976 42 63 235 163

5 M 15512   745136 117750 2762259 3861240 7146   6242 13430 10781 16715 33222 2321119 3268369 4073221 4016 16083 11944 10975 F 26314 1010206 1488156 3353280 4472258 7226 11970 154121 190115 26819 381131 270056 3485265 4741205 5329 9242 13253 13573 m 209   877 1332 3051 4161 72   90 144 148 217 356 2510 3508 4407 46 126 125 122

106116 12515 35321 67877 2547119 3636141 5320 11350 24178 12381 10084 25522 35344 741109 2992107 3823218 5219 5355 16465 11466 103 190 353 709 2770 3730 53 83 203 118

12717 34631 2384247 3064212 3891310 4621 9472 25023 33626 2661170 334867 4400502 8660 8145 188 341 2523 3206 4146 66 87

4 M 12513   71864 118261 2869190 3781211 5932   7453 11160 7448 F 24332 1458120 1458120 3128276 3990218 8538   7930 20054 12245 m 184   826 1320 2999 3885 72   76 155   98

11234 11356 113

29427 37077 2985180 3838262 4765203 4534 163146 15770 16441 29447 33733 2824157 3590303 4551405 4026 8980 6131 9565 294 354 2904 3714 4658 43 126 109 129

3 M 29141   990269 1489230 3383206 4311222 7136   9828 9647 11549 F 29940   985109 1504250 3413274 4528311 5718 11760 10354 15572 m 295   987 1496 3398 4420 64 108 100 135

180102 30554 35129 3012182 3646167 4701120 3630 6838 9545 33019 35418 323894 3928124 486739 2413 6129 138 318 352 3125 3787 4784 30 64

15686 13851 11327 8751 134 112

B3

2 M 28957   101102 143987 3473209 4369167 7831   7312 11345 F 31633   98385 138117 3771281 4362197 3662   5233 7327 m 302   999 1412 3622 4366 57   63 93

B1 B2

9043 10141 10846 12824 99 114

F4

1 M 31417 1162164 622140 3589265 4608104 5233   5716 13390 121161 324277 34229 3140275 3952222 4882145 2423 9465 F 33124 1259117 1670115 3925219 4628193 6025   5932 11874 7821 33426 36033 3383142 4174188 494180 2417 9975 m 323 1210 1646 3757 4681 56   58 125 100 329 351 3262 4063 4912 24 97

F3 12157 22194 134120 17164 128 196

F2

i

32043 36284 3341131 4055152 4883134 2628 6434 33726 35821 3415144 4367118 4971154 2624 7733 328 360 3378 4211 4927 26 69

F1

0 M 32439 128480 1800104 3704251 4580220 6622 10032 11739 15350 F 34440 1254138 1850159 4186248 4791127 5922 10566 18496 15571 m 334 1269 1825 3963 4686 63 102 151 154

F0

A

Table 2.1 Data of main acoustic features for primary vowels [a], [i], [u]

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18  A phonetic investigation of primary vowels

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Figure 2.2 The overall developmental trajectory of the main acoustic features of the ­primary vowels

an effective reaction region for primary vowels.8 This shows that in the process of early childhood phonetic acquisition, developmental characteristics are already similar to the region of effective reactions in Chinese Mandarin. From the perspectives of developmental trends, several parameters exhibit the developmental pattern of declining with an increase in age as shown from left to right in the figure. Other parameters show a stage-like developmental pattern. This illustrates that the development of vowels has a certain degree of variability. This variation is also age-related, such that it is constrained by the development of the physiology of human organs. The development of the main acoustic features of primary vowels in early childhood phonetic acquisition reflects both the robustness of human language systems (Wang, 2006) and the variations restricted by biomechanical constraints (Stevens & Perkell, 2006). In the following sections, we will examine the relevant experimental results and discuss the primary vowels from the basis of the development of fundamental frequency, the development of formants, and the development of acoustic space for the nine different age groups.

2.3 Development of fundamental frequency F0 2.3.1  The developmental trend of fundamental frequency F0 Fundamental frequency F0 is the active frequency of autonomously vibrating vocal cords during vocalization, which directly reflects the circumstances of how vocal cords vibrate in the speech organ. The magnitude of the vocal

A phonetic investigation of primary vowels  19 cords’ vibration frequency is determined by the vocal cords’ own physiological ­characteristics (e.g., thickness, length, and so on) and different types of vocalization control.9 2.3.1.1 Stages of the development of fundamental frequency

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Using the absolute values of the data and their relative range of variation as the main standard of quantification and on the basis of clustering statistics (SPSS Cluster), we reached the conclusion that there are three major stages of continuous development for fundamental frequency. The three stages are as follows: first stage (Stage I  G0–3, childhood), second stage (Stage II G4, adolescence), and third stage (Stage III G5–8, adulthood) (see Figure 2.3). Data in the preceding figure were from the corresponding items in Figure 2.1. The mean was the averaged fundamental frequency across genders and vowels. According to Figure 2.1, the development of the fundamental frequency of the three primary vowels mainly concentrates in the 150–350 Hz range, with a relative range of variation10 of 200 Hz. From Figure 2.1 and Figure 2.3, we can see that in the first stage of fundamental frequency development (Stage I G0–3), F0 has a variation range of 289–344 Hz and a relative variation range of 56 Hz. In the second stage (Stage II G4), the variation range is 125–255 Hz, and the relative variation range is 130 Hz. In the third stage (Stage III G5–8), the variation range is 126–274 Hz, and the relative variation range is 148 Hz. Among the stages, the overall development of the childhood stage is relatively high and stable, with the toddler and young child groups G0 and G1 showing a high degree of stability and a slight decrease of F0 before reaching the big child group G2 and the early teen group G3. From the early teen group G3 to the late teen group G4, the general developmental trend of F0 in each stage declines sharply, with an average decrease

Figure 2.3 Stages illustrating the development of primary vowels

20  A phonetic investigation of primary vowels of 40.1%. There is also a large increase in the relative variation ranges, reaching 132.1%, showing that the development and change from childhood to adolescence are relatively acute. There is a small increase in F0 from adolescence to adulthood, averaging at 5.3%, with an increase of 13.8% in relative variation range. Fundamental frequency in general exhibits a developmental trend of initial-repression-followed-by-later-cultivation, while its relative variation range on the whole displays a developmental trend of rapid change from narrow to wide. In terms of overall development, the changes occurring between the early teen group, G3, and the late teen group, G4 (from the beginning to the end of adolescence), are the most acute and unstable. 2.3.2 Relationship between characteristics of fundamental frequency, gender, and age The aforementioned developmental characteristics are largely related to gender and age. In the following, we consider the extreme values from measurements of different genders and ages, and their relative variation ranges in order to examine the developmental characteristics of F0 under these varied circumstances (see Table 2.2 and Figures 2.4 and 2.5). All frequency values in Table 2.2 use the unit Hz. This table lists the extreme values of fundamental frequency from actual measurements of male (M) and female (F) participants: maximum (max), minimum (min), relative variation range (rang), and the average value of F0 across vowels (mean). Fundamental frequency data in Figure  2.5 were taken from Figure  2.1. The higher bounds are the means of females, while the lower bounds are those of males. The point in the middle is the mean averaged across gender. The p-values at the top are results from t-tests, with the original data for statistical analyses and N = 4. From Figure 2.3 and the tables, we can begin to see that gender and age had different effects at various stages. Figure 2.2 and Figure 2.5 further illustrate this point. We will discuss them further separately.

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Table 2.2 Data chart of primary vowels’ F0 extreme values by gender M

G0 G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 G6 G7 G8

F

max

min

rang

mean

max

min

rang

mean

436 360 367 367 151 193 186 169 209

271 253 201 244 101 132 104 110 113

165 107 166 123 50 61 82 58 96

326 320 302 292 126 163 147 135 155

406 367 367 367 290 297 324 272 265

300 290 270 217 195 239 161 164 164

105 77 97 150 95 58 163 108 101

335 334 329 299 249 265 253 222 223

A phonetic investigation of primary vowels  21

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Figure 2.4 Extreme values of fundamental frequency and their relative variation range (male) – (female)

Figure 2.5 Statistical significance of the development of F0 in primary vowels by gender

2.3.2.1 The toddler groups (G0–G1) Through the data in the preceding tables and figures, we can see that there is little difference in the range of extreme values and the relative variation ranges between males and females in regard to the F0 development of young children (G0–1) (see Figure  2.6). There was no statistical significance (p > .05). This suggests that in the age groups younger than the young child group (6 years of age), gender has little influence on fundamental frequency. For young children,

22  A phonetic investigation of primary vowels

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Figure 2.6 Relative variation range of the extreme values of F0 in primary vowels (male) – (female)

especially in toddlerhood, the relative changes in male and female children’s voice pitch (absolute fundamental frequency) and pitch height do not differ significantly. Data obtained in this chapter concur with our general experience as well, such that children’s voices are highly similar and that it is not easy to distinguish gender based on the voice of a child in early childhood. Other research has shown that early male and female children’s absolute pitch height only differ by 3 Hz (Kong, 2008). With regard to age difference, we also performed t-tests on the relevant F0 data by age (see Figure 2.7), and the results showed that there were no significant differences between males, females, or their means, suggesting that in these two age groups, there is little variation in the development and change of fundamental frequency and that age as a factor does not have a significant impact on F0 during this stage. Through the analysis of the absolute value of F0 in regard to the acquisition of different vowels in the young children groups, we find that the three vowels are equally affected by constraining factors, such as age and gender, in terms of duration and level of impact. The origins of the primary vowels does not vary differently due to distinctions in vowels. This also proves, to some extent, that during the process of vowel production, different stages (vocalization, tuning, and so on) are independently constrained by corresponding physiological factors. 2.3.2.2 Overview of each stage Based on the data, we can see that the impact of gender and age on the characteristics of fundamental frequency reaches its peak influence prior to the late teen group G4 (i.e., early teen group G3) and right after it (i.e., young adult group G5). During the adolescent (G4) period, both the range of extreme values and the relative variation ranges are less varied for males than females. From the first stage

A phonetic investigation of primary vowels  23

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Figure 2.7 Significance of the development of F0 in primary vowels by gender11

to the second stage, the magnitude of decrease for the range of extreme values as well as the range of variation are both more dramatic in males than in females, suggesting that during this period of change, there are larger internal variations within males than females. During the transition from the second stage to the third stage, the range of extreme values and the range of variation exhibit a steady upward trend in males while displaying a downward trend in females. Therefore, in terms of an overall trend, the developmental pattern of fundamental frequency in males is that it is heavily repressed at first and then begins to slightly rise – similar to the developmental trend of fundamental frequency averaged across genders. For females, the value of fundamental frequency steadily declines. The variations caused by gender difference during the stage-like development of fundamental frequency therefore exhibit both different characteristics and distinctive developmental patterns at the various stages. However, within the male or female groups, they still demonstrate a developmental pattern that could be described by three stages, with a trend of decline as an overall pattern. Regarding age differences, we devised three groups, male, female (Table 2.3), and average (Table  2.4), and performed pairwise t-tests among the nine age groups using the F0 data from the various age groups (N = 4). Results are shown

24  A phonetic investigation of primary vowels Table 2.3 Results of t-tests on F0 by age (1) G0 G0 G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 G6 G7 G8

.661 .510 .202 .000* .000* .000* .000* .000*

G1

G2

G3

G4

G5

G6

G7

G8

.884

.704 .734

.224 .221 .312

.001* .001* .003* .129

.001* .001* .003* .247 .295

.001* .001* .002* .139 .835 .316

.001* .001* .001* .038* .185 .033* .116

.001* .001* .002* .046* .239 .054 .163 .951

.662 .237 .000* .000* .000* .000* .000*

.769 .000* .004* .003* .001* .004*

.000* .000* .000* .000* .001*

.012* .201 .453 .129 M

.310 .039* .647

.445 .691

.273

F

Table 2.4 Results of t-tests on F0 by age (2)

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G0 G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 G6 G7 G8

G0

G1

G2

.631 .423 .054 .000* .000* .000* .000* .000*

.584 .069 .001* .001* .000* .000* .000*

.339 .001* .001* .001* .001* .001*

G3

G4

.002* .005* .413 .002* .710 .000* .765 .000* .957      Mean

G5

G6

G7

.633 .205 .351

.455 .699

.663

G8

in Table 2.4, with the lower-left triangle area representing results regarding males and the upper-right triangle part representing females. Table 2.4 shows the results using the means averaged across genders. A significance level of .05 is marked by * (p < .05). Since the development of age is successive, the data points on the diagonal line of the triangle area in Table 2.4 indicate the between-group status by age and can reflect the differences at stage boundaries; the data points within the triangle, however, demonstrate the differences within a stage. During the development of fundamental frequency for males, there are no significant differences within the first three age groups (Stage I  G0–3), suggesting that there is little change in boys’ fundamental frequency development during the first stage and that the age factor does not have a significant impact on boys’ fundamental frequency during this period. From Stage II (G4) onward, there is a significant difference within the male group after the first and second stages due to voice change caused by physiological alteration. Such change is also the reflection of individual differences before and after maturation. During Stage III (G5–8) and Stage II (G4), only G5 and G4 differ significantly, suggesting that during a special period right after voice change, fundamental

A phonetic investigation of primary vowels  25 frequency differs from that in the mature stage. Other than the significant difference between G5 and G4, there are no significant differences among any other groups in the two latter stages. The change of fundamental frequency is relatively steady during Stages II and III, indicating a fairly stable status of individuals’ vocalization after maturation. In addition, although the development of fundamental frequency during adulthood (G4–8) is relatively stable, the development of fundamental frequency in adult males increases slightly, showing a somewhat feminized trend in elderly male voices.12 In summary, the preceding circumstances suggest a co-varying pattern that is akin to an exponential relationship between the stage-like development and age in regard to fundamental frequency in males. For females, there is no significant difference in the development of fundamental frequency either between successive groups (data points on the diagonal line of the triangle area) or the various age groups within each stage. There is a significant difference between groups G2 and G4 but not on the boundaries of G3 and G4, which correspond to time points before and after voice change. There is no significant difference between G3 and G4–6. These results show that the development of fundamental frequency is relatively stable in females, with G3 having a transitional manner. For females, the development of fundamental frequency before and after voice change is a process that undergoes a transitional period and slows down without the acute change that occurs in males. Taken together, the developmental stages and ages for female F0 development can be portrayed as a covariant pattern with a near-linear, negative, correlation. Putting these findings together, we can see that based on the three stages, both gender difference and age difference have a certain impact on the developmental characteristics of fundamental frequency.

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2.3.2.3 Related discussions Why do males and females differ in their patterns of developmental stages (i.e., various ages)? The main reason stems from low-level physiological constraints. During Stage I  of the development of fundamental frequency, there is no statistical significance in terms of differences between males and females; from Stage II, statistical significance starts to appear between male and female F0. Impact brought by gender difference begins to have a significant effect on the development of fundamental frequency, and this effect lasts from G4 through the entire adulthood group of G8. The average age of group G4 was 17.5 years – in the adolescent period that individuals develop while their voices transition from a child’s voice to an adult’s voice, a period referred to as voice change from a medical and physiological perspective. Due to individual differences, voice change typically begins from 13–14 years of age and ends at 17–18 years (corresponding to G3–G4 in this research on average), lasting inconsistent durations. Research has shown that the shortest durations for children in China are 2 months for girls and 4 months for boys; the longest durations are 10 months for girls and 2 years and 10 months for boys.

26  A phonetic investigation of primary vowels Sex hormones secreted by sex glands are the main reasons for voice change during the voice change period. Androgens have the most significant impact on the development of the larynx. Under its influence and the impact of other hormones, the larynx grows rapidly in all directions; the cartilage stents also grow rapidly, with the thyroid cartilage protruding forward, and the triangle formed by the two square-shaped cartilages becoming smaller, thus forming the laryngeal prominence. Alongside the growth of the cartilage, the vocal muscles also lengthen, widen, and thicken accordingly, forming various slits in between the two vocal cords (glottis); within the lateral third of the glottal region, especially, they cannot close and thus form a triangular opening which is the triangle region of voice change. Due to sex differences, androgen levels are higher in males than in females. Therefore, during voice change, the effect is more prominent in males. Male thyroid cartilage protrudes forward to form the Adam’s apple, whereas the vertical expansion of the laryngeal prominence in females is not noticeable and usually does not result in the appearance of an Adam’s apple. This is a rather large difference for males versus females after voice change. Prior to voice change, the growth of the laryngeal cartilage has an almost linear relationship to the growth of height without gender difference. After the period of voice change, the average length of an adult male’s vocal tract is 16–18  cm, with an average lengthening of the vocal cords of 60%, reaching 20–25 mm and an average of 4 mm at the center of the thickest point. Though girls’ vocal cords also grow during this period, they are much shorter than those of boys, with an average of 14–16 cm, an average growth of 34% in length, reaching 15–20 mm and an average of 2.5 mm at the center of the thickest point (Han & Xu, 2007). The relationship between the mass of vocal cords and vibration frequency can be calculated under the linear mass spring system, with mechanical compliance C and mass M. The equation is as follows13:

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F0 =

1 2π MC

Using the voice change period (G4) as a boundary, we divide it into pre-adult and adult groups,14 as well as males and females, to discuss each separately. A Fundamental frequency for the underage and adult stages, when Mu < Ma, Cu < Ca: Given MuCuF0a B Male and female F0 after reaching adulthood, when Mf < Mm, Cf < Cm: Given MFCFF0M From the preceding formula derivation, we can see that F0 decreases when vocal cord mass increases; therefore, F0 in the underage stage is higher than that of the adult stage. Entering the adult stage after voice change, physiological changes have caused individuals’ voice changes, such that male and female F0 now have significant differences, resulting in drastically different voices for males and females. The lengthening and thickening of the vocal cords lead to a decrease in F0. The average F0 for adult males declines to an average of around 150 Hz. Male voices begin to be generally perceived as low and heavy. For adult females, the average of F0 decreases to about 250Hz, giving female voices the characteristics of being high and sharp. The appearance of this vocal difference between men and women also becomes an important symbol of biological maturity. During the adult stage, after voice change (Stage III of F0 development G5–8), gender differences are still substantially manifested in the development of fundamental frequency.

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2.4 The development of formants in primary vowels The most important manifestations of vowels from an acoustic perspective are formant frequencies and formant patterns. Different from fundamental frequency, formant frequency illustrates the characteristics of vocal tract transmission (also known as the acoustic resonance of the vocal tract). It is created by the resonance of the vocal cavities and is a passive frequency that depends on physiological characteristics, such as the shape and volume of the vocal organ. Generally, it is believed that the three following physiological factors constrain the characteristics of formants: I first one is the position of the point of maximum constriction. This constriction point divides the vocal tract into anterior and posterior tubes, which are controlled by the forward and backward movement of the tongue and correspond to the anterior and posterior positions of models of tongue positioning. The second is the size of the cross-sectional area at the point of maximum constriction. This is controlled by how far the tongue moves in relation to the top of the oral cavity and the back of the pharynx and roughly resembles the height of the tongue in regard to models of tongue positioning. The third is the position of the lips, which is the area of the lip shape (Ladefoged, 1996). In addition, the length of the vocal tract itself is also an important constraining factor (Bao, 1984).

28  A phonetic investigation of primary vowels Here, we mainly use the quantal theory of speech (Stevens, 1972, 1989, 1998; Stevens and Keyser, 2010 and the two-tube resonator model to discuss the relationship between the changes in primary vowel formants of various age groups and their physiological characteristics. The reason for choosing this model is mostly a lack of basic data from medical anatomical fields regarding the development of the vocal tract in China, and we are therefore unable to quantitatively calculate the constraining relationship of physiological factors on formants based on measurements of physiology. Additionally, the two-tube resonator model itself can explain the relations among vocal tract length, tube shape (anterior and posterior tubes, constriction point, and so on) and formants; the lengthening of the vocal tract is also relatively apparent during physiological development and can facilitate the discussion on the constraining relationship between the development of formants and the physiological characteristics of the vocal tract. In the following, we first investigate the data regarding the development of various formants of the primary vowels. We then discuss the impact of the transmission characteristics of children’s vocal tracts on the development of their formants. 2.4.1 The development of the primary vowels’ formants

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2.4.1.1 Developmental characteristics of [a]’s formants We observe the developmental data of the four formants of primary vowel [a]. Data in Figure 2.8 were from Table 2.1. The larger plot on the left shows the average values; the upper right plot depicts males, while the lower right depicts females. From Figure 2.8, we can see that the four formants of [a] vary from 790 to 4686 Hz on average. In both gender groups as well as the average group, the four formants all decrease as age increases: F1 declines from 1269 Hz to 790 Hz on average, which is an average decline of 37.8%. The downward trend and the stages of F2 are similar to those of F1, with a decrease from 1825 Hz to 1177 Hz and a 35.5% decline on average; F3 also exhibits a downward trend developmentally, declining from 3963 Hz to 2959 Hz, resulting in a decrease of 25.3% on average. F4 decreases from 4686 Hz to 3692 Hz on average and has a 21.2% decline. G4 is a dividing point for all four formants: the decrease is rapid before it and slows down afterward. In addition, gender difference has a certain amount of impact on the development of F3. After two step-wise decreases and one increase, the male group could be divided by G4 and G6, whereas the female group should be partitioned by groups G4–5, with one decrease. We consider the developmental characteristics of the formants for primary vowel [a] to be dependent on physiological constraints. Structural features of the vocal tract during the articulation of [a] are illustrated in Figure  2.9b. The physiological features are a low tongue position in the oral cavity, a large space in the oral cavity, the relative constriction of the pharynx, the relative equivalence between the pharynx and the posterior tube in the model, and the relative equivalence of the oral cavity and the anterior tube. Within the constraints of this

Figure 2.8 The development of primary vowel [a]’s formants

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30  A phonetic investigation of primary vowels

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Figure 2.9a Two-tube resonator model simulation for [a]

Figure 2.9b MRI scan of the articulation of [a]15

construction, the tongue can still obtain a certain amount of space for front and back movements in order to produce the contrast between low frontal and low back vowels. The two-tube resonator model in Figure 2.9a simulates this physiological construction fairly effectively by representing the posterior tube of the

A phonetic investigation of primary vowels  31 glottis (the narrow tube to the left) and the anterior tube at the opening (the wide tube to the right) (Stevens, 1998). Since there still has not been any measurement data on the development of Chinese children’s vocal tracts (oral cavity, pharynx, and so on) and the developmental speed of the organs as well as the growth rates among organs both exhibit a nonlinear relationship (Fletcher & MacWhinney, 1995), we therefore base our discussion regarding the relationship on already-available medical data of the speech organs (Wang, 2002, Shen, 2005, Han & Xu, 2007). Within these data, the basic developmental trends in regard to children’s physiology are shown as the following: First, there is a change in the total length of the vocal tract ℓ. From existing physiological data and general rules of growth,16 we can ascertain that the vocal tract lengthens significantly accompanying age growth prior to an individual’s reaching maturation. As such, in the children’s groups G0–3 (before group G4), these variables exhibit a fairly noticeable trend of increase. Therefore, during an individual’s developmental process, the total length of the vocal tract has the following relation: ℓG0–3 1 as 3 > 1 as 4 / 3 as 2 > 2 as 1 / 4 as 1 / 4 as 3 Based on the order sequence, yangping tone and yinping tone have strong substitution abilities, whereas shang tone and qu tone have relatively weak abilities. In addition, we find that the distribution of children’s substitution types is rather uneven. Counting the substituting and substituted tones, we can see the distribution characteristics of the substitution types (see Tables 4.6 and 4.7). Table 4.6 Percentage table of substituting tones Substituting tone

Counts

Percentage of substituting（%）

yinping yangping shang qu

18 11 4 2

51.43 31.43 11.43 5.71

Acoustic analyses of tone acquisition  93 Table 4.7 Percentage table of substituted tones Substituted tone

Counts

Percentage of being substituted（%）

yinping yangping shang qu

2 13 16 4

5.71 37.14 45.71 11.43

Using one tone to substitute another tone suggests that children place priority on the usage of the substituting tone and have acquired it. A tone being substituted by another tone indicates children’s avoidance of it and that its acquisition may not have been completed. Due to length constraints, we provide case-based examples to analyze children’s substitution of 2 as 3 and observe the acoustic manifestations of errors involving yangping tone replacing shang tone. We chose three single character tones as targets from the language material: the correct yangping tone “méi” (01;03), yangping tone replacing shang tone “měi1” (01;03), and the correct shang tone “měi2” (01;11). The child’s actual pronunciations were then analyzed. From the first set of figures in Table 4.8, we can ascertain that the yangping tone (měi1) retains the original length of shang tone. However, its tone shape lacks sufficient curvature at the bottom and exhibits the same low pitch height as its onset. Therefore, though the whole curve is low-rising, the overall tone contour trend is almost identical to that of yangping tone with the exception of the minor curvature at the beginning. As such, from an acoustic perspective, this single character shang tone has been replaced by yangping tone.

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4.3.2 Inaccurate pitch values and their acoustic analyses Based on the data in Table 4.2, a frequency count of inaccurate pitch values during the various ages is summarized here, see Table 4.9: It is worth noting that tones are also part of the psychological domain and have the characteristics of prototypes. Therefore, from a purely acoustic perspective, even though the articulations of the four tones are not identical in terms of pitch height and contour trend, listeners still accept them during comprehension. We label those tokens that concur perfectly with their acoustic criteria (absolute pitch height and tone contour trend for the tone type) as prototype members and call those that are less standard yet still undistinguishable to the human ear as uncanonical members. When variations are not audibly detectable, listeners categorize their perception as a type of tone automatically. When discussing inaccurate pitch values, we should also take into consideration the existence of uncanonical pitch values in order to exclude them from the error analyses regarding inaccurate pitch values. Since narrowband spectrogram and pitch height visualization apparatus are more precise than the human ear in assessing fundamental frequencies, we can acoustically convert these

Primary contour length (ms) Primary contour variation(Hz) Frequency variation (Hz) Tone contour shape Five-point scale values

Tone contour trend

Single character tone

Comparison of F0s and tone trends

0

0.1

0.2

0.7

Low rising 113

Low rising 25

měi1: yangping as shang (onset at the very bottom)

0.6

120

0.5

179

0.4 Time (s)

564 292–258–412

0.3

180 339–518

méi: correct tone (onset at center)

100

200

300

400

500

600

Table 4.8 Individual comparisons of “méi”, “měi1”, and “měi2”

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Frequency (Hz)

Middle falling low rising 314

161

451 395–282–443

měi2: correct tone (onset at the very top)

Acoustic analyses of tone acquisition  95 Table 4.9 Frequency counts of inaccurate pitch values across ages Type Time 01;02 01;03 01;04 01;05 01;06 01;07 01;08 01;09 01;10 01;11 02;00 共计

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Percentage incorrect (%)

Inaccurate pitch 55

332 343

35 23 13/23/34 12 334/334/223/3 34/223/122/ 12/23/34 334/23

Total 214

554 32/21

334

34/334

3

23

223/545/545 223/435 445/434 322/434 434 434/435/435 211 14

6.52

50

30.43

34/34/34/233 223

51

31 32 32 6 13.04

1 3 3 12 5 3 6 4 1 6 2 46 100

specific F0s into five-point scale values and then obtain and exclude the tolerable pitch variations in order to finally determine the acceptable types of inaccurate pitch height from a psychological and perceptual perspective. We further summarized the acoustic experimental results in Lin and Wang (1992) and Guo (1993) and concluded the uncanonical pitch values for each tone. Uncanonical pitch values are depicted using F, see Table 4.10. The key characteristics of the four Mandarin tones is at the heart of our ability to distinguish whether young children’s tone values are standard. The fundamental frequency for yinping tone is likely flat and even without fluctuations; very few yinping tones exhibit slight frequency variations of rising or falling. Yangping tone’s F0 starts low and ends high, with females having a larger frequency variation than males, as well as a relatively large range for frequency increase (frequency variation values for reference: male 66Hz, female 98Hz). Since children hold even higher fundamental frequencies than adults, we consider it normal for them to demonstrate a larger range of frequency variation as well. The curved shang tone is a bidirectional tone, requiring its articulation to first fall and then rise while moving continuously. There are three distinct pitch height peaks in the tone: the first is the pitch height at the onset, which ordinarily lies below or at the middle frequency region of the speaker. The second is the pitch height at the middle point, which lies in the low frequency region of the speaker and sometimes extends below point zero, thus placing a blank space on the spectrogram without indication of frequency. The third is the pitch height at the endpoint, which lies in the middle or above frequency region of the speaker. Overall, shang tone’s frequency tends to be low and does not rise to the high frequency region. Qu tone

96  Acoustic analyses of tone acquisition Table 4.10 Uncanonical members of the four tones Standard value

Contour features

Crucial point

yinping 55

High level

yinping 35

Middle rising Falling rising High falling

Beginning and endpoints Endpoint

shang 214

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qu 51

Turning point Onset

F1

F2

F3

54

44

24

25

14

212

213

314

F4

F5

313

323

41

displays a clear drop in frequency, with a typical range of above 150 Hz – a high onset, a short length, and a rapid decrease in frequency. On the basis of this description of the four tones, we consider the criteria for judging whether a tone has standard pitch values to be the position of its crucial points and the characteristics its pitch values. The crucial points for yinping tone are the beginning and the end. Disregarding children’s absolute pitch height, if the two points are connected by a flat line, we deem it an acceptable yinping tone, for instance, 33 and 44. If frequency variation exceeds the normal range and the F0 line is no longer flat, it is then of inaccurate pitch value. Yangping tone’s crucial point lies at the end. Its pitch characteristics are middle-rising, thereby requiring the beginning and endpoints to be two degrees apart. As a result, an insufficiently high endpoint, for instance, 13, or a separation smaller than two degrees, for example, 34, would all result in inaccurate yangping tones. The crucial point of shang tone is the turning point in the low frequency region. Therefore, pitch values such as 545, 434 are inaccurate shang tone values. Qu tone’s crucial point is at the beginning. Its pitch characteristics are high-falling, with the onset in the high frequency region and the endpoint in the low frequency region. Hence, pitch values such as 31, 32, 554 are all inaccurate qu tone values. We notice that of children’s inaccurate pitch values for the four tones, yangping tone consists of the highest error rate at 50%, and then shang tone occupies 30.43%, which is followed by qu tone at 13.04% and lastly yinping tone with 6.52%. We will analyze the acoustic performance of each type of inaccurate pitch values. 4.3.2.1 Inaccurate pitch value of yinping tone In fact, young children’s articulation of yinping tone is not high-level but mostly 33 middle-level. This could be constrained by young children’s physiological and developmental characteristics, such as those related to their vocal cords. Prior to age 02;00, the majority of yinping errors are centered around the instability of pitch value; they include 1) fluctuation in the middle section of a level tone (e.g., 343) and 2) rising or falling at the end of a level tone (e.g., 334, 332). We analyze the exemplar characters of these two error types (see Table 4.11).

323–349–324

01;05

01;11

qī七

yā鸭

276–300–369

Primary contour variation (Hz)

Time of output

Character

334

343

5-pt scale value

Pitch contour

Table 4.11 Analysis of exemplar characters for inaccurate yinping pitch values

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0

100

200

300

400

500

0

0

0

100

200

300

400

500

F0

Frequency (Hz)

Frequency (Hz)

0.1

0.1

0.2

0.2

Time (s)

Time (s)

0.3

0.3

0.4

0.4

0.5

0.5

98  Acoustic analyses of tone acquisition The frequency variation for the child’s yinping tone character “dēng” is only 10 Hz in the previous section, but these two frequency variations both exceed the standard frequency variation range for yinping tone. The second example “yā”, in particular, displays a frequency variation at 93 Hz. During assessment, we find many exemplar characters with unstable pronunciations similar to the type of “qī”, though their representations are not as conspicuous in the spectrogram. However, it is still certain that the instability of the glottis-controlled airflow in young children has led to the prevalence of such irregularities in the unevenness of the pitch values in yinping tone. “yā” is an error that occurs after the acquisition of yinping tone has relatively stabilized. We conclude that this is related to the child’s usage of emphasis by stressing their speech utterance, since such an error is rather rare in single characters but more common in yinping errors from two-character units. As a result of stressing the speech utterance, the second half of the yinping tone increases or decreases in pitch value on the whole.

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4.3.2.2 Inaccurate pitch value of yangping tone Cases of inaccurate yangping pitch values exhibited a high percentage of occurrences, comprising 50% of the total amount. Inaccurate yangping tones included two types and three subtypes (see Table 4.12). Due to the physiological and developmental constraints of the muscles involved in controlling tones, children may unconsciously add turning points into the originally level yangping tone. However, with or without turning points, the main reason for the pitch of yangping tone to be inaccurate is that it lacks sufficient pitch height. In Table 4.13, we analyze three exemplar characters. We consider yinping tone 33 as correct, since young children’s pitch range is yet to be expansive enough. However, yangping tone has a middle-rising curve that extends from a middle pitch to a high pitch, with a two-degree difference on the scale; “ná” with a five-point scale value of 23 therefore appears to not possess a sufficiently obvious rising trend based on the F0 line. The character “lán” bears a turning point at its pitch peak. While the rising contour prior to the turning point is fairly standard, there is a slight falling trend after it. Even though this decrease does not exceed the range of three degrees, such tonal contour is still absent in adults’ yangping tone. The F0 contour shape for yangping tone can be either an evenly rising curve or a slight-falling-then-rising curve. Based on contour shape, character “hóng” belongs to the second type, though its pitch range for the rising

Table 4.12 Types of inaccurate yangping pitch values Type of inaccuracy Without turning point With turning point

Actual values Rising and then level Level and then rising

12/13/23/34 122/233 223/334

268–289

01;03

01;08

01;08

ná拿

lán蓝

hóng红

287–261–382

224–250–345

Primary contour variation (Hz)

Time of output

Character

Table 4.13 Analysis of inaccurate yangping pitch values

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223

233

  23

5-pt scale value

Pitch contour

0

100

200

300

400

500

0

0

100

200

300

400

0

0

500

100

200

300

400

500

F0

Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)

Frequency (Hz)

0.1

0.1

0.05

0.2

0.2

Time (s)

Time (s)

0.1 Time (s)

0.3

0.3

0.15

0.4

0.4

0.5

0.5

0.2

100  Acoustic analyses of tone acquisition trend after the turning point is still too narrow, and its pitch height does not eventually reach the high frequency region. 4.3.2.3 Inaccurate pitch value of shang tone Inaccurate shang tone pitches can also be categorized into three types (see Table 4.14). We again select three representative characters to conduct acoustic analyses: Upon carefully examining the pitch trend of the character “hǎo”, we see that even though there is a falling trend prior to the dipping point, the frequency difference is only 18 Hz. The tone also has an insufficiently low dipping point, which lies on the 4th degree, same as the onset. The overall 5-point scale values for “shǒu” are too low. While its F0 exhibits a rising trend after the dipping point, the frequency difference is 29Hz, which lies on the 1st degree and is also an inaccurate shang tone. The character “gěi” lacks sufficient bending in order to form a bowl-shaped curve, which is the main reason why the child’s speech production sounds unclear.

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4.3.2.4 Inaccurate pitch value of qu tone The types of inaccurate pitch values of qu tone are relatively centralized, which is mainly due to a lack of sufficient height of the onset. They are in the middle- to low-frequency ranges, for example, 31 and 32. In addition, of the six instances of mispronunciation, one begins in the high frequency range, which conforms to requirements for qu tone. However, its falling trend is too flat and has a pitch value of 554. We conduct acoustic analyses on these two types of inaccurate pitch types (see Table 4.16). The fundamental frequency curve of the character “cài” has a turning point and exhibits a rising curve with a frequency difference of 69 Hz prior to it, which does not exceed the 5-degree range. The falling curving does not appear until after the turning point. While the overall plot demonstrates a falling trend, it is not sufficiently low. The onset of “dà” has a pitch value of 2, which is not within the high frequency range. Its frequency difference is 38 Hz, which is too small, and does not meet the requirement of a typical qu tone in regard to the dropping span and is, therefore, not a standard qu tone.

Table 4.14 Types of inaccurate shang pitch values Type of inaccuracy

Actual values

Same dipping and onset point Same dipping and endpoints Dipping point not in low frequency range

223/445 322/211 545/435/434/435

323–305–445

01;08

02;00

01;06

hǎo好

shǒu手

gěi给

362–251–312

276–200–229

Primary contour variation (Hz)

Time of output

Character

Table 4.15 Analysis of inaccurate shang pitch values

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545

211

445

5-pt scale value

Pitch contour

0

0 0.2

100

200

300

400

500

0 0.3

100

200

300

400

500

0

100

200

300

400

500

F0

Frequency (Hz)

Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)

0.3

0.4

0.3

0.5

0.4

0.4

Time (s)

0.5 Time (s)

0.6

0.5 Time (s)

0.7

0.6

0.6

0.8

0.7

0.9

0.7

0.8

1

0.8

320–389–310

01;04

01;05

cài菜

dà大

265–227

Primary contour variation (Hz)

Time of output

Character

  21

554

5-pt scale value

Pitch contour

Table 4.16 Analysis of characters with inaccurate qu pitch values

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0

100

200

300

400

500

0

100

200

300

400

500

F0

Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)

0

0

0.1

0.1

0.2 Time (s)

0.2 Time (s)

0.3

0.3

0.4

0.4

Acoustic analyses of tone acquisition  103

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4.4 Tentative explanations for children’s tone errors So far, no one theory has completely explained the reality of children’s language acquisition. Tones are a speech phenomenon that has physical, physiological, psychological, and social properties.6 Therefore, we can only obtain a holistic understanding of young children’s tone learning process by combining several constraint-mechanisms, such as physiological and psychological factors. However, we believe that the constraints of physiological factors should be more essential, such as the development of brain function and the maturity of organs involved in pronunciation. From the aspect of vocal organs alone, we know that the source of power is the lungs. When children speak, by breathing air and through the coordinated operations of the diaphragm and the muscle groups for breathing, they send air currents out of the lung chambers. Because children have a low number of alveoli but a high blood content and a relatively low air content, the most important reason for young children’s F0 curve to exhibit breaking bands is a lack of sufficient air flow. From the analysis in section 4.3.2, we can see that the inaccurate pitch values are most common in yangping and shang tones, which can be tentatively explained from a physiological perspective. As the trachea reaches the larynx, air flow is regulated or relaxed by various cartilage-connected muscle groups to determine the tone height.7 Sagart (1986) analyzed the average electromyographic (EMG) values of the cricothyroid (CT) muscle and the variations of F0 and discovered that there was a connection between the height of F0 and the CT activity and that it was easier for CT activity to change from strong-to-weak than weak-to-strong. Thus, from an articulation perspective, it is easier to produce qu tone than yangping tone, and we therefore obtain a tentative explanation for how yangping tone is acquired after qu tone and with a higher error rate. Guo (1993:39) mentioned that “when producing a shang tone, the movement of CT drops to a very low level from an already low point, and the strong activity of the sternal hyoid skeletal muscle (SH) causes the F0 to fall in the low pitch range”. It seems that producing shang tone requires the coordination of both CT and SH muscle groups and is therefore more difficult to manage than the other three tones. It is also the last to be acquired by children and the most error-prone tone. Ladefoged (1967) found that subglottal pressure (Ps) also plays a role in vocal cord tension. Lin et al.’s (1984) study also showed that laryngeal muscle tone (VCT) plays a dominant role in fundamental frequency, but under certain circumstances, Ps and VCT also work together. Bao (1984) studied the relationship between the laryngeal cavity and pitch height change and found that given the same vowel, the higher the F0, the larger the laryngeal cavity. Young children’s throats are funnel-shaped, with soft cartilage and rich mucous membranes. The development of contraction for cartilage and muscle fibers is yet to be completed like that of adults. Their ability to control the glottis is not strong. Therefore, young children’s yinping tone lacks sufficient height, and their qu tone is not sufficiently lowered. They cannot manage the turning point of a dipping tone, which thus leads to a gentle bowl-shaped curve.

104  Acoustic analyses of tone acquisition

Notes

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1 See X. Deng (2004). Acoustic processing strategies in children’s phonetic acquisition [儿童语音习得中的语音处理策略]. Journal of Tsinghua University, 1, 22–30. 2 Yuan (2009) as a reference for this definition. 3 Other work suggests that this begins at 00;10, e.g. The New Encyclopedia of Chinese Teachers (Volume on The Education of Infants and Toddlers) [中国教师新百科（幼儿 教育卷）], Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, 2003. 4 See X. Zhu (2004). F0 normalization: How to deal with between speaker tonal variations? Linguistic Sciences, 3(2), 3–19. 5 According to analyses, we discovered that even for the same character during the same time within the same language material, its pronunciations differed. At age 01;02, “ná” appeared three times, with the first one being tone 55, the second and the third tone 11. These occurrences happened within an hour. 6 See Liu (2007). 7 The preceding research is cited from Kong (2001), Guo (1993), Lin et al. (1984), and so on.

5 Acquisition of locative words relating to “up” and “down”

Using a Chinese child of 1;02–3;07 years of age, this chapter conducts a detailed longitudinal study of the acquisition of six directional verbs in the “up, down” groups, including their order of acquisition, output frequency, patterns of semantic development, and so on. We discover that from the perspective of cognitive development, children’s acquisition of directional verbs reflects the metaphorical projection of “path  result  time”; from the perspective of semantic development, it mainly induces the process of grammaticalization of “space  path  result  state  time” of the diachronic development of Chinese; from the perspective of syntactic development, it exhibits the transformation of “lexical category  lexical-grammatical category  grammatical category”. In sum, the development of children’s semantics-syntax is generally consistent with their cognitive development, but pragmatic frequency factors may overwhelm cognitive principles and thus make certain semantic acquisitions contrary to the general sequence of acquisition.

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5.1 Research background and research subject Directional verbs are a very small class of modern Chinese verbs, and they are often one of the difficult points for foreigner learners of Chinese. However, Chinese children acquire them relatively early and with few mistakes. Research regarding directional verbs has always been the focus of attention for Chinese linguistics. Jinxi Li, Yuen-Ren Chao, Shuxiang Lü, Dexi Zhu, Shengshu Ding, Jianming Lu, Yuehua Liu, Bojiang Zhang, and other scholars have discussed the relevant issues from different perspectives. This has provided a good theoretical basis for our discussion regarding the acquisition of directional verbs. As for the research results pertaining to children’s acquisition of directional verbs, currently we mainly see studies from Chinese academe by scholars such as Lingda Kong and colleagues (2004) and Xiaochao Guo and Zhengyuan Xu (1991) and so on in psychology. In their research, the acquisition of directional verbs is only a small component in the acquisition of the whole verb system and is therefore difficult to examine in a very detailed manner – sometimes it is only briefly mentioned. Taken together, it can be concluded that the study of the acquisition of children’s directional verbs has only just begun.

106  Acquisition of locative words The main grammatical characteristics of directional verbs are as follows:

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First, they are relatively restricted in number and neat in structure. Generally speaking, the number of directional verbs is considered to be 25 to 28. We can describe directional verbs as a small matrix, the simple directional verbs “shàng上(up), xià下 (down), jìn进 (in), chū出 (out), guò过 (over), huí回 (back), kāi开(open), qǐ起 (up), dào到 (arrive)” and “lái来(come), qù去 (go)”, as well as the compound directional verbs that they consist of, as shown in Table 5.1. Second, there is a fairly broad and consistent extension of semantics. Essentially, each directional verb has three usages: trend meaning, results meaning, and state meaning. This leads to a very complex semantic system of directional verbs. Third, they can be used as a predicate or complements in a sentence, and the issue regarding the word order of directional verb-object sentences is also relatively complex. All of these features have made directional verbs a lasting focus in academia. The present chapter is too constrained by its length to examine children’s acquisition of the entire directional verb system – doing so might lead to mistakes by trying to cover too much superficially. Taking into account the systematic nature of directional verbs, we intend to focus on two groups “shàng上(up), xià下 (down)” (including six words “shàng上(up), xià下 (down), shànglái 上来 (come up), shàngqù 上去 (go up), xiàlái 下来 (come down), xiàqù 下去 (go down)”, which are collectively referred to as the “上、下(up, down)” group from here on). Based on this in-depth investigation regarding the rules of children’s acquisition of directional verbs, we hope to examine the relevant theories pertaining to language acquisition. “上、下 (up, down)” reflect the most fundamental spatial orientation and kinesthetic image schema in the world. The “上、下 (up, down)” group of directional verbs include both the “up and down” of simple, directional movements and also those from the speaker’s perspective: “shànglái 上来 (come up), shàngqù 上去 (go up), xiàlái 下来 (come down), xiàqù 下去 (go down)”, therefore covering the two semantic dimensions of modern Chinese directional verbs. Table 5.1 Table of directional verbs in modern Chinese 上 up 来 上来 come come up 去 go

上去 go up

下 down 下来 come down 下去 go down

进 in 进来 come in 进去 go in

出 out 出来 come out 出去 go out

回 back 回来 come back 回去 go back

过 over 过来 come over 过去 go over

开 drive 开来 drive here 开去 drive there

起 up 起来 come up

到 to 到 . . . 来 come . . . to 到 . . . 去 go . . . to

Acquisition of locative words 107 The participant child in this chapter is JBS. Speech materials were selected from 01;02–03;07.

5.2 Investigation on the timing of acquisition of directional verbs related to “上、下 (up, down)” The investigation found that since the first occurrence of “上、下 (up, down)”, JBS continued to produce them without a large gap in time. To ensure the comprehensiveness and attention to detail of the investigation, we sub-categorized the six verbs according to their syntactic function. A total of 15 targets (the starting times for “上、下 (up, down)” as locational nouns and “下 (down)” as a verbal classifier are also listed as a reference). The resulting sequence is as follows: 上、下（predicate，01;03.20）> 下去（predicate，01;06.27）> 上（com­-­ plement， 01;07.03） > 上 去 （ predicate， 01;07.10） > 下 （ comple­ment，01;07.24）> 上（noun，01;09.12）、下来（predicate，01;09.12）> 下（qualifier，01;10.03）> 上来（predicate，01;11.07）> 下来（com­plement，01;11.14）> 下（noun，01;11.20）>下去（complement，02; 00.04） > 上 去 （ ­c omplement， 02;04.15） > 上 来 （ comple­m ent，   02;08.28） 5.2.1  Timing of first occurrence of “上、下 (up, down)” 上（predicate，01;03.20）> 上（complement，01;07.03） > 上（noun，01; 09.12） 下（predicate，01;03.20） > 下（complement，01;07.24） > 下（qualifier，01;10.03 ） > 下（noun，01;11.20） 5.2.1.1 Syntactic function

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From the perspective of syntactic functioning, the acquisition of the predicate precedes that of the complement: 上（predicate，01;03.20） > 上（complement，01;07.03） 下（predicate，01;03.20） > 下（complement，01;07.24） 上来（predicate，01;11.07） > 上来（complement，02;08.28） 上去（predicate，01;07.10） > 上去（complement，02;04.15） 下来（predicate，01;09.12） > 下来 （complement，01;11.14） 下去（predicate，01;06.27） > 下去（complement，02;00.04） The predicate verbs “上、下 (up, down)” were learned first and almost at the same time. “上、下 (up, down)” were acquired relatively early because of their basic positional relationship and as a pair of interdependent antonyms, which is to be expected and reasonable. However, that the use of verbs was acquired prior to that of nouns is somewhat surprising. We initially predicted that the usage of

108  Acquisition of locative words locational nouns “上、下(up, down)” for humans’ basic spatial orientation may appear earlier because children generally acquire nouns before verbs – understanding spatial orientations first and then the verbs that are related to these locations. However, an examination in regard to “上、下 (up, down)” revealed that, without exception, the acquisition of nouns occurred much later than that of verbs, with more than half a year passing in between. We consider this to be related to the particularity of locational nouns – since they are agglutinative and can also be seen as half-lexical, half-grammatical. From a language production perspective, children produce concrete words before they do functional ones. Taken together, we have a unified explanation for the phenomena that are seemingly contradictive to the general patterns of language acquisition. 5.2.1.2 Syllabic characteristics In terms of syllabic characteristics, monosyllables are learned prior to multi-­ syllables, such as 上、下（predicate，01;03.20） > 下去（predicate，01;06.27） > 上去 （predicate，01;07.10） > 下来 （predicate，01;09.12） > 上来（predicate，01;11.07） The preceding sequence reflects the trend of children’s language learning: from simple to complex, from lexical to grammatical.

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5.3 Output frequency counts of directional verbs related to “上、下 (up, down)” Output frequency is an important indicator for investigating the acquisition of directional verbs. We summarize the frequency of the six words according to their syntactic functions (including the frequency of nouns and qualifiers, for reference). Data are shown in Table 5.2. From Table 5.2, we can see several characteristics pertaining to the acquisition of “上、下 (up, down)”, such as 1

2

The asymmetry in the output of mono- and di-syllabic verbs. Monosyllabic verbs “上、下 (up, down)” accounted for 679 instances for frequency, whereas “上来(come up), 上去 (go up), 下来 (come down), 下去 (go down)” only tallied 365 times. The asymmetry in the output of antonyms. “上 (up)” (879 times) had a higher output frequency than “下 (down)” (430 times). The “来 (come)” group (211 times) had a higher output frequency than the “去 (go)” group (154 times). The antonyms that were interdependent on each other exhibited an asymmetry in regard to their frequency of usage, which was in line with the frequency results in adult language. Comparatively speaking, “上 (up)” and “来 (come)” are unmarked words, while “下 (down)” and “去 (go)” are marked words (Shen, 1999a). This is directly related to the asymmetry of antonyms’ output frequency.

Acquisition of locative words 109 Table 5.2 Output frequency of children’s directional verbs “上、下 (up, down)” Class and part of speech Total frequency

Verb（as predicate）

Verb（as complement）

Noun

上（879） up 上来(52) come up 上去（50） go up 下（430） down 下来（159） come down 下去（104） go down

223（25%）

232（27%）

424（48%）

38（73%）

14（27%）

32（64%）

18（36%）

175（41%）

49（11%）

68（43%）

91（57%）

61（59%）

43（41%）

3

96（22%）

Qualifier

110（26%）

The frequency of “上 (up)” as a complement was far higher than that of “下 (down)”. Focusing only on the usage of “上、下 (up, down)” as verbs, the frequency of “上 (up)” as a complement substantially exceeded that of “下(down)”.

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Within each group, the frequency of “上 (up)” as a complement (51%) was comparable to it as a predicate (49%); the frequency of “下 (down)” as a complement (22%) was markedly lower than it as a predicate (78%). Comparing across the two groups, “上 (up)” as a complement (51%) was far more frequent than “下 (down)” as a complement (22%). According to the grammaticalization theory by Hopper and Traugott (1993), high-frequency resultative complements tend to grammaticalize more easily. From the frequency counts, we can see that “上 (up)” is more grammaticalized than “下 (down)”.

5.4 Investigation on the semantic acquisition of directional verbs related to “上、下 (up, down)” 5.4.1  Semantic characteristics of directional verbs related to “上、下 (up, down)” The semantics of directional verbs can be considered as a central question, since “motion-path” is the most basic cognitive paradigm in humans and can easily incur metaphorical mapping and thus result in semantic extensions. The grammaticalization process of directional verbs is reflected at the position of the complement. Therefore, we focus on examining the directional verbs at the position of the complement. Directional verbs in Chinese emerged during the period of Middle Chinese (Liang, 2007) and from the directional serial-verb constructions

110  Acquisition of locative words Table 5.3 Semantic types of directional verbs “上、下 (up, down)”

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Directional verb

Semantic Directional type meaning

上

From low to high; approaching the destination

下

From high to low; leaving the destination

Resultative meaning State meaning

Contact, attachment; From stillness to achieved the movement, the intended purpose beginning of a new state Leave; leave over From movement to stillness, continuation of movement

in Old Chinese. The semantic evolution of directional verbs has a clear lexicalto-grammatical trajectory: directional meaning  resultative meaning  state meaning  temporal aspect meaning (Liu, 1998). As a result, the semantics of directional verbs are not limited to simple lexical meaning but are rather at the interface of “semantics-syntax”. In the six words, we only list the semantic types of “上、下 (up, down)” for reference since they indicate the direction of movement; “来、去 (come, go)” are appended to them in order to add information regarding the perspective of the speaker. “来 (come)” indicates that the movement is toward the speaker while “去 (go)” indicates that it is moving away from the speaker. From Table 5.3, resultative meaning and state meaning can be further extended into temporal aspect meaning, at which point the directional verb no longer corresponds to any argument component in the sentence from a semantic perspective but rather only to the verb itself and can therefore be seen as having lost its directional meaning. For instance, in the case of “上 (up)” indicating completion or realization from the perspective of modality, such as “她开口骂上了 (She openmouth curse-up-Le, ‘She has begun cursing’)”, these components can be seen as quasi-aspectual markers. Regarding the four semantic types “directional, resultative, stative, temporal aspectual” and the criteria for definition, we mainly referred to Liu (1998). When we encountered controversial words, we referred to the vocabulary list in Liu’s book. 5.4.2  Acquisition order of different semantic types Chinese directional verbs have diachronically undergone the grammaticalization process of “directional meaning  resultative meaning  state meaning  temporal aspect meaning”. Does children’s language development exhibit similar processes? We examined the time of occurrence of the different semantic types pertaining to the six words, and the results are as follows (the words in parentheses are examples of first occurrences):

Acquisition of locative words 111 上： Resultative（放上，01;07.03） > Directional （骑上，01;09.12） > State（吃上了，03;02.11） 上来： Directional（拿上来，02;08.28） > Resultative （围上来，02; 09.25） 上去： Directional （爬上去，02;04.15） > Resultative （贴上去，02; 10.09） 下： Directional（放下，1 01;07.24 > Resultative（ 装不下，02;02.06） 下来： Directional （弄下来，01;11.14） > Resultative （脱下来，02; 03.19） > State （停下来，03;06.18） 下去： Directional （掉下去，02;00.04） We notice that these directional verbs by and large follow the developmental trend of “directional meaning  resultative meaning  state meaning”, with “上(up)” being the only exception. The resultative meaning occurs prior to the directional meaning for “上 (up)”, which again indicates that “上 (up)” is so highly grammaticalized that it breaks the normal order of acquisition. 5.4.3  Investigation on the verbs that precede directional complements The semantic types of directional complements are closely tied to the verbs that precede them. We examined these verbs one by one, and recorded their output frequency ranked by high to low frequency counts,2 as seen in Table 5.4.

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Table 5.4 Frequency of the verbs that precede directional verbs relating to “上、下 (up, down)” for children Complement

Meaning

上 242 up

Directional 9 Resultative 232

上来 14 come up 上去 18 go up

State 1 Directional 12 Resultative 2 Directional 15 State 3

Verb combination and frequency 追3　坐3　骑1 爬 1 围 1　 戴26 盖23　穿20 关20 粘20　挂13 弄11　接（～上 球）8 套8 拿4　 放3 安3 对3　贴3 拉3　扣3　系3　带2　丢2　 铺2　涂2 搭2　站2　 挠2　包2　拧2 靠2　写2　装1 钓1 加1　垫1 闭1　 合1 见1 镶1 晾1　照1　标1 要1　勾1　别1 耍1　安1 背1 舀1 杀1 罗1 扎1　 叠1　挡1 上1　披1 画1 拉1 充1 踩1 夹1　叉1　唇 （语境中作动词用）1　挖1   吃1（没～上） 叠1 掉1 吃1（我又～上了） 拿2 钓2　挖 1 围1　弄1　爬1　坐1 土（语境中作 动词用）1 救1　吸1 戴1　录1 爬7 坐3　放1　挂1　登1　扔1　架1 贴1　粘1　数 1 (Continued)

112  Acquisition of locative words Table 5.4 (Continued) Complement

Meaning

Verb combination and frequency

下 49 down 下来 89 come down

Directional 40 Resultative 9 Directional 80

放17 坐10 躺4　蹲3　趴2　咽1 撬1　吃1 弄1 装3　睡3　剩2　拿1（～得下）　 掉19　拿13　弄11　倒6　撕5　滑4　坐3　摘2　 挖2 　踩2 放2　跳2　摔1　掰1 丢1　蹦1 剥1 滚1 割1　撬1 下1（～不下来） 脱4 剪2 录1 停2 掉12 推 4 摔4　滚3　咽3　挤3　滑3 跳2放2　 塌1 冲1 碰1 跑1 趴1 踢1 盖1

下去 4 go down

Resultative 7 State 2 Directional 43

5.4.4  Analysis and discussion

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From Table 5.4, we can derive the following conclusions: 1 Almost all of the frequency counts of directional verbs exhibit a declining trend following “directional meaning  resultative meaning  state meaning”, which reflects the process of metaphorical mapping of “path  results  time” regarding children’s cognition. Only “上 (up)”, however, is an exception. The resultative meaning of “上 (up)” accounts for the absolute majority and is the most frequent, while the more basic directional meaning tokens are scarcely seen. We can therefore see that of the directional verbs relating to “上、下 (up, down)”, “上 (up)” truly occupies a unique position. 2 There is a wide range of semantic meanings for the verbs that precede the complements.3 The verbs that combine with directional meanings mainly include “verbs for objects that change position” and “verbs that can change the position of objects”, essentially covering all possible types of verbs. Regarding the verbs that combine with the resultative meaning, the “上 (up)” group includes meanings of “wearing, closing, covering, attaching, stepping on, writing, and drawing”, and the “下 (down)” group includes “be rid of, remaining, leaving, carrying”, and so on, comprising most types of verbs. The state meaning of directional complements occurs rarely in children’s language. Only three cases of “吃上了” and “停下来” were counted in this study. They indicate the beginning of a new state and the change of an action. The complements’ semantic meaning only refers to the verb itself, signaling the transition towards aspect marker. However, certain more abstract and extended meanings (such as “爱上 (love-up, ‘fall in love’), 买下 (buy-down, ‘to purchase’), 答不上来 (answer-not-up-come,

Acquisition of locative words 113 ‘cannot answer’), 说下去 (speak-down, ‘to continue speaking’), and so on) have not yet appeared; neither have we seen adjectives (such as “静下来 (quiet-down-come, ‘calm down’), 暗下去 (dark-down-go, ‘go dark’)) before directional complements. 3 “上 (up)” further gammaticalizes and becomes a temporal aspect marker. In the speech materials of JBS, we found the intriguing phenomenon of the generalization of “V上” and the neutralization of “上、下 (up, down)”. This reflects the dynamic trajectory of the directional verbs relating to “上、下 (up, down)” developing into temporal aspect markers. 5.4.4.1 Generalization of the form “V上”

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After 01;09, JBS was passionate about using “V上” to indicate the completion of an action. There were also usages that did not conform to adults’ sense of the language, resulting in the generalization of this form: （1）JBS:   典典没靠上。 （01;09.27） JBS: Diǎndian méi kào shàng. Diandian (personal name) didn’t lean SHANG PARTICLE ‘Diandian didn’t successfully lean against [something].’ （2）JBS:   没扔上。 （01;10.10） JBS: Méi rēng shàng. Didn’t throw SHANG PARTICLE ‘[Someone] didn’t successfully throw [something].’ （3）JBS:   没弄上。 （01;11.23） JBS: Méi nòng shàng. Didn’t do SHANG PARTICLE ‘[Someone] didn’t successfully do [something].’ （4）JBS:   姐姐没丢上（球） （02;00.04） JBS: Jiějie méi diū shàng (qiú) Older sister didn’t throw SHANG PARTICLE (ball) ‘The older sister didn’t throw (the ball) successfully.’ （5）JBS:   把它舀上 （02;05.26） JBS: Bǎ tā yǎo shàng BA it ladle out SHANG PARTICLE ‘Ladle it out successfully.’ (海豚把河鱼）杀上了 （02;07.01） （6）JBS:   JBS: (Hǎitún bǎ héyú) shā shàng le (Dolphin BA river fish) kill SHANG PARTICLE ‘(The dolphin) killed (the river fish) successfully.’

114  Acquisition of locative words （7）    JBS: 掉不上（指掉不到桌子上） （02;09.02） JBS: Diào bù shàng Fall not SHANG PARTICLE ‘Cannot fall successfully [meaning something cannot fall onto the top of the table].’ （8）    JBS: 琳达（注：小狗名）的脚怎么站上了？ （02;10.15） JBS: Líndá de jiǎo zěnme zhàn shàng le? Linda (dog’s name) PARTICLE foot how stand SHANG PARTICLE ‘How come Linda’s feet stood successfully?’ （9）    JBS: 拿这唇油给它唇上 （03;06.11） JBS: Ná zhè chúnyóu gěi tā chún shàng Take this lip oil for it lip (used as a verb) SHANG PARTICLE ‘Use the lip oil to “lip” it successfully.’ “上” essentially refers to “indicating the completion of an action” here, which is no longer obviously connected to its fundamental meaning. Semantically, it refers to the verb itself. We also recorded in the language development log that during the time period of 01;09 ~ 02;00, for this child, “V上了, V好了, V 住了” were all of high output frequency, and could largely be used interchangeably. There were even errors involving “上” and “掉” substituting each other by mistake. For instance, when trying to express “穿不上 ‘can’t put on’ ”, the child said “穿不掉 ‘can’t wear off’ ” by mistake (02;04.00). Here, “上、好、住、掉” have become synonyms, whose specific meaning is no longer important; what is important is to add a phonetic form to indicate that the action has been completed. This is very similar to an aspect marker.

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5.4.4.2 Neutralization of the semantic meaning of “上、下 (up, down)” Since directional verbs change from lexical to grammatical, the antonym pair “上、下 (up, down)” becomes synonymous in terms of their resultative meaning and state meaning because of grammaticalization. Their semantic meanings are irrelevant, and the acquisition of their meaning “indicating the completion of realization of an action” has begun. In the speech of child JBS, there are instances where the antonymous “上、下 (up, down)” are semantically neutralized in the complement position, for example: （1   0） （   袋 子 解 不 开 时， 说） 弄 不 上 ， （ 紧接 着 又 说） 弄 不 下 。 （02;08.00）   (Dài zi jiě bù kāi shí, shuō) nòng bù shàng, (jǐn jiē zhe yòu shuō) nòng bùxià. (When a bag cannot be open, said) Do not SHANG; (then said) do not XIA ‘(When the bag cannot be open, said) cannot get it successfully; (immediately then said) cannot get it successfully.’

Acquisition of locative words 115 （11） 成人:   那个电视里面讲的什么故事呀？ Adult: Nàge diànshì lǐmiàn jiǎng de shénme gùshì ya? That-MW television inside speak PARTICLE what story PARTICLE ‘What story is told on the TV?’ 儿童: 你给他录下来下。 Child: Nǐ gěi tā lù xiàlái xià. You for him record XIA come XIA ‘You record it (for him).’ 成人: 好的, 我待会儿录。 Adult: Hǎo de, wǒ dài huìr lù. All right I in a short while record ‘Okay, I will record it in a short while.’ 儿童: 呃, 你你把这个录上来。 Child: È, nǐ nǐ bǎ zhège lù shàng lái. Eh you you BA this-MW record SHANG come ‘Eh, you record this.’ 成人: 这个怎么录上啊？ Adult: Zhège zěnme lù shàng a? This-MW how record SHANG ‘How do you record this?’ 儿童: 这样。（03;07.02） Child: Zhèyàng. This way ‘[In] this way.’

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Interestingly, similar phenomena also occurred in the history of Chinese, for instance: （12） 书上先叙了寒温及得官的事，后却写下一行道：“是我在京中早晚无   人照管，已讨了一个小老婆，等候夫人到京，同享荣华。”（《错斩 崔宁》）   Shū shàng xiān xùle hánwēn jí déguān de shì, hòu què xiě xià yīháng dào: “Shì wǒ zài jīngzhōng zǎowǎn wúrén zhàoguǎn, yǐ tǎole yīgè xiǎolǎopó, děnghòu fūrén dào jīng, tóng xiǎng rónghuá”. (from Cuòzhǎn Cuī Níng)   letter on first describe PARTICLE cold-warm and receive official title PARTICLE matter later unexpectedly write XIA one line say is I at the capital inside morning-evening no people take care already marry a small wife wait madam arrive the capital share wealth and glory   ‘The letter first mentioned some greetings and the matter of receiving an official title, but then a line was written saying: I am in the Capital city by

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116  Acquisition of locative words myself, and no one takes care of me day and night. I have got a concubine, waiting for you to arrive in the capital and to share my wealth and glory with you’ (from Cuòzhǎn Cuī Níng). （13） 女王即令取笔砚来，浓磨香翰，饱润香亳，碟文之后，写上孙悟   空、猪悟净、沙悟能三人名讳，却才取出御印，端端正正印了。 （《西游记》第54回）   nǚwáng jí lìng qǔ bǐ yàn lái, nóng mó xiāng hàn, bǎo rùn xiāng bó, dié wén zhīhòu, xiě shàng Sūn Wùkōng, Zhū Wùjìng, Shā Wùnéng sān rén mínghuì, què cái qǔchū yùyìn, duānduānzhèngzhèng yìn le (from Xīyóu Jì, chapter 54).   queen then order take writing brush and inkstone come thicken grind fragrant ink full polish fragrant brush traveling document after write SHANG Sun Wukong Zhu Wujing Sha Wuneng (names of three main characters in the novel) three people name but only then take out the imperial seal squarely print PARTICLE   ‘The Queen immediately ordered the brush and inkstone to come, thickening the fragrant ink, preparing the brush. After the text on the traveling document, [she] wrote the three names of Sun Wukong, Zhu Wujing, and Sha Wuneng and then took out the imperial seal to print on the document (from the 54th chapter, Journey to the West). （14） 郭   威 去 个 卦 肆 里 买一 个 卦 ， 专占 此 身 去 就 。 费博 古 排 下 了 卦 子 问：“丈夫要做何用？要谋甚事？”（ 《新编五代史平话·周史评话》）   Guōwēi qù gè guà sì lǐ mǎi yīge guà, zhuān zhàn cǐ shēn qùjiù. Fèi Bógǔ pái xià le guàzi wèn: “Zhàngfū yào zuò hé yòng? Yào móu shén shì?” (from Xīnbiān Wǔdài shǐ Pínghuà – Zhōu shǐ Pínghuà)   Guo Wei go MW fortune-telling stand inside buy one-MW divination specifically divine this body occupations Fei Bogu arrange XIA divinatory symbols ask mister want do what use want do what career   ‘Guo Wei went to a fortune-telling stand to ask for his fortune, particularly about his career path. Fei Bogu arranged the divinatory symbols and asked, “What do you ask the fortune for? What career do you want to do?” (from Xīnbiān Wǔdài shǐ Pínghuà – Zhōu shǐ Pínghuà). （15） 排上酒筵，二人殷勤相劝。（《三国演义》第60回）     pái shàng jiǔyán, èr rén yīnqín xiāngquàn (from Sānguó Yǎnyì, chapter 60).   arrange SHANG wine banquet two people diligent each other persuade  ‘Arranged the banquet, the two diligently persuaded each other [to enjoy the banquet]’ (from the 60th chapter, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms). （16） 他们做下见成的饭，与我吃了。（《老乞大》）   tāmen zuò xià jiàn chéng de fàn, yǔ wǒ chīle (from Lǎo Qǐdà). they make XIA ready-made PARTICLE meal give me eat PARTICLE ‘They made the ready-made meal and had me eat it.’ （17） 严冬雪雨的时节，恐怕学生触了寒冷，鞋上蹈了污泥，或煮上一大   锅小米稀粥，或做上一大锅浑酒。 （《醒世姻缘传》第92回）

Acquisition of locative words 117   yándōng xuěyǔ de shíjié, kǒngpà xuésheng chùle hánlěng, xié shàng dǎole wūní, huò zhǔ shàng yī dà guō xiǎomǐ xīzhōu, huò zuò shàng yī dà guō hún jiǔ (from Xǐngshì Yīnyuán Chuàn, chapter 92)   bitter winter snow rain PARTICLE season afraid student touch PARTICLE cold shoe SHANG tread PARTICLE mud perhaps cook SHANG one big pot millet porridge perhaps do SHANG one big pot low-quality alcohol   ‘During the snowing bitter winter season, [she was] afraid that the students will catch a cold and that their shoes will be muddy. She would cook a large pot of millet porridge, or make a big pot of alcohol’ (from the 92nd chapter, Xǐngshì Yīnyuán Chuàn). （18） 你祖宗九死一生挣下这家业。（《红楼梦》第7回）   nǐ zǔzōng jiǔsǐyīshēng zhēng xià zhè jiā yè (from Hónglóumèng, chapter 7). you ancestor have a close shave earn XIA this family business   ‘Your ancestors managed to earn this family business’ (from the 7th chapter, Dream of the Red Chamber). （19） 这样苦奔了一天，未必就能挣上一顿饱饭。（老舍《骆驼祥子》   ）  zhèyàng kǔ bēnle yītiān, wèibì jiù néng zhēng shàng yī dùn bǎo fàn (from Luòtuó Xiángzi, by Lǎo Shě).   this way bitter rush PARTICLE one day not necessarily then able earn SHANG one MW full meal   ‘Rushing laboriously for a whole day, [one] may not necessarily be able to earn a full meal’ (from Rickshaw Boy, by Lao She).

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These instances of “上、下 (up, down)” that occurred in Modern Chinese could also essentially substitute each other. Their semantic meaning referred to the verb itself, suggesting that the lexical meaning of “上/下” became irrelevant under the syntactic framework of “V上/下 + O”. They had begun to acquire the syntactical function of “indicating the completion or realization of an action”, that is, to begin the transition towards quasi aspect markers. Children’s linguistic development reflects a similar trajectory vis-à-vis the diachronic development of language.

5.5 Explaining children’s learning mechanism for directional verbs It is our belief that language ability is closely tied to the general cognitive capacity of humans. Language acquisition is partially constrained by the general psychological and cognitive characteristics of human beings, while internal cognitive mechanisms also interact with external pragmatic motivations to promote children’s language development. The human conceptual system is non-autonomous (Tai, 2002). The categories and concepts in language are based on the gradual formation of our perception of body, space, strength, and so on. Space (including movement, direction, path, location, and so on) is the method by which children learn to experience early on. This spatial experience gradually develops into a series of abstract concepts following the order of near-to-far and concrete-to-abstract. Based on children’s

118  Acquisition of locative words acquisition of the directional verbs related to “上、下 (up, down)” and from the perspective of cognitive development, the acquisition of directional verbs reflects the metaphorical mapping of “path  result  time” for children. In terms of semantic development, it essentially demonstrates the diachronic development of Chinese as “space  path  result  state  time”, displaying the lexicalto-grammatical process. From the aspect of syntactical development, it exhibits the change of “lexical category  lexical-syntactical category  syntactical category”. We consider that the consistency between children’s language acquisition and grammaticalization is the linguistic externalization of shared human cognitive processes. Human cognition is always moving from concrete to abstract. The development of children’s cognition should reflect, to a certain degree, the historical process of humans’ cognitive development.

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5.5.1  Frequency principle of pragmatics Because of the complexity of linguistic phenomena, children’s language acquisition is not a simple reenactment of the history of human language evolution. For instance, the acquisition of the prepositions “把” and “被” (Zhou & Wang, 2001), adverb “就” (Fu, 2002), directional verbs “上” and “过” (Cheng, 2009), and other relatively highly grammaticalized words do show exceptions, such that the learning of functional words precedes that of concrete words. We consider that the high frequency of these words may be the main reason. If a word meaning is used with a high enough frequency, it may overwhelm the cognitive principle and thus result in the violation of the general learning sequence. During the process of lexicalization, the “frequency principle” is also an important mechanism for grammaticalization. However, we suggest that the underlying mechanism that leads to the high frequency of words is their cognitive semantics. Their relationship should be determined as “cognitive semantics  frequency  degree of grammaticalization”. In the acquisition of the directional verbs relating to “上、下 (up, down)”, “上 (up)” shows an overwhelming advantage and distinctive uniqueness in terms of its output frequency, the proportion of it being a complement, the frequency of its resultative meaning, and the acquisition order of semantic types. We consider this to be determined by the basic meaning of “上 (up)”. “上 (up)” means “rise and reach”, which focuses on the endpoint of a movement. Whether or not there is a clear endpoint is often an important factor in determining the degree of integration between movement and direction. During the process of continuous use, “上 (up)” gradually deviates from its original meaning and generates metaphorical meaning. The generation of metaphorical meaning expands the scope of application of the verb complement structure “V上”, and its frequency increases accordingly. Among all the directional verbs, “上(up)” has the most obvious endpoint. Therefore, its frequency and aspectual marking ability are far stronger than the semantically antonymous “下 (down)”. A usage-based theory of acquisition (Tomasello, 2003) argues that children learn lexicon and conceptual systems through the categorization of pragmatic information. Pinker (1999) also believes that language elements can be seen as a

Acquisition of locative words 119 list, where the vocabulary and concepts are learned and determined by experiential factors. The data in this chapter largely support these views. We consider that the underlying semantic representation is still motivated by the pragmatic needs of communication and that language acquisition should be a layered process of “pragmatics  semantics  syntax”. Communication needs determine what semantic representation children use; semantic representations determine what syntactical structure children use. The need for richer semantic representations promotes the complication of syntactical structures. Children gradually learn to code semantics according to the rules of their native language. Whether in the diachronic evolution of language or children’s language acquisition, the internal mechanism of “semantics promote syntax” is manifested. In general, children’s lexical-semantic development is mostly consistent with their cognitive development. If there are inconsistencies, it is often due to the interference from the frequency of pragmatic use. But the frequency of pragmatic use is still regulated by cognitive semantics.

Notes

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1 Regarding “放上(put up)” and “放下(put down)”, we opted for a different approach after referring to Yuehua Liu (1998). On page 113, the “上(up)” in “放上(put up)” indicates resultative meaning. “放(put)” is “an action verb that can make an object adhere to or be put at a place”. On page 156, the “下(down)” in “放下(put down)” indicates directional meaning. “放(put)” is “an action verb that can change the location of an object”. We support Liu’s view, such that they exhibit different behavior whether we examine them from the perspective of children’s specific linguistic context or the criteria for determining their semantics. In the same context, “下(down)” can indicate something lexical/concrete while “上(up)” is grammatical/abstract. This is also a manifestation of the different degrees grammaticalization of the two. 2 Numbers indicate the output frequency of the verb. Examples are in parenthesis. ~ indicates the verb before parenthesis. The statistics here have accounted for the speech materials in the logs; therefore, there are more instances of “上(up)” as a complement compared to table 2. “接下来(next)” is considered as a common phrase and was therefore counted to be a complement two times fewer compared to Table 2. 3 See table in Y. H. Liu (1998, pp. 111–116).

6 The onset of time consciousness – the acquisition of Le 了

This chapter explores the connotations of the acquisition of “了” and considers both the state-of-change marker Le2 and aspect marker Le1 to be associated in their markedness with the temporal meaning. When Le2 and Le1 represent the meaning “past”, the temporal meaning is unmarkedly associated to the state-ofchange meaning and the aspect meaning. The meaning “past” is also the prototype meaning of Le2 and Le1. Otherwise, the temporal meaning is markedly associated with the state-of-change meaning and the aspect meaning, and the “non-past” meaning is the non-prototype meaning of Le2 and Le1. The usage of “了” by the three young Chinese children suggests the following: (1) The “了” acquired by young children, regardless of it being Le2 or Le1, has a relatively simple meaning and is their respective prototype meaning. (2) Both Le2 and Le1 generally express the meaning of “past”; this indicates that young children already have the knowledge of time. “了” is the earliest temporal marker used by young Chinese children. (3) Young children first acquire Le2 and then acquire Le1, which suggests that young children’s acquisition of the temporal category starts globally and then locally from external to internal – they first acquire the external temporal structure and then acquire the internal temporal structure.

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6.1 Research background and research subject The functional word “了” in Chinese is rich in both usage and semantic connotation: It is an aspect particle that attaches to a verb to indicate the completion or end of an action and is therefore an aspect marker (hereinafter referred to as Le1); it is a modal particle that attaches to the end of a sentence to indicate that the change has been achieved or is about to occur and is therefore a state-of-change marker (hereinafter referred to as Le2). We agree with this classification, although some scholars believe that some cases of “了” can also be separated into Le3, or that the use of Le2 at the end of a sentence still requires careful analysis. But we consider this complex usage to be an internal complication of Le1 and Le2, such that the various semantic meanings within Le1 and Le2 can be seen as prototype categories. In fact, both the aspect category and the state category require more complex knowledge (such as knowledge regarding both the internal and external time

The onset of time consciousness 121 structure) to understand and apply (Comrie, 1976, 1985). Therefore, Chinese children’s, especially young Chinese children’s, acquisition of “了” has received much attention. Research related to this chapter consists of O. Lin (1986), P. Li (1990), M. Erbaugh (1992),1 Guoguang Zhou (2004), and so on. The main conclusions include the following: The earliest emergence of “了” is Le2, indicating that the situation has changed; “了” can be regarded as Le1 first, which is the earliest aspect particle for Chinese children. However, its boundary with the stateof-change marker is unclear and therefore contains the grammatical connotations of both Le1 and Le2. Whether young children first acquire Le1 or Le2 is not only relevant to the question of whether the aspect marker or the state-of-change marker is first learned. In fact, some scholars also regard Le2’s acquisition as the acquisition of the meaning of time. However, issues related to the relationship between the learning order of Le1 and Le2 as well as the relationship between “了” and learning the meaning of time have not been satisfactorily explained. On what basis could we say that the “了” in “VP + Le” is Le2? And how can we determine that if the earliest “了” is Le2, children have already begun to understand complex categories such as time and change? Furthermore, even if the appearance of Le2 is seen as “sprouting the representation of time” (Zhou, 2004), can we know if children have learned all or some parts of a complex and broad concept such as “the representation of time”? These issues are clearly far from being noticed. Therefore, it is necessary to consider what kind of theory is used to support the aforementioned conclusions and how to use a more rigorous and scientific method to demonstrate the learning of “了”.

6.2 Basic data

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6.2.1  Corpus description The data in this chapter consist of spontaneous data of three children of the Beijing dialect. The three children are SYY (01;06–04;06), LXY (01;02–03;10), and CQF (01;07–03;00). CQF can be regarded as a bilingual child. We hope that the sample in this chapter can not only ensure the inherent homogeneity of the sample due to its developmental nature but can also make the sample as representative as possible by considering the effects of various influencing factors on acquisition and therefore balancing the differences and similarities. 6.2.2  Format characteristics and age of first emergence of “了” Young children’s “了” mainly appears in three syntactic structures which can be coded as “VP + Le”, “VP + NP + Le”, and “VP + Le + NP”. Here “VP” includes verb-complement phrases (e.g., “吃完 (eat-finish, ‘done eating’)”, “打开 (hitopen, ‘open up’)”, “画不出来 (draw not-out-come, ‘cannot draw’)”, and so on). The three structures first occur at the times shown in Table 6.1.2

122  The onset of time consciousness Table 6.1 Time of first occurrence of “了” in participant children

SYY LXY CQF

VP + Le

VP + NP + Le

VP + Le + NP

01;07 01;08 01;08

01;08 01;08 01;08

01;11 02;00 02;01

Table 6.2 Output counts of “了” structures by the participant child 01;07 01;08 01;09 01;10 01;11 02;00 02;01 02;02 02;03 02;04 02;05 02;06 Type1 85 Type2 26 Type3 0

156 92 0

169 103 0

192 84 0

153 112 1

131 101 2

134 127 2

185 177 6

167 169 2

186 183 3

210 214 6

228 271 2

6.2.3  Frequency of structure distribution by age

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We performed an exhaustive count on the number of outputs of the three aforementioned structures at different ages of participant child SYY and hoped that the statistics from frequency counts could contribute to the reliability of the conclusions. In order to simplify the table format, “VP + Le” was labeled as “type 1”, “VP + NP + Le” as type 2, and “VP + Le + NP” as type 3 (see Table 6.2). Example sentences of first occurrences follow: （1） SYY   ：洋洋洋洋洋洋 打开 了。（01;07;02） SYY: yángyang dǎkāi le Yangyang (personal name) open PARTICLE ‘Yangyang opened [it].’ （2）   CQF：妈妈 拿 了。（01;07;15） CQF: māma ná le Mom take PARTICLE ‘Mom took [it].’ （3）   LXY: 你（指的是“我”） 全 倒 出 来 了。（01;08;13） LXY: nǐ (zhǐ de shì wǒ) quán dào chū lái le You (referring to ‘I’) all pour out come PARTICLE ‘You (referring to ‘I’) poured [it] all out.’ （4） SYY   ：没水（指钢笔水） 了。（01;07;02） SYY: méi shuǐ le No water (referring to ink) PARTICLE ‘No more water (referring to ink).’ （5）   CQF：又 吃 蛋黄 了。（01;07;15） CQF: yoù chī dànhuáng le Again eat egg-yoke PARTICLE ‘Eating egg yoke again.’

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The onset of time consciousness 123 （6）   LXY: 吃 饭 了。（01;08;13） LXY: chī fàn le Eat food PARTICLE ‘Time to eat [food].’ （7） SYY   ：我 抢 了 一个.（01;11;25） SYY: wǒ qiǎng le yígè I grab PARTICLE one ‘I grabbed one.’ (Note: Mom and SYY were playing and grabbing sunflower seed shells. Mom said: ‘Quickly grab one, I grab one.’) （8）   LXY: 喷了一杯水.（02;00;21） LXY: pēn le yì bēi shuǐ Squirt PARTICLE one-MW water ‘Squirted one cup of water.’ (Note: LXY was naughtily playing with mom while sitting on the bedding drinking water.) （9）   XYH：这是什么呀？ XYH: zhè shì shénme ya? This be what PARTICLE ‘What is this?’ CQF：盖 了 猫猫. CQF: gài le māomāo Stamp PARTICLE CAT ‘stamped a cat.’ XYH：在哪盖的猫猫？ XYH: zài nǎ gài de māomāo Be where stamp PARTICLE cat ‘Where is the cat stamped on?’ CQF：在老师那表扬就盖猫猫呗。（02;01;04） CQF: zài lǎoshī nà biǎoyáng jiù gài māomāo bei Be teacher there praise then stamp cat PARTICLE ‘[I] got praised by the teacher and then got stamped with a cat.’ (Note: at the early education center, when a child is praised, the teacher stamps a little kitty-cat onto the child’s palm.) According to traditional views, examples (4) through (6) are “VP + NP + Le” structures; “了” is used at the end of a sentence that has an object and can be seen as Le2. Examples (7) to (9) are “VP + Le + NP” structures, where “了” appears after a verb in a sentence that has an object and can therefore undoubtedly be regarded as Le1. Controversial is the “VP + Le” structure in examples (1) to (3), where “了” can be either Le1 or Le2. We can see that even though the usage of “了” in adults’ language, especially the use of Le2, is very complex, it is still relatively simple when used by young children. The timing of usages regarding “了” is also relatively uniform, with “VP

124  The onset of time consciousness + Le” and “VP + NP + Le” appearing first at age 01;07 and “VP + Le + NP” at around age 02;00.

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6.2 Acquisition order of the various “了” Previously, there have been two opinions regarding whether the “了” in “VP + Le” should be Le1 or Le2: the first is that of Le2 (Zhou, 2004); the second is ambiguous—that is, it can be regarded as Le2, yet its boundary with Le1 is unclear – therefore, it embodies the two grammatical meanings of Le2 and Le1 (M. Erbaugh, 1992). We posit here that the “了” in “VP + Le” should be Le2. Based on the language materials, first, if the “了” in “VP + Le” is ambiguous, then the stative meaning “VP + NP + Le” and the aspectual meaning “VP + Le + NP” should appear at the same time or appear in close proximity to each other in their timing. However, the corpus data do not support this prediction. The language materials undoubtedly indicate that Le2 occurs prior to Le1. The former could be as early as age 01;07 while the latter is at 01;11. Therefore, we consider it a more logical and consistent approach to regard the “了” in “VP + Le” as Le2 after having taken into account the timing sequences of the other two structures. Secondly, regarding the “了” in “VP + Le” as Le1 is contrary to the evidence from the corpus data and against common sense (it appears almost at the same time as the uncontroversial Le2 and is four months prior to the uncontroversial Le1), which is also why virtually no scholar considers it as an uncontroversial Le1. According to the item-based learning theory by Tomasello (2000), the unit for language acquisition is utterance or construction – not single words or abstract categories.3 Children identify individual linguistic elements from utterances or structures and acquire these linguistic elements through role-playing and imitation. In other words, the items learned by young children do not correspond to the grammatical unit of “word”. They correspond to “structure” or “sentence”, which is what we usually mean by “single-word sentence” and “two-word sentence”. When young children acquire the “VP + Le” structure, VP should not be regarded as a verb but should be viewed as a structure or a sentence. If so, the identity of “了” leans toward the Le2 at the end of a sentence. If the preceding analysis is correct, then young children first acquire Le2 and then acquire Le1. The former occurs at around age 01;08 and the latter at around age 02;00. In other words, young children first learn the meaning of the change of state and then learn the meaning of aspects.

6.4 The acquisition of “Le” 6.4.1  Markedness relations of temporal meanings The “了” children have acquired prior to age 02;00 is Le2. This shows that children before the age of 02;00 already have a preliminary understanding in regard to

The onset of time consciousness 125 changes of state. More often, Le2 indicates the state of completion. Some scholars therefore consider children’s acquisition of Le2 to be an initial understanding of the time category. We agree with this conclusion, but we believe that drawing such a conclusion cannot be solely based on one’s sense of language and general experience but should rather be on the basis of scientific prediction and analysis of corpus data. It also requires relevant theories to support this analysis. We think that it is more appropriate to use theories of markedness and relevance to analyze the acquisition of “了”. Jiaxuan Shen (1999) proposed a markedness theory of relevance when studying various asymmetries of Chinese grammar and suggested that there are marked association patterns between several different grammatical categories. We consider this theory to be a very suitable explanation for the issues in this chapter. Since there is a certain type of marked association among the category of state change, the aspectual category, and the temporal category, the acquisition of Le2 and Le1 not only indicate children’s understanding of the category of state change and the aspectual category but also their understanding of the temporal category.

6.4.1.1 Markedness relations of the state-change meaning and temporal meaning

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Changes of state include changes that have already occurred, are after an occurrence (post-state-of-change), or are yet to happen. Changes of state take place in time. Therefore, changes that have occurred or have ended are unmarkedly related to the past tense, while the changes that are yet to happen are unmarkedly related to the future tense; the opposite of these pairings would result in marked relations. We counted all of the instances of “了” of the structure “VP + NP + Le” before SYY reached age 02;06 and found that all of the sentences referred to changes that had already occurred. This shows that young children use Le2 to indicate their understanding and expression regarding not only the change of state but also the temporal meaning of the past tense.

6.4.1.2 Markedness relations of aspectual and temporal meanings According to Comrie (1985), aspectual and temporal meanings are two cognitive modalities of the human understanding of time. The aspectual meaning expresses the specific state of one or more stages in the time constituency, which is the internal temporal characteristics of a situation. The temporal meaning exhibits the relative position of the situation in the time constituency, which is an external temporal characteristic of a situation. Generally, the temporal meaning can be divided into present, past, and future tenses; the aspectual meaning can be separated into perfect and imperfect aspects, the latter of which also includes progressive and

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126  The onset of time consciousness non-progressive. Theoretically, markedness relations between aspectual and temporal meanings should be as shown in Table 6.3. That is, when the perfect aspect is expressed using the past tense, it is unmarked; when it is expressed in the present tense, it is marked. When the imperfect aspect is expressed using the past tense, it is marked. When its non-progressive aspect is in the present tense, it is unmarked; when the progressive aspect is expressed in the present tense, it is also marked.4 In Modern Chinese, the aspectual marker Le1 in a past tense expression is unmarked and can be denoted as Le1-u (Le1-unmarked, same below). It is marked when expressing the present and future tenses and can be noted as Le1-m (Le1marked, same below). Even if the “了” in young children’s “VP + Le” structure is ambiguous, we can still consider that the acquisition of “了” indicates that children have already had a preliminary understanding of the time category prior to age 02;06. We also counted all of the “了” instances of the structure “VP + Le” before SYY was 02;06 years old. The results showed that Le1-u occurred 99% of the time, while Le1-m accounted for 1%.5 We also investigated all of the “VP + Le + NP” structures the three children, SYY, CQF, and LXY, produced from ages 02;00–02;06. Of all of the materials, only one sentence by SYY at age 02;00 was an imperative sentence (*SYY: 把这个弄了皮#弄这个) that expressed the meaning of the present tense. All of the other instances of “了” indicated actions that were completed in the past. This suggests that at this time, children use “了” to express the meaning of the past. According to markedness theory, the present tense of temporal meanings is unmarked and can be expressed using zero formation. The past and future tenses are marked and require certain grammatical or lexical means to express. In Chinese, “了” is one of the markers for the temporal meaning of past tense. In general, the acquisition of unmarked elements should precede the acquisition of marked elements. Therefore, if young children are able to skillfully use “了” to express the meaning of the past at age 01;08, then the acquisition of the unmarked present meaning should have occurred even earlier. If we recognize the item-based learning theory mentioned earlier, young children have already acquired the meaning of the present during the stage of single-word-sentence. According to Yunqiu Zhang and Xuebin Zhao (2007) and Xuebin Zhao (2006), based on the observations regarding young Chinese children’s acquisition order of temporal words, the sequence of temporal meaning as reflected by the learning

Table 6.3 Markedness relations between aspectual and temporal meanings

perfect imperfect

non-progressive progressive

present

past

marked unmarked marked

unmarked marked

The onset of time consciousness 127 order of temporal nouns is present tense > past tense > future tense. However, the acquisition order of temporal adverbs shows a temporal meaning sequence as past tense > present tense > future tense. The participant child SYY referred to in this chapter started producing “了” at age 01;07 in the corpus materials, while the progressive aspectual marker “着(zhe)” of the imperfect aspect first occurred at age 01;10. This suggests that the temporal meanings embodied in aspectual markers are consistent with temporal adverbs, which is past tense > present tense. That is to say, from the perspectives of nouns, the characteristics of acquisition orders of temporal meanings are not identical to those from the perspectives of aspectual markers and temporal adverbs. How can we explain this contradiction? Here, we still apply the markedness theory. The sequence of temporal meaning as embodied by the acquisition of temporal nouns should be the real order or acquisition in regard to young children’s learning of temporal meanings. The adverbs that indicate time are functionally similar to aspectual markers. They are all manifestations of how Chinese utilizes lexical means to express grammatical meanings. The present tense is unmarked; using “着(zhe)” and adverbs such as “在、正在” to indicate the present tense is a marked expression, which cannot deny the possibility that children have already acquired the unmarked expression of the present prior to their learning the marked expression of the present. The meaning of the present is the earliest point of children’s cognition of temporal orders and is also a reference point for human languages to express temporal concepts. As mentioned earlier, young children have already acquired the unmarked expression of the present during the single-wordsentence stage, which is prior to their learning the unmarked expression of the past. At age 01;10, they then acquire the marked expression of the present.

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6.4.2  The prototype category of “了” As mentioned before, “了” is used in multiple contexts and can indicate a wide number of semantic meanings. According to Modern Chinese Eight Hundred Words (Shuxiang Lü, 1999), Le1 as an aspectual marker can indicate having completed and will complete. Le2 as a change-of-state marker can not only show that changes have occurred but also express that changes will happen; it also aids in the completion of a sentence. Recent studies have shown that Le2 has more effects. It also expresses “before the incident”, which is the derived modal meaning that indicates the confirmation of an occurrence at the time of speaking or at a specified time point in the sentence (Suying Zheng, 2004). Compared to adults, young children’s acquisition of “了”, whether it is the meaning of Le2 or Le1, is relatively simple – that is, the expression of an action that has already been completed and the state change that has occurred or ended. This inspires us to use the prototype category theory to observe the variable grammatical meanings of “了”. We can treat the different grammatical meanings of Le1 and Le2 as prototype categories, respectively. The use of Le2 and Le1, which is related to the meaning of the past, is their typical meaning. The usage associated with the non-past meanings is regarded as atypical meaning. Le2 is more

128  The onset of time consciousness complicated than Le1, but the path from typical Le2 to atypical Le2 can still be found. For instance, Le2 with the function of sentence completion is actually a telic marker of syntactic unit, and the change of state is one of the situations indicating telicity in a sentence. Instances of Le2 referring to the future and before-the-incident are extensions of the meaning of the past. Modal meanings are derived from the before-the-incident instances and indicate “confirmation of occurrence”. 6.4.3  Acquisition of “了” The acquisition of “了” is shown in three aspects: First, the “了” learned by young children, regardless of Le2 or Le1, essentially express the meaning of the past. The past tense is marked in the time category. “了” is the earliest temporal meaning marker used by young Chinese children, which signifies the conscious acquisition of temporal meanings of young children. It also suggests that young children have conscious awareness of time at least by 01;08 years of age. Second, if we consider how Le2 is acquired prior to Le1 as learning the change-of-state marker (which, based on sense of language and experience, should be the same as temporal meaning) before the aspectual marker, it suggests that young children acquire the time category from global to local, and from external to internal. This indicates that they first learn the external temporal structure and then the internal temporal structure. Third, young children’s acquisition of “了” essentially follows the derivational paths of the meanings within the prototype category, such that the typical meaning of “了” is first acquired, and then the various atypical meanings are gradually learned after age 02;06.6

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6.4.4  Young children’s levels of cognition regarding time The preceding characteristics of learning may be related to the levels of cognition of young children. Although the relationship between language acquisition and cognitive development of young children is complex and bidirectional, certain specific cognitive activities and the learning of language components are still related. If some lexical items are learned, then their projected cognitive structures must have been previously obtained (Fletcher & MacWhinney, 1995). The young children studied in this chapter should be at the sixth sub-stage of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage, which is the beginning period for symbolic thinking and occurs around 19–24 months of age. At this time, infants have the ability for mental representations and can form internal representation of their actions and external events. This suggests that children around two years of age have initially obtained the cognitive ability to express time consciousness. Regarding the concept of time, children’s concept of time mainly includes the concept of empirical time (the subjective perception of the order and continuity of events), the concept of logical time (the subjective speculation regarding the sequence of events), and the concept of customary time (the general division of time) (Chen, 1999). The concept of empirical time refers to one’s personal experience of the sequence and

The onset of time consciousness 129 continuance of events. The concept of logical time is one’s presumption of the sequence of events. The concept of customary time denotes the universal division of time; for instance, there are twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, and so on. Studies have shown that young children’s concept of time still only consists of the concept of empirical time. In addition, the concept of empirical time is initially understood through the actions of oneself and others (Zhu, 1986). The concept of logical time and the concept of customary time are generally acquired before and after they reach school age, respectively. These observations and conclusions from developmental psychology can clearly help us better explain the occurrence and development of young children’s concept of time and also provide evidence for our preceding analyses.

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6.5 Remarks These observations on children’s language acquisition and their implications are intriguing. Children’s learning of language components generally follows human cognitive mechanisms. Therefore, the description of the learning rules can also aid us in clarifying certain issues in ontological research. The research regarding “了” prompts two lines of possible further inquiries: First, the various and distinctive Le1 and Le2 are actually different members of the same prototype category. Children’s acquisition begins with the typical members. Second, in current practices of teaching Chinese as a foreign language and teaching modern Chinese at the university level, Le1 is mostly regarded as an aspectual marker and Le2 as a modal particle that has no relation with the concept of time. The research in this chapter, however, shows that aspectual markers and change-of-state markers are significantly related to the concept of time. They are not simple correspondences but are connected via markedness relations. Young children’s acquisition of the concept of time should have universal features. Further investigation is needed for the research in the chapter. On the one hand, we can further study the acquisition of “了” and related temporal words in Chinese children after age 02;06; on the other hand, more investigation could be applied to the acquisition of temporal markers in young Chinese dialect-learning children and non-Chinese children in order to more truthfully reveal the development of young children’s temporal systems.

Notes 1 The above-mentioned scholars’ research conclusions were cited from Lee Hun-tak (1997). Language development theory and Chinese children’s language. Modern Foreign Languages, 4. Liu Hui juan. (2006). The longitudinal study of the acquisition of “了” in Mandarin Chinese: A case study. Joint IACL 14th Conference, mia Sinica Taiwan. 2 The principle for determining the time of first occurrence is if there is an introductory usage of interlocutors previously and there is no use of a component in the following corpus for a long time, then the first time that a component appears in children’s discourse is generally not considered as the time of first occurrence. However, children’s

130  The onset of time consciousness

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word production is mostly under the guidance of parents or other caregivers. Therefore, even if there has been a leading usage of interlocutors previously, if a certain component appears in the subsequent corpus, that time point can still be regarded as the time of first occurrence. 3 Of course, children initially also acquire some phrases, but these phrases are seen as “frozen units” by children and are not separable from within. Children acquire them as one entity, and they function as single lexical items. Only later do children separate these frozen units and divide them into elements of construction. This is also the reason why we believe that the “VP” of the three forms in section 6.2.2 should include verbcomplement phrases. 4 However, Chinese lacks the morphological changes in the sense of Indo-European languages. The expression of grammatical meaning is often used in word order and lexical means. Therefore, the marking association of the temporal meaning and the aspectual meaning is not as neat as theoretically proposed. “ZHE” as a Chinese expression that means ongoing is markedly associated to the present tense. It should be a zero formation in terms of the unmarked association with the present tense. For instance, “吃饭 ‘eat food’ ”, not “吃着饭 ‘eating food’ ”. 5 Relatedly, “ZHE” and the present tense are unmarkedly associated and are coded as zhe-u. When it is markedly associated with the past and the future tense, it is coded as zhe-m. The usage frequency of zhe-u and zhe-m are also 99% and 1%. See Zhao (2006). Research on the acquisition of young Chinese children’s temporal system. Master’s thesis, Capital Normal University. Advised by Yunqiu Zhang. 6 We also conducted a preliminary investigation regarding the acquisition of “了” after age 02;06 and arrived at these conclusions. However, because of length constraints, the present chapter only introduces the acquisition before age 02;06. We will analyze the various uses of “了” after age 02;06 in another article.

7 Acquisition and development of expressions of subjectivization

In this chapter, through the investigation of a child’s developmental speech corpus before the age of four, we discover that children’s means of expression for subjectivity and subjectivization are acquired. The acquisition order is first subjective emotions and then subjective understandings. The development of expressions of subjectivization is also accompanied by the development of cognitive abilities. By observing the acquisition data of the meanings of the polysemous adverbs “还, 又, 也” from children younger than four years of age, we can see that young children already have the cognitive ability for “narrowing”, “generalization”, “optimistic inference”, and “contextual absorption” and can use them to expand and utilize the meaning of words. They also have obtained preliminary abilities for intersubjectivization. The various cognitive abilities that affect the development of subjectivity may also impact the developmental characteristics of various expressions of subjectivization simultaneously.

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7.1 Research goal and theoretical background In recent years, the subjectivity and subjectivization of language have attracted the attention of Chinese linguists (Shen, 2001a, 2002; Song, 2005; Zhang, 2005; Shi, 2003, 2005; Xing, 2005; L. Zhang, 2007; B. Zhang, 2007; Cui, 2009, etc.). This is due not only to the abundant research done by non-Chinese researchers but also to the prevalence of subjectivity in the language system, such that it is difficult for linguists to circumvent it to explain related linguistic phenomena. The subjectivity of language is so ubiquitous and complex that we cannot help but wonder about its situation in children’s language. Is it innate or learned? What is the distribution of various expressions of subjectivization of adult language in children’s language at different ages? How does the cognitive ability associated with expressions of subjectivization develop? Is the subjectivity of language as the semantic meaning of the interactions between the subjective and the objective related to children’s syntactic development? This being our point of departure, this chapter hopes to explain the acquisition of expressions of subjectivization of young Chinese children by exploring the developmental corpus of a child of Beijing dialect before the age of 04;00. In doing so, we explore issues such as the

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132  Expressions of subjectivization restrictive factors of subjective development and the relationship between subjectivity and children’s syntactic development. According to Lyons (1977), subjectivity refers to the speaker expressing his or her stance, attitude, and emotion towards the topic of his or her speech while speaking, thus leaving a mark of the self in the discourse. Subjectivization refers to the linguistic adaptation of a corresponding structural form or a corresponding evolutionary process in order to express subjectivity. The concept of subjectivization embodies two levels of meaning: one is synchronic subjectivization, which is the structural form adopted by language in order to express subjectivity; the other is diachronic subjectivization, which is the evolutionary process of language in order to express subjectivity. The expressions of subjectivization in this chapter refer to the concept of synchronic subjectivization. It specifically pertains to the use of particular words or structures in order to express the speaker’s evaluation, attitude, and emotions regarding the topic of the speech. There are many ways in which subjectivity is expressed in language. It is generally considered to include prosodic changes, affixes, function words (such as modal particles, adverbs), modal verbs, word order, some constructions, and so on. Current research regarding subjectivity generally involves three aspects (Finegan, 1995): one is the perspective of the speaker, which is the vantage point of the speaker’s observations regarding an objective situation or the starting point of the description of an objective situation; the second is the speaker’s affect, which is his or her mood and emotions; the third is the speaker’s understanding, which is his or her attitude toward, and evaluation and judgment of, the topic of the speech (Shen, 2001a; Cui, 2009). Chinese scholars have not intentionally studied the early development of Chinese children’s language within the framework of subjectivization. However, some studies involved the acquisition of the means of subjectivization-related expressions, such as Li and Chen’s (1999) study of interrogative sentences, Kong and colleagues’ (2004) research of adverbs and auxiliary verbs, Zhou and Wang’s (2001) investigation regarding some constructions, Yang and Xiao’s (2008) study on the Ba construction, and the developmental studies by Zhang and colleagues (2007, 2010) on the meanings of polysemous adverbs. The data in these studies provide us with great insight during the investigation of young Chinese children’s language development from the perspective of subjectivity.

7.2 Expressions of subjectivization in Chinese children’s language 7.2.1  Means of expressions of subjectivization for young children The data in this chapter were from participant child SYY when he or she was 01;06–04;06  years of age. There was a total of about 116  hours of spontaneous speech corpus. Given the research goals of this chapter, we do not intend to perform a diachronic developmental examination of each expression of subjectivization but rather only to investigate the timing of acquisition of each expression of subjectivization.1

Expressions of subjectivization 133 We first provide a list of these expression and then consider which members have been acquired by the child and which elements are yet to be acquired. We also survey the issues behind the acquisition characteristics. It should be noted that regarding the identification of the means of subjectivization, we have adopted a slightly conservative approach that considers only those expressions whose subjective connotations have been revealed. Although we also agree with what has been mentioned by much of the literature in regard to the many means of subjective expressions, such as rhythmic changes, affixes, function words, modal verbs, marked structures or sentence classes, word order, and some constructions, the content of subjectivity of these means of expression has not been thoroughly researched and understood. Therefore, if we use those means of expression whose subjective connotations have yet to be revealed as a reference to examine children’s acquisition, the connotation of children’s acquisition of the means of subjectivization will be ambiguous. The adverbs listed in Table  7.1 were purely for the expression of various moods, such as speculation, reinforcement of affirmative or negative attitudes, surprise, unexpectedness, enhanced questioning, and assumptions. We consider these adverbs to embody subjectivity. They express the subjective emotions and understanding of the speaker.2 Auxiliary verbs are also called modal verbs. According to the definitions by Zhu (1982), Zhu (2005), and Peng (2007), there are generally 25 modal verbs. But not all modal meanings expressed by modal verbs are subjective. Guo (2003) discussed the polysemous nature of the modal verb 能neng2 ‘can’ and divided its modal meanings into objective and subjective modalities. We also believe that only those auxiliary verbs that express subjective modality belong to the means of

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Table 7.1 Some commonly used means of subjectivization Means of expression

Member

Modal adverbs

准zhun3、没准（儿）mei2zhun3(r)、必（必然） bi4(bi4ran2)、的确(di2que4)、就(jiu4)、偏/偏偏 pian1/pian1pian1、难道nan2dao4、究竟jiu1jing4、 简直jian3zhi2、也许ye3xu3、难怪nan2guai4、 大约da4yue1、幸亏xing4kui1、反正fan3zheng4、 果然guo3ran2、竟然jing4ran2、何必he2bi4、未 免wei4mian3、只好zhi3hao3、不妨bu4fang2 能neng2、会hui4、可能ke3neng2、得dei3、肯 定ken3ding4、要yao4、应该（应、该、应当）ying1gai1 (ying1, gai1, ying1dang1)、敢（在“敢是”中）gan3 (in “gan3shi4”)、别（别是）bie2 (bie2shi4)、一定 yi2ding4 怕pa4、看kan4、许xu3、想（在“想是”中）xiang3 (in “xiang3shi4”) 都dou1、还hai2、也ye3、又you4

Auxiliary verbs

Epistemic verbs Derivative meanings of polysemous adverbs Constructions

“把”字句、“被”字句、焦点句（“连”字句、“是 . . .  （的）”句）   BA construction, BEI construction, focus construction, (LIAN construction, SHI . . . DE construction)

134  Expressions of subjectivization subjectivization, such that only the auxiliary verbs that express epistemic modality (i.e., the auxiliary verbs embody epistemic modality) are counted toward means of subjectivization. Among the auxiliary verbs, if the members that do not express epistemic modality are deleted, then there are only 14 remaining from the members listed in the table. The subjective modality of each auxiliary verb is mainly based on He (1992), Wang (2000), Guo (2003), Cui (2003), Li (2003), and so on. Verbs such as “怕pa4 ‘fear’, 看kan4 ‘see’, 许xu3 ‘allow’, 想 xiang3 ‘think’ ” have speculative meanings and are subjective. Our description of the subjective meaning of these verbs is mainly based on Gao (2003). Regarding the subjectively derivative meanings of polysemous adverbs as a means of expression, it is acquired through the same path as auxiliary verbs (except “可能 ke3neng2 ‘maybe’ ”) and epistemic verbs from the perspectives of the order of acquisition of their objective and subjective meanings. However, the polysemous adverbs listed here mostly express emotional modalities, which differ from the epistemic modality meaning of auxiliary verbs and epistemic verbs and are also not identical to adverbs that only express subjectivity, such as modal adverbs. Many scholars have conducted detailed research regarding the subjectively derivative meanings of polysemous adverbs. Here, we list them as one type of means of expression. Some marked sentences also express certain subjective evaluation or understanding of the speaker toward the content of his or her speech, but there have not been many studies of Chinese on this topic. We only list those sentence structures with preliminary research results here. With regard to SYY’s speech corpus before the age of 04;06, we performed a careful examination on the items of expressions of subjectivization as listed in Table 7.1 in order to find the produced means of subjectivization by this child. The timing of acquisition is listed in Table 7.2. Table 7.2 Timing of acquisition of means of subjectivization by SYY Means of expression

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Modal adverbs Auxiliary adverbs

Epistemic verbs Derivative meanings of polysemous adverbs Constructions

Members 就 jiu4 （01;08）、反正 fan3zheng4 （02;04）、没准 （儿）mei2zhunr3 （02;06）、偏pian1（02;07）、准 zhun3（02;11）、竟然jing4ran2（03;08） 该gai1（01;11）、会hui4（02;05）、要yao4（02;05） 、别bie2（02;06）、可能ke3neng2（03;08）、 应该ying1gai1（03;10）、得dei3（03;11）、肯 定ken3ding4（03;11）、一定yi2ding4（03;11） ？ 看kan4（02;10）、？想xiang3（03;06） 都dou1（‘even’ 01;11）、还hai2（contrary to expectation 02;02）、也ye3（euphemistic meaning 02;03）、又you4（enhance rebuttal 02;07） “把”字句（01;11）BA construction、“被”字句 (01;11）BEI construction、“连”字句（02;07）LIAN construction、“是 . . . （的）”句（02;08）SHI . . . DE construction

Expressions of subjectivization 135

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Usage examples of modal adverbs, auxiliary verbs, and epistemic verbs are as follows: （1） SYH:    别要，那坏了。 SYH: biéyào, nà huài le. Don’t want, that broke PARTICLE ‘Don’t take it; that’s broken.’ SYY: 我就要。（01;10） SYY: wǒ jiù yào I modal.ADV want. ‘I WANT [it].’ （2）    SYY:反正我 xx 一个大猫。(02;04) SYY: fǎnzhèng wǒ xx yígè dàmāo. Anyway I xx one-MW big-cat ‘I xx a big cat no matter what.’ （3） SYY:我出去玩去，没准扎带了（    02;06） SYY: wǒ chūqù wán qù, méizhǔn zhādài le. I out-go play go, possibly puncture-tire PARTICLE ‘I’m going out to play; possibly have punctured the tire.’ （4） SYY:    我偏揍，我偏揍（02;07） SYY: wǒ piān zòu, wǒ piān zòu. I modal.ADV beat, I modal.ADV beat ‘I would beat [it]; I would beat [it] (contrary to listener’s expectation).’ （5） SYY:准是苏万成整的。（02;11）    SYY: zhǔn shì Sū Wànchéng zhěng de. Must be Su Wancheng (personal name) do PARTICLE ‘[It] must be Su Wancheng who did [this].’ （6） SYY:竟然成了。（03;08）    SYY: jìngrán chéngle. Surprisingly succeed PARTICLE ‘Surprisingly [it] succeeded.’ （7） SYY:哥哥该揍我了，揍我了。(01;11)    SYY: gēge gāi zòu wǒ le, zòu wǒ le. Older brother should beat me PARTICLE, beat me PARTICLE ‘The older brother should be beating me now, beating me now.’ （8） SYY:    这也是猫? 猫会咬人吧? （2;05） SYY: zhè yě shì māo? māo huì yǎorén ba? This also be cat? Cat can bite person PARTICLE ‘Is this also a cat? Cat can bite people, right?’ （9）    SYY: 别动，要掉的。 （02;05） SYY: bié dòng, yào diào de. Don’t move, will fall PARTICLE ‘Don’t move; [it] will fall.’

136  Expressions of subjectivization

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（10） SYY:   那个怎么不见了？别给我弄掉了。 SYY: nàge zěnme bú jiàn le? Bié gěi wǒ nòngdiào le. That-MW why not see PARTICLE don’t for me do-fall PARTICLE ‘How come that is missing? Don’t lost [it] (for me; the situation against the speaker’s will).’ GCY: 没有，没给你弄掉。 （2;06） GCY: méiyǒu, méi gěi nǐ nòngdiào. No-have no for you do-fall ‘No, [I] didn’t lose [it] (for you).’ （11）   SYY: 举伞呢，可能疯啦。 （03;08） SYY: jǔsǎn ne, kěnéng fēng la. hold-umbrella PARTICLE possibly crazy PARTICLE ‘[someone is] holding an umbrella; [someone is] possibly crazy.’ （12）   SYY: 嗯，肯定有盒子了，对吧。 （3;11） SYY: en, kěndìng yǒu hézi le, duìba. PARTICLE, definitely have box PARTICLE, correct PARTICLE ‘Yes, definitely have had box[es], correct? (confirming with the listener)’ （13）   SYY: 应该不是小坡xxx。（3;11） SYY: yīnggāi bú shì xiǎo pō xx. Should not be small hill xx ‘[It] should not be a small hill xx.’ （14）   SYY:  要是夏天过年一定很好玩。我们穿着新汗衫去吃年夜饭。 （4;05） SYY: Yàoshi xiàtiān guònián yídìng hěn hǎowán, wǒmen chuānzhe hànshān qù chī nián yèfàn. If summer celebrate-new year must very fun we wear-PARTICLE new summer clothes go eat New Year’s Eve banquet. ‘If [we] celebrated New Year in summer, it must be so much fun. We would go to have the New Year’s Eve banquet wearing our summer clothes.’ Some marked sentences are often related to the speaker’s special intention of expression and are therefore one of the important means of expressing subjectivity. The BA construction in Chinese expresses the subjective disposition (Shen, 2002), and the BEI construction expresses the subjective emotion of “unsatisfactory” from the perspective of production mechanism (Zhang, 1994). Regarding the intensity of the willingness of the matter from the perspective of the agent, Song (2005) considers the decline in the willingness of the agent in the BEI construction to be the result of excessive use of the mechanism of subjectivity. The LIAN and SHI in the LIAN construction and the SHI . . . DE construction are focus markers (Cui, 1990; Fang, 1995), which mark the components after themselves as the contrast focus. Though the nature of the focus of the two

Expressions of subjectivization 137 markers are not identical, it is without a doubt that the focus is on the subjective attitude of certain content in the speaker’s speech. SYY acquired the BA construction and the BEI construction simultaneously at age 01;11. The word expressing passivity in the BEI construction is “让 rang4 ‘let’ ” (see example 18). At ages 02;07 and 02;08, the child spontaneously used the LIAN construction and the SHI. . . (DE) construction, respectively. Examining the BA constructions acquired before age 02;06 by SYY, we see that the verbs tended to have a higher degree of transitivity and that the objects in the BA constructions were mostly patients that were definitive; there were also more imperative sentences, such as （15）   SYY: 把这个搁这。（01;11） SYY: Bǎ zhège gē zhè. BA this-MW put here. ‘Leave this here.’ (16) SYY: 把小金鱼搁炕上。（02;00.） SYY: Bǎ xiǎo jīnyú gē kàng shàng. BA small goldfish put heated-bed top ‘Put the small goldfish on the top of the heated bed.’ （17）   SYY:把那个钢镚儿放在大马里。（02;04） SYY: Bǎ nàgè gāngbèngr fàng zài dàmǎ lǐ. BA that-MW coin put in big-horse inside ‘Put the coin inside the big horse.’

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These BA constructions strongly expressed the subjective emotions of the child – he or she wanted the listener to handle certain matters.3 The meanings of the BEI constructions acquired during the same period (including passive markers such as JIAO, RANG, GEI, and so on) were mostly sentences that expressed destructive and unsatisfactory connotations. This was even the case for most BEI sentences before the age of 04;06,4 for example, （18）   GCY: 让谁撕坏了？ GCY: Ràng shéi sīhuài le? RANG who tear-break PARTICLE ‘By whom [is it] torn and broken?’ SYY:让桐桐撕坏了。（01;11） SYY: Ràng Tóngtóng sīhuài le. RANG Tongtong (personal name) tear-break PARTICLE ‘[It is] torn and broken by Tongtong.’ （19）   SYY: 被，被我，被高富豪弄坏的。（02;01） SYY: Bèi, bèi wǒ, bèi Gāo Fùháo nòng huài de. BEI, BEI I, BEI Gao Fuhao (personal name) do-break PARTICLE ‘[It is] broken by, by me, by Gao Fuhao.’

138  Expressions of subjectivization （20）   SYY: 叫大坏蛋抢跑了。（02;06） SYY: Jiào dà huàidàn qiǎngpǎo le. JIAO big bad-egg snatch-run PARTICLE ‘[It is] snatched away by big bad guys.’ （21）   SYY:它们被虫咬了。（03;05） SYY: Tāmen bèi chóng yǎole. They BEI bug bite PARTICLE ‘They were bitten by bugs.’ （22）   SYY: 都坏了，让万成给我弄坏了。（03;11） SYY: Dōu huàile, ràng Wànchéng gěi wǒ nòng huàile. All broken PARTICLE, RANG Wancheng (personal name) for me do-broken PARTICLE. ‘[It is] all broken, broken by Wancheng (for me; the situation against the speaker’s will).’

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Although the LIAN construction and the SHI. . . (DE) construction were spontaneously produced, they were few in number. There were only two instances of the LIAN construction before age 04;00. The SHI. . . (DE) construction as a focus marker was also produced in small numbers: （23）   SYY: 连录音机声都听不见了。（02;07） SYY: Lián lùyīnjī shēng dōu tīngbújiàn le. Even recorder sound all hear not perceived ‘Even the sound of the recorder could not be heard.’ （24）   SYY: 连裤子都掉了。（04;00） SYY: Lián kùzi dōu diàole. Even pants all fall/gone PARTICLE ‘Even the pants are fallen/gone.’ （25）   SYY: 是你放屁吗？（02;08） SYY: Shì nǐ fàngpì ma? Be you set fart question.PARTICLE ‘Was it you who farted?’ （26）   SYY: 我是管她叫小姐姐吗？（03;00） SYY: Wǒ shì guǎn tā jiào xiǎo jiějiě ma? I be mind her call little older sister question.PARTICLE ‘Am I calling her little older sister?’ （27）   SYY: 是打针去了。（03;02） SYY: Shì dǎzhēn qù le. Be hit needle go PARTICLE ‘[Someone] is gone for getting an injection.’ The development of lexicalization and functionalization caused by grammaticalization or subjectivization has been studied by some linguists in recent

Expressions of subjectivization 139 years. Their research results show that some meanings of polysemous words (especially polysemous function words) are the results of diachronic grammaticalization or diachronic subjectivization. Around age 02;00, children can extend the meaning of words to express subjective evaluations through the method of semantic derivatives; for instance, the 都dou1 expresses the meaning of “even” in “大灰狼把门都干掉了 ‘The big grey wolf even killed the door’ ” and has a strong tone of subjective evaluation. This suggests that children at this point can already express various subjective emotions via the functions of some reasoning mechanisms that subconsciously expand word meanings. The acquisition of the subjective meanings of polysemous words will be discussed in detail in section 7.3 and is omitted here.

7.2.2  Results

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Based on the data of the investigation, we conclude as follows: First of all, children’s subjectivity and expressions of subjectivization are learned. The child’s initial expressions of subjectivization were fewer in both number and type compared to adult language. From the perspective of lexical means, those members that were not acquired were either disyllabic, akin to formal written language, or involving two computations: the comprehension of the meaning of words and the understanding of complex syntactic rules. For example, only 5/22 of the adults’ modal adverbs were acquired. Words such as “的确di2que4 ‘indeed’, 大约 da4yue1 ‘roughly’, 果然guo3ran2 ‘really’, 幸亏xing4kui1 ‘fortunately’ ” are rather formal and elegant and with rare inputs from the child’s parents; “难道 nan2dao4 ‘is this to say’, 何必he2bi4 ‘why’, 未免wei4mian3 ‘rather” appeared in quite complex syntactic environments (such as rhetorical questions, double negative sentences). Of adults’ auxiliary verbs, 9/14 were acquired. The members that were not acquired had very little input,5 and some occurred in rather complex syntactic environments. For example, “能 neng2 ‘can’ ” is an auxiliary verb with a very high frequency of occurrence, but its meaning of subjective speculation is generally used in rhetorical questions (Guo, 2003). This situation is identical to that of the modal adverbs “难道 nan2dao4 ‘is this to say’, 何必he2bi4 ‘why’, 未免wei4mian3 ‘rather”, which involve the two computations: the comprehension of the meaning of words and the understanding of complex syntactic rules. Four-year-old children are not yet able to solve issues this difficult. We cannot be completely certain regarding the acquisition of epistemic verbs. The epistemic meanings of “许 xu3 ‘allow’ ” and “怕 pa4 ‘afraid’ ” were not acquired. When expressing speculation, “看 kan4 ‘see’ ” and “想 xiang3 ‘think’ ” did not appear independently but rather in combinations that

140  Expressions of subjectivization embodied topical markings such as “我看 wo3kan4 ‘I think” and “我想 wo3xiang3 ‘I think’ ”. We therefore add a “?” in front of the timing of acquisition of “看 kan4 ‘see’ ” and “想 xiang3 ‘think’ ” in Table 7.2 to indicate this uncertainty, for instance: （28）   SYY: 我看那是爸爸给我扔掉的。 （2;10） SYY: Wǒ kàn nà shì bàba gěi wǒ rēng diào de. I see that be father for me throw-fall PARTICLE ‘I think that was the father who threw it away (for me)’ （29）   SYH: 你妈呢？ SYH: Nǐ mā ne? you mom question.PARTICLE ‘What about your mother?/where is your mother’ SYY: 我想我妈玩完都回去了。（3;06） SYY: Wǒ xiǎng wǒ mā wánwán dōu huíqù le. I think my mom play-finish all return-go PARTICLE ‘I think my mother went back after playing.

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Second, the epistemic modality of auxiliary verbs and the subjective meaning of polysemous adverbs are acquired later than the objective meaning. However, the timing of derivation for subjective meanings is not completely concentrated in one age group but several age groups – the first around age 02;00, the second around 02;06, and the third from 03;06–04;00. Among them, the derivation of epistemic modality is most prominent around age 02;06, which generally conforms with the results from both domestic and international research (e.g., Hirst & Weil, 1982; Shatz & Wilcox, 1991; Guo, 1995, etc.). Third, the syntactic means to express subjectivity and the means for lexicalization are generally acquired at the same time by children.

7.3 The development of expressions of subjectivization and cognitive abilities Here, we mainly take the acquisition of the polysemous adverb “还 hai2 ‘still’ ” as an example to examine the development of cognitive mechanisms related to the expressions of subjectivization. Why choose the polysemous adverb “还 hai2 ‘still’ ”? There are two reasons: First, the richness of the semantic meanings of “还 hai2 ‘still’ ” can reflect the development of the subjective meanings of polysemous words and their related mechanisms very well; second, children generally acquire the main objective and subjective meanings of “还 hai2 ‘still’ ” before the age of four. The results can truthfully reflect the

Expressions of subjectivization 141 development of subjectivity and its relevant cognitive mechanisms in children. In addition, we should also briefly examine the development of the meanings of polysemous adverbs “也 ye3 ‘also’ ” and “又 you4 ‘again’ ” in order to support some of the conclusions obtained through the acquisition data of “还 hai2 ‘still’ ”. 7.3.1  Extensions of the subjective meanings of “还 hai2” and their mechanism

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Our summary of the semantic meanings and the development of the semantic meanings of “还 hai2” is a synthesis of research by Shen (2001b), Gao (2002), Zhang (2007), Guo (2008), Cui (2009), and Wu (2009). It includes various opinions and is not identical to any one of them. The number of meanings is based on the actual number of output by the child, which is fewer than the numbers in the aforementioned studies. Overall, the main objective meaning of “还 hai2” is “repetition”, and the main subjective meanings are “expectation” and “against expectation”. We use Figure 7.1 to illustrate the development of the semantic meanings of “还 hai2” and its constraining mechanism. The bolded parts are subjective meanings. Figure  7.1 is explained as follows: First, the objective meaning of “repetition” derives the meanings of “supplementation” via the mechanism of generalization (when the latter case is the same as the previous case, they both mean “repetition”; when they differ, the latter case means “supplementation”); under the mechanism of narrowing, it derives the meaning of “continuation” (when there is an interval between the same situation, it is “repetition”; when there is no internal, it is “continuation”). “Continuation” includes both the continuation of time (i.e., the time has changed, but the state remains the same) and the continuation of condition (i.e., the condition has changed, but the state remains the same). Example sentences of the objective meanings are as follows:

supplementation˄䘈 2 ˅ ↑ ↑generalization

repetition˄䘈 1 ˅

↓narrowing ↓ optimistic

inference, euphemism, context absorption still˄䘈 4 ˅←←←←←← continuation˄䘈 3 ˅→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→mostly satisfied˄䘈 5 ˅ ↓ optimistic inference ↓ context absorption contextual solidification 1 unreasonable˄䘈 6 ˅→-→-→-→-→ surprise˄䘈 7 ˅

entailment (pragmatic entailment)

Figure 7.1 The development of the semantic meanings of “还 hai2” and its constraining mechanism

142  Expressions of subjectivization （30）   我还要馒头。(repetition) Wǒ hái yào mántou. I still want steamed bun ‘I still want [another] steamed bun.’ （31）   我还有一双鞋，也给你吧。(supplementation) wǒ hái yǒu yīshuāng xié, yě gěi nǐ ba. I still have one-MW shoe also give you PARTICLE ‘I still have another pair of shoes. [I’ll] also give [it] to you.’ （32）   她还在接电话。(continuation of time) tā hái zài jiē diànhuà. She still in get phone ‘She is still answering the phone call.’ （33）   她对你这么不好，你还为她辩解。(continuation of condition) tā duì nǐ zhème bù hǎo, nǐ hái wèi tā biànjiě. She toward you this.ADV not good you still for her defend ‘She is so unkind to you. You still defend her.’

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Second, the subjective meanings of “还 hai2” are derived from the node of the meaning of continuation (Gao, 2002), among which “mostly satisfied” denotes expectation and “unreasonable” and “surprise” belong to against expectation. “Still” is both expectation and against expectation. The meaning of continuation is the basis for the derivation of expectation and against expectation of “还 hai2”. The reason is that people often have a psychological tendency to view things in a positive light in their daily life, such that the persistence of a positive situation is expected to exist continuously (i.e., the Pollyanna hypothesis6). On the one hand, if the expected positive situation ceases to exist, the speaker will feel it is “unreasonable” or even feel “surprise”, for example: （34） 这个小胖子（指懒羊羊），还敢撒谎！(unreasonable,   should not) zhège xiǎo pàngzi, hái gǎn sāhuǎng! This-MW small fatty even dare lie ‘This little fatty (referring to a lazy sheep, a cartoon character), [it] dared to lie!’ （35）   还大人呢，这么一点小事就哭！(surprise) hái dàrén ne, zhème yìdiǎn xiǎo shì jiù kū! Even adult PARTICLE this.ADV tiny small matter modal.ADV cry ‘[The person is]even an adult. [I can’t believe this person] cried for such a small matter!’ On the other hand, if the expected positive situation does persist or if the situation is not as good as expected but is not too bad either, then the speaker generally will express “mostly satisfied” because of the euphemistic principle,7 for example,

Expressions of subjectivization 143

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（36） 这西瓜你买得还挺好。(meets   the expected positive condition and mostly satisfied) zhè xīguā nǐ mǎi dé hái tǐng hǎo. This watermelon you buy PARTICLE quite pretty good ‘This watermelon you bought is quite nice / This watermelon is quite a nice purchase.’ （37）   日子过得还算可以。(generally meets the expected positive condition and mostly satisfied) rìzi guò dé hái suàn kěyǐ. Day pass PARTICLE quite count passable/okay ‘[One’s] life can be considered as okay.’ In this way, the mechanism of the generation of 还’s subjective meanings is the cognitive “Pollyanna hypothesis” (Boucher & Osgood, 1969, cited from Shen, 1999). Additionally, contextual solidification is also one of the reasons for the generation of the subjective meanings. Some research has shown that the 还 denoting mostly satisfied in context usually occurs in front of complementary words (Cui, 2009), and the 还 denoting against expectation often appears in contrastive conjunction sentences or phrases (Wen, 2008). As such, 还 gradually absorbs the meanings of complementary words and the deviation meaning in contrastive conjunctions. Both optimistic reasoning and contextual absorption work together to develop the meanings of expectation and against expectation. The meaning of “still” is also derived from the meaning “continuation” (Gao, 2002) and is the result of intersubjectivization, which suggests that the speaker pays attention to both his or her own expectations and the expectations of the listener. The “continuation” meaning denotes the continuation of the situation in a sequence of magnitudes (e.g., “small car – large car”, “primary school s­tudent – middle/ high school student – college student). Therefore, the items in the sequence can be entailed, such as “A small car can still not pass, let alone a large car”. The latter item is entailed from the former one based on the relationship. However, based on the logical relationship, we can entail three latter items based on the former item. They are a “the large car cannot pass”, b “the large car can pass”, and c “the large car may or may not be able to pass”. Though the ­speaker’s expectation is a, the listener’s expectation may be a, b, or c. Thus, the speaker uses the former item to enhance the latter item. By using 还 as a contrast on the former item, the latter item becomes the focus. In this way, the entailed result can only be a, thus avoiding the listener entailing b or c. We consider this kind of attention and guidance to the listener’s expectations to have the characteristics of intersubjectivization. 7.3.2  Acquisition data of 还 (hái) Let us examine the child’s lexical acquisition of 还. Using the automatic search provided by CLAN while manually tagging and excluding non-adverbial usages

144  Expressions of subjectivization of 还, we computed an exhaustive search of the 116-hour-long corpus of participant SYY. Results showed that a total of 1,948 instances of adverbial 还 were produced before 04;06 years of age – 1,716 items remained after excluding cases of repetition (56), imitation (165), and unclear semantic usage (11). Of the 1,716 items, there were 1,558 cases of objective usage and 158 cases of subjective usage. A summary table of frequency counts is given here:

Table 7.3 Age of acquisition (AoA) and total frequency counts of 还 (hái)

data AoA Count

Lexical Objective Subjective meaning Contin­ Still Mostly Unrea­ Surprise Repetition Supple­ mentation uation satisfied sonable 01;08 254

01;09 1204

01;10 100

02;06 02;06 3 7

02;02 62

02;02 82

7.3.2.1 Lexical Acquisition of 还 with objective semantic meanings

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The first usage of 还 by SYY occurs at age 01;08.06, with the semantic meaning “还 1” and functions as an answer by imitation: e.g., (38) ZSF: 还要吗？ hái yào ma? again want question.PARTICLE ‘[Do you] want more?’ SYY: 还要。 hái yào. again want ‘[I] want more.’ Within an hour, at the age of 01;08.06, the child produced 还 1 16 times, with 5 self-initiated utterances, 5 instances of imitation, and 6 instances with the semantic meaning repetition. We can therefore confirm that the acquisition of 还 1 was completed at 01;08. 还 2 meaning supplementation first appeared at age 01;08.13. There was, however, only one such utterance. Self-initiated production with this semantic meaning occurred at age 01;10 en mass, with the majority of cases following the format of “还有XXX”. For instance,

Expressions of subjectivization 145 (39) SYY: 还有舌头。 hái yŏu shétou also have tongue ‘There is also a tongue.’ (40) SYY: 还有个鸭子。 hái yŏu gè yāzi also have a duck ‘There is also a duck.’ 还 3 meaning continuation first appeared at age 01;08.13 with one instance. It was an answer by imitation but was, however, erroneous. For instance, (41) ZXB: 还痒痒吗？ hái yăngyang ma? continue itchy question.PARTICLE ‘Still itchy?’ SYY: 还不痒痒了。 hái bù yăngyang le. continue neg itchy CRS ‘not itchy anymore.’

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Self-initiated production of 还 3 started at 01;10.20 and was frequently used at age 02;01; for instance, (42) SYY: 还没做熟呢。(SYY’s mother told her that she could not eat uncooked food.) hái méi zùoshú ne. continue neg cooked CONT ‘Still not cooked.’ (43) SYY: 还录吗？ hái lù ma? continue record questions particle ‘[Do you want to] continue to record?’ We can therefore conclude that the various objective meanings of 还 were acquired prior to two years of age. The order of acquisition is also in line with that of the lexical meanings. 7.3.2.2 Lexical acquisition of 还 with subjective semantic meanings SYY acquired 还 6 and 还 7 relatively early among the subjective meanings. They both first appeared at the age 02;01.03, with one instance each. In both cases, the usage was that of an imitative nature. For instance,

146  Expressions of subjectivization (44) SYH: 还怎么着？ zĕnme zhāo? hái additionally how/what progressive particle ‘And what else is going on?’ SYY: 还不让我摸。 hái bú ràng wŏ mō. additionally neg let 1st person.sg touch ‘And wouldn’t let me touch.’ (45) GCY: 我捡的，从那屋，还是新的呢！ wŏ jiăn de, cóng nà wū, 1st person.sg pick noun-modifier particle from that room ‘I picked it, from that room,’ ne! hái shì xīn de still be new noun-modifier particle exclamation particle ‘[it is] still new!’ SYY: 还是新的呢！ hái shì xīn de ne! still be new noun-modifier particle exclamation particle ‘[it is] still new!’ Self-initiated production of 还 6 increased at 02;02.04 and at 02;02.12 for 还 7. Examples of usages are as follows:

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(46) SYY: 这还有法儿吃吗？ hái yŏu făr chī ma? zhè this unreasonably have means eat question particle ‘This is still edible?’ (47) SYY: 这筷子还有字儿呢！ yŏu zìr ne! zhè kuàizi hái this chopstick unreasonably have character exclamation particle ‘This chopstick has characters [on it]!’ The confirmation regarding the acquisition of 还 6 with the meaning to expect required more effort. It first appeared at age 01;10.20 as an imitation usage. Selfinitiated production did not occur until 02;06.20 and resulted in 7 instances until 04;06.05. For instance, (48) SYY: 小东西还正好呢！ xiăo dōngxi hái zhènghăo ne! little thing as expected exactly-right exclamation particle ‘Little thing is exactly right!’ (49) SYY: 这车还行吗? zhè chē hái xíng ma? this car as expected capable question particle ‘Is this car okay?’

Expressions of subjectivization 147 There were few instances of 还4, though they were self-initiated. Two such cases were observed at 02;06.08, as shown here: 8 (50) SYY: 长大了，小时候还揪白兔被和。 zhăng dà le, grow big aspect particle ‘[I] grew big,’ bèihuo. xiăo shíhou hái jiū báitù little time even pull white-rabbit blankie ‘when [I was] little, [I was] even pulling on the white-rabbit blankie.’ (51) SYY: 小时候还揪白兔毛呢。 ne. xiăo shíhou hái jiū báitù máo little time even pull white-rabbit hair ­exclamation particle ‘[I was] even pulling the white-rabbit hair when [I was] little.’

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The context for these productions was that SYY intended to bring the whiterabbit blanket, and her father refused. SYY therefore repeated that “[I could] pull on the blankie when [I] was little”, suggesting that “[thus it should be] even more permissible to do so when [I am] older”. This particular usage, meaning even or however, did not occur again until 03;02.08, with one instance in “你坐着还 行呢”. The context for this utterance was that SYY intended to ride the bicycle with a backpack, and her mother was concerned that carrying it would cause her posture to tilt and that she might fall from the bicycle. SYY thus produced “你 坐着还行呢” to suggest “I can as well”. There were only 3 productions of 还 4 until 04;06.05. Taken together, it is therefore shown that among the subjective semantic meanings of 还, the anti-expectation meaning is acquired prior to the one denoting expectation; the acquisition of the intersubjectivistic even is accomplished relatively late and with the fewest productions.

7.3.3  General discussion 7.3.3.1 Characteristics and explanations of the acquisition of subjective meanings Children acquire the main semantic meanings of 还 prior to age 04;06, including both objective and subjective semantic meanings. Although from the perspective of learning strategies, their learning of the subjective meanings interleaves both continuous and differentiated strategies(Zhang, 2010),9 the acquisition of objective meanings precedes that of the subjective ones based on the overall learning

148  Expressions of subjectivization pattern of all lexical meanings. The following order of acquisition can be concluded based on the time point and frequency counts (by month) of the semantic meanings of 还: 1 2 3

objective meanings > subjective meanings 还1（repetition）> 还2（complementation ）> 还3（continuation） 还6, 还7（anti-expectation）> 还5（expectation）> 还4（intersubjectivity）

“>” denotes that the item before it is acquired prior to the one after. There are several plausible explanations for the aforementioned learning pattern. Firstly, children’s learning of polysemous grammatical items is closely related to their cognitive development in regard to subjectivity. At around age 01;10, children are capable of expressing certain emotions and attitudes. The acquisition of 还 therefore manifests itself following the order of objective semantic meanings to subjective semantic meanings, such that after age 02;06, expressions employing intersubjectivity also begin to emerge. Secondly, the various semantic meanings of the objective category are learned following the order exhibited by diachronic change. The frequency of 还2, however, is of 1,204 counts – a very large number even after excluding the influence from input. This effect should be related to the relevant cognitive mechanisms regarding 还2. We already know that the extension mechanism from 还1 to 还2 is generalization and that generalization is applied more frequently than narrowing, even though children primarily rely on these two strategies in semantic learning and processing early on (Xiao, 2007). In addition, Guo (2010) shows that the essential meaning of adverbs “还”, “又”, “也”, “再” is “supplementation”,10 which is supported by data presented in this chapter. Guo’s observation also explains the learning characteristics of 还2 from cross-linguistic and inter-lexical perspectives. Thirdly, the extended subjective semantics of the objective 还3 (i.e., 还5, 还6, and 还7) are acquired prior to the intersubjective meaning (还4,). This learning order concurs with the first trajectory of pragmatic semantic change proposed by Traugott and Dasher (2002):

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nonsubjective semantics > subjective semantics > intersubjective semantics Such concurrence is meaningful in that it points to a positive correlation between children’s language acquisition and the diachronic change of lexical semantics. In addition, the extension from 还6 to 还7 is the result of contextual solidification. Contextual solidification also entails context absorption, though the former embodies stronger subjectivity and less dependency on context, whereas the latter relies heavily on its context. The omission of context absorption does not affect the overall meaning of a sentence, wherein the implied violation-of-expectation still exists, for instance, (52) 下这么大的雨，你真来了！（contextual absorption） xià zhème dà de yŭ, nĭ zhēn lái le! fall this big noun-modifier rain 2nd person.sg really come A-particle ‘[It is] raining so heavily, [yet] you really came!’

Expressions of subjectivization 149 *(53) 大人呢，这么一点小事就哭！（contextual solidification） rén ne, zhème yìdiăn xiăo shì jiù kū! dà little small matter then cry big man E-particle this ‘An adult, yet cries for such a small matter!’

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Among the anti-expectation meanings, the order of children’s acquisition for lexical items of higher levels of subjectivization (i.e., 还7) also coincides with that of semantic diachronic change. Due to its complex extended semantic meanings and the relevant mechanisms involved in their occurrences (e.g., entailed language usage, intersubjectivization), it is not surprising that the intersubjective meaning (i.e., 还4) is acquired relatively late and has a lower frequency of production. Why is it then, among the subjective meanings, that the meaning of expectation (i.e., 还5) is acquired later and occurs less frequently than that of anti-expectation? Since adults use 还5 relatively frequently, we can infer that the onset and the frequency observed of 还5 are not due to the impact from input. As mentioned before, the extended meaning of 还6 only involves one psychological mechanism: positive bias (also Pollyannaism); whereas for 还5, two psychological mechanisms are required: positive bias as well as euphemistic psychology. The usage of 还5 therefore relies on the competency of these two psychological mechanisms and thus posits a difficulty for young children. In regard to the syntactic, semantic, and phonological acquisition of children, we already know that the learning of a single skill develops earlier than those involving the coordination of skills in multiple domains. Such an explanation can be applied to the learning order of 还5 – its late acquisition and low frequency could be related to and constrained by the complex cognitive demands involved. In sum, by the age of 04;06, children have already acquired the skills of narrowing, generalization, positive inference, and context absorption. Such skills11 serve as foundations for children to expand on and for them to make use of the semantics of lexical items. They also show a rudimentary learning in regard to the ability of intersubjectivization. 7.3.3.2 Supporting evidence from other polysemous adverbs In order to verify the acquisition characteristics and their explanations of the acquisition data regarding 还’s subjective meanings, we chose two modals with objective and subject meanings, “也 ye3” and “又 you4”, for further observation. However, it should be noted that even in ontological research, it is difficult to find a word with such rich semantic meanings as 还 to explain the mechanism of semantic extension. Although there are quite a few adverbs with both objective and subjective meanings, for example, “也 ye3, 都dou1, 又 you4”, none of them are as rich in their semantic meanings as 还. The same is true for children’s language acquisition. Additionally, because of space limitations, we do not intend to discuss the semantic development of “也 ye3, 又

150  Expressions of subjectivization similarity˄ҏ 1 ˅ ↓generalization context absorption context absorption ↓ euphemism˄ҏ 3 ˅ ←←←supplementary˄ҏ 2 ˅→→→→rebuttal˄ҏ 4 ˅

repetition˄৸ 1 ˅ ↓generalization ↓ context absorption addition˄৸ 2 ˅→→→ rebuttal˄৸ 3 ˅

Figure 7.2 The developmental and constraining mechanisms of the semantic meanings of “也 ye3” (also) and “又 you4” (again)

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you4” in detail. The conclusions we rely on regarding the extension processes and their mechanisms are a synthesis of research by Shi (2005), Cui (2009), and so on. The developmental and constraining mechanisms of the semantic meanings of “也 ye3” and “又 you4” are as follows. The bolded parts are the subjective items. The rebuttal meanings of “也 ye3” and “又 you4” both embody intersubjectivity. Syntactically, their common characteristic is that they are mostly used in negative sentences. The affirmative form of such negative sentences often indicates certain behaviors. If by implementing a behavior (premise), a certain conclusion (result) can be drawn, then negating the premise can negate the result. The addition of “也 ye3” and “又 you4” to sentences with a negative premise enhances this voice of rebuttal (i.e., the “anti”), and prohibits the listener from realizing the expectation of reaching a certain conclusion. After excluding cases of imitation, the participant child’s acquisition examples of “也 ye3” and “又 you4” are as follows: （54） GCY:   叔叔安不上. GCY: Shūshu ān bù shàng. Uncle install not up ‘Uncle is not able to install [it] up there.’ SYY: 洋洋也安不上。（01;08）(similarity) SYY: Yángyáng yě ān bù shàng. Yangyang also install not up ‘Yangyang is also not able to install [it] up there.’ （55）   GCY: 待这儿吧。 GCY: Dài zhè’er ba. Stay here PARTICLE ‘Stay here.’ SYY: 待也待不住。（01;08）(supplementary) SYY: Dài yě dài bù zhù. Stay also stay not steady ‘[I] am not able to stay [here] steadily.’ （56）   GCY: 那上有什么呀? GCY: Nà shàng yǒu shénme ya?

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Expressions of subjectivization 151 There up have what PARTICLE ‘What’s on top of there?’ SYY:我也不知道,我瞅瞅。（02;03） (euphemism) SYY: Wǒ yě bù zhīdào, wǒ chǒu chǒu. I also not know I look look ‘I don’t know, either. Let’s me take a look.’ （57）   GCY:你看压伤了吧？ GCY: Nǐ kàn yāshāngle ba? You see press-injured PARTICLE PARTICLE ‘SEE! [something is] injured from pressing now!?’ SYY:你给压伤的也不是我压伤的。（03;03） (strengthen the defensive tone) SYY: Nǐ gěi yāshāng de yě bùshì wǒ yāshāng de. You passive marker press-injured PARTICLE, also not be me pressinjured PARTICLE ‘It’s you by whom [it is] injured from pressing, not by me.’ （58）   SYY:又出来了，小哥哥。（ 01;08） (repetition) SYY: Yòu chūlái le, xiǎo gēgē. Again out come PARTICLE small older brother ‘[You] came out again, little older brother.’ （59）   SYY:出了一三，又出一五.（01;11） (Addition) SYY: Chūle yīsān, yòu chū yīwǔ. Out PARTICLE one give again out one five ‘[someone/something] released one and three; then now release one and five. （60）   SYH: 下午推着你和你妈妈上哪儿了咱们? SYH: Xiàwǔ tuī zhe nǐ hé nǐ māmā shàng nǎ’er le zánmen? Afternoon push PARTICLE you and you mother up where ­PARTICLE we ‘To where did we push you and your mother in the afternoon?’ SYY:我又不知道。（02;07） (strengthen the defensive tone) SYY: Wǒ yòu bù zhīdào. I again not know ‘I DON’T know.’ We then summarized the acquisition of the various semantic meanings of “也 ye3” and “又 you4” in Table 7.4. Although the meanings of “也 ye3” and “又 you4” are not as rich as those of “还 hai2”, it can be seen from the quantity and the time of output regarding their respective objective and subjective meanings that children’s output of objective meanings precedes that of subjective meanings. Among the subjective meanings, the general subjective meanings are produced earlier than the meanings denoting intersubjectivity. Around age 02;02, the child could spontaneously produce

152  Expressions of subjectivization Table 7.4 Timing of acquisition of the various semantic meanings of “也 ye3” and “又 you4” Objective meanings and their timing of acquisition 也 又

similarity （01;08）   repetition （01;08）  

supplementary （01;08）   addition （01;11）  

Subjective meanings and their timing of acquisition euphemism （02;03）   enhancing rhetorical question (no output)

enhancing defensive/ rebuttal tone（03;03） enhancing defensive/ rebuttal tone（02;07）  

subjective meanings; around age 02;06, he or she could develop the meaning of intersubjectivity through the development of intersubjectivization. Abilities such as “generalization” and “context absorption” as well as intersubjectivization were essentially acquired.

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7.3.3.3 Acquisition characteristics of subjective meanings and expressions of subjectivization We also noticed that the time for the development of subjective meanings of “还hai2”, “也 ye3”, and “又 you4” is 02;00–02;06 years of age. This period and the two or three months after it are also the time period during which the means of the expressions of subjectivization expand. From age 02;00 to 02;08, the newly produced expressions are mainly LIAN construction and “SHI.  .  .  (DE)” construction and many words of epistemic modality. These newly produced expressions generally express subjective knowledge, including subjective attitudes or evaluations. Most of them require certain reasoning abilities, and some also have characteristics of intersubjectivization, which require children to have the ability of intersubjectivization. This being the case, the various cognitive abilities that influence the development of subjective meanings may also affect the characteristics of the developmental order of various expressions of subjectivization (components).

7.4 The development of subjectivization and syntax The subjectivity expressed by various means is a type of semantic meaning of subjective and objective interactions. We would like to know whether the development of children’s subjectivity has a certain relationship with the development of syntax. It is generally believed that young children’s syntactic development can be measured by the change in the mean length of utterance (MLU) (Brown, 1973; Pan, 1994; Zhang, 1998, etc.) since an increase in the MLU indicates that the sentences are becoming more complex. This

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Expressions of subjectivization 153 is mainly manifested by the emergence of modified components (including nominal modifiers and predicate modifiers) and the development of syntactic knowledge associated with them. Using the CLAN program in CHILDES, we can quickly calculate the MLU of young children. However, we consider calculating the average length of the five longest sentences (MLU5) for children during a certain age range to be more concise and accurate. This is because even though children have rather complex syntactic knowledge, they may not produce relatively long sentences in actual communication. Therefore, simply calculating MLU may be more conservative. But the data of MLU and MLU5 should still be mutually verifiable. Zhang (1998) carefully observed the development of MLU in 5 children. Zhou (2009) also performed detailed research regarding the development of MLU and MLU5 of 10 children before the age of 32 months and 20 children during 36–72 months of age. We compared the research data of the two scholars with the data of the child’s MLU5 and expressions of subjectivization in this chapter, and we could observe some valuable phenomena. In order to make the table concise, we coded the expressions of subjectivization and the meanings of “还” listed in Table  7.5. For example, A = modal adverbs; B = auxiliary verbs; C = epistemic verbs; D = derivative meanings of the subjective meanings of polysemous adverbs; E = BA construction; F  =  BEI construction; G  =  LIAN construction; H  =  SHI.  .  .  (DE) focus sentence; K1 = objective meaning 1; Z1 = subjective meaning 1; and so on and so forth. If a code of a certain age increases, it indicates the addition of a new member to the means of expression. Furthermore, the unit of calculation for MLU or MLU5 is the word. Due to reasons such as individual differences in children, the MLU5 data of the child in this chapter were slightly higher than those in Zhou (2009). However, both conclusions from existing research and the data of the child in this chapter showed that for children younger than four years of age, MLU and MLU5 lengthened with the increase of age. The MLU5 of the child discussed in this chapter grew most rapidly from ages 02;00 to 02;06, with the fastest development of MLU5 around age 02;06, which was also the stage during which the means of expression of subjectivization rapidly became more complex. The expressions of subjectivization around ages 02;00 to 02;06 developed from the single modal adverbs at age 01;08 to the various means of expression that included sentence structures and derived subjective meanings. The means of expression of subjectivization at 03;06–04;00 were concentrated in the development of epistemic modality, though we could still regard the richness of children’s expressions of subjectivization and the level of complexity of their syntactic structures as having a co-varying relationship. The question is whether this developmental feature is semantically driven or syntactically driven, or if they were driven by one another. We lean toward it being driven by semantics. Even if syntactic knowledge is innate, it still should be a latent (or intrinsic) knowledge that requires a certain external factor to induce. And this motivation is semantics. Fundamentally, language is expressive. The

01;06 01;08 02;00 02;02 02;06 02;08 03;00 03;06 04;00

age

Data comparison

2.82 3.31 3.74

2.44

1.99

1.56

MLU Zhang（1998）

5.95 6.72 6.25 6.52

5.22

3.03

MLU5 Zhou（2009）

8.00 9.00 9.20

7.60

4.60 5.20

MLU5 （present   case）

A ABDEF ABDDEF AAABBBBDDDEF AAAABBBBDDDDEFGH AAAAABBBBCDDDDEFGH AAAAABBBBCCDDDDEFGH AAAAABBBBBBBBBCDDDDEFGH

Means of expression of subjectivization

Table 7.5 Developmental data of MLU and MLU5 and various means of expression of subjectivization for young children

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K1 K1、2、3 K1、2、3; Z6、7 K1、2、3; Z6、7; Z4、5

Development of meanings of 还

Expressions of subjectivization 155 speaker’s subjective intention and cognitive and empirical structures promote the complication of sentences. Relatively young children can understand and even express rich meanings through prosodic features, and their language comprehension precedes production. These acquisition characteristics all indicate that semantics is the driving force for children’s syntactic development.

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Notes 1 With regard to the timing of acquisition, we exclude the use of imitative first-time usage, but the appearance of children’s language components is mostly used under the guidance of parents or other caregivers. Therefore, if the speech materials in the corpus after imitative first-time usage are used continuously, then the timing of the component’s first-time usage can still be seen as the timing of acquisition. Otherwise, only the next similar situation or the child’s independent output can be regarded as the timing of acquisition. 2 See He (1992). 3 Same as the results in Yang and Xiao (2008). 4 See Tian’s (2008) research for reference. 5 We collected and counted two clips of SYY’s speech materials monthly from age 01;08 to 04;06. The input of “应该 ying1gai1 ‘should’ ” and “应 ying1 ‘should’ ” is zero. Counting the “应该 ying1gai1 ‘should’ ” from age 01;08 to age 01;11, there were 26 instances of input, 3 of which had epistemic meaning. Counting the “该 gai1 ‘should’ ” from age 01;08 to age 01;11, there were 322 instances of input, 194 of which had epistemic meaning. According to this set of data, there is a high positive correlation between the amount of input and the timing of children’s acquisition. 6 See relevant introduction in Shen (1999). 7 Shen (1999) mentioned that in communication, people tend to be euphemistic about negative judgments in order to leave room for politeness. But in Chinese, people not only euphemistically express negative judgments, but they also even speak euphemistically regarding some complimentary comments, which is possibly related to the “modesty mentality” of the Han ethnic group. 8 “被和” means blanket. “白兔被和” refers to a blanket with a white rabbit pattern. The child pronounces it as bei4he following his/her parents. The transcription kept its original pronunciation. 9 See Zhang (2010). A continuous strategy refers to acquiring the various meanings of a polysemous item using their derivative processes; a differentiated strategy refers to an independent learning procedure of the semantic meanings rather than following their diachronic derivation. In this chapter, children acquired 还6 and 还7 first while learning 还4 and 还5 later, which is an example of employing a differentiated strategy. 10 See Guo (2010). Supplementary meanings of adverbs and their relevant semantic maps, paper presented at the 15th annual conference of Chinese Linguistics Society, Inner Mongolia. 11 Skills here does not refer to children being able to utilize certain learning methods consciously or actively; rather, it points to a developmental by-product in children’s cognitive development. Its emergence is therefore inadvertent and spontaneous. Such skills are manifested as the ability to spontaneously generate the appropriate lexical item, as well as being able to accurately apply semantic meanings of lexical items in specific linguistic contexts.

Appendix 7.1 The participant child SYY’s MLU5 at different ages

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01;08 (SYY040718) MLU5 = 4.60 洋洋也安不上。 Yángyáng yě ān bú shàng. Yangyang (personal name) also install not up ‘Yangyang is also not able to install [it] up there.’ 不跟我玩儿了。 Bù gēn wǒ wán’er le. Not with me play PARTICLE ‘[someone] Do not play with me now.’ 我在家弄的。 Wǒ zàijiā nòng de. I at home do PARTICLE ‘I did it at home.’ 等会儿就行了。 Děng huìr jiù xíng le. Wait a short while Modal.ADV acceptable PARTICLE ‘Wait a short while and it’ll be done.’ 猫猫上那儿了。 Māomāo shàng nà’er le. Cat cat up there PARTICLE ‘The kitty cat went over there.’ 02;00（SYY041111） MLU5 = 5.20 上学校门口那儿倒土。 Shàng xuéxiào ménkǒu nà’er dào tǔ. Up school door mouth there deposit dirt ‘Go over to the area of the school’s gate to dump dirt.’ 我把尾巴伸出看一看。 Wǒ bǎ wěibā shēn chū kàn yí kàn. I BA tail extend out look one look ‘I extend the tail to take a look.’ 上那儿找爷爷去。

Expressions of subjectivization 157 Shàng nà’er zhǎo yéyé qù. Up there search paternal grandfather go ‘Go there to look for paternal grandpa.’ 奶看白菜去了。 Nǎi kàn báicài qùle. Paternal grandma look white veggie go PARTICLE ‘Paternal grandma went to check out the Chinese cabbage.’ 不跟我玩儿了。 Bù gēn wǒ wán’er le. Not with me play PARTICLE ‘[someone] Do not play with me any longer.’

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02;06 （SYY050602） MLU5 = 7.60 瞅见我大姑又给我买桃来着。 Chǒujiàn wǒ dàgū yòu gěi wǒ mǎi táo láizhe. Look-perceived I big father’s sister again for me buy peach come PARTICLE ‘Saw my big aunt (father’s sister) buy me some peaches again.’ 呆会儿你再给我买笔去。 Dāi huì’er nǐ zài gěi wǒ mǎi bǐ qù. Stay a short while you again for me buy pen go ‘After a short while, then you go buy me some pen(s).’ 该把那创可贴贴这儿一个。 Gāi bǎ nà chuàngkětiē tiē zhè’er yīgè. Should BA that Band-Aid stick here one-MW ‘[one] should put a Band-Aid like that here.’ 开那纱门该进蝇子了。 Kāi nà shā mén gāi jìn yíng zile. Open that screen door should enter flies PARTICLE ‘Opening that screen door will allow flies to enter.’ 把苹果香蕉都运 ff过来了。 Bǎ píngguǒ xiāngjiāo dōu yùn guòlái le. BA apple banana all transport pass come PARTICLE ‘[one] Transported the apples and bananas all over here.’ 03;00 （SYY051127） MLU5 = 8.00 呆会上牛场给我买点桃去。 Dāi huì shàng niúchǎng gěi wǒ mǎi diǎn táo qù. Stay a short while up cattle field for I buy some peach go ‘Later, go to the cattle field to buy me some peach.’ 我瞧小猫咪挎那小篮子干嘛。 Wǒ qiáo xiǎo māomī kuà nà xiǎo lánzi gān ma. I see small kitten carry that small basket do what ‘I [want to] see why the small kitty carries that small basket.’ 我给你翻一个小马马的。 Wǒ gěi nǐ fān yīgè xiǎo mǎma de.

158  Expressions of subjectivization I for you flip one-MW small horse hours PARTICLE ‘I’ll flip the one with a small pony for you.’ 还有一个老师还在学校。 Hái yǒu yīgè lǎoshī hái zài xuéxiào. Still have one-MW teacher still at school ‘There’s still one teacher at school.’ 把这被和抱下来压着。 Bǎ zhè bèi hé bào xiàlái yāzhe. BA this blanket hold down come press PARTICLE ‘Carry this blanket down [by holding it] and press it flat.’ 03;06 （SYY060530） MLU5 = 9.00

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一会儿咱们给我妈拿那个咱们家电话。 Yìhuǐ’er zánmen gěi wǒ mā ná nàgè zánmen jiā diànhuà. A short while we for I mom take that-MW I house phone ‘Later, let’s take the phone of ours to my mother.’ 我再给你画一个大圆圈。 Wǒ zài gěi nǐ huà yīgè dà yuánquān. I again for you draw one-MW big circle ‘I [will] draw you another big circle.’ 要不写完这个再写这个。 Yào bù xiěwán zhège zài xiě zhège. How about write-finish this-MW then/again write this-MW ‘How about finish writing this one [first], and then write this one?’ 树下有人就不会了。 Shù xià yǒurén jiù bù huì le. Tree down have people modal.ADV not will.modal.V PARTICLE ‘[It] will not [be the case] if there’s someone under the tree.’ 我给你讲一个故事。 Wǒ gěi nǐ jiǎng yīgè gùshì. I for you speak one-MW story ‘I tell you a story.’ 04;00 （SYY061130） MLU5 = 9.20 咱们等一会儿谁输了谁拿大布娃娃成。 Zánmen děng yìhuǐ’er shéi shūle shéi ná dà bù wáwá chéng. We wait a short while who lost who take big cloth doll ‘[Among] us, later whoever lost [the game] takes the big cloth doll.’ 这个我奶奶都不知道这怎么穿的了。 Zhège wǒ nǎinai dōu bù zhīdào zhè zěnme chuān dele. This-MW I paternal grandmother all/even not know this how wear PARTICLE PARTICLE ‘[As for] this, even my paternal grandma doesn’t know how to wear it.’ 它裤子在这儿都能掉到后边儿。 Tā kùzi zài zhè’er dōu néng diào dào hòubiān’er.

Expressions of subjectivization 159 It pants in here all/even able fall to backside ‘Its pants over here can fall into the back.’ 我把这箱子给弄出来了。 Wǒ bǎ zhè xiāngzi gěi nòng chūlái le. I BA this box for do out come PARTICLE ‘I got this box out [toward the speaker].’ 那就别给它穿衣服了。 Nà jiù bié gěi tā chuān yīfú le. Then/in that case modal.ADV don’t for it wear clothes PARTICLE ‘In that case, don’t dress it.’

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04;06 （SYY070510） MLU5 = 9.60 明天我想在我们小铺买那吸管儿。 Míngtiān wǒ xiǎng zài wǒmen xiǎo pù mǎi nà xīguǎn’er. Tomorrow I want at we small shop buy that straw ‘I want to buy that straw in our small shop tomorrow.’ 来自张家塘的我给你们唱一首小燕子。 Láizì zhāngjiātáng de wǒ gěi nǐmen chàng yìshǒu xiǎo yànzi. Come from Zhangjiatang (place name) PARTICLE I for you sing one-MW small swallow ‘I, from Zhangjiatang, sing [the song] Small Swallow for you.’ 我今天带这么一大长衣服。 Wǒ jīntiān dài zhème yí dà cháng yīfú. I today bring this.ADV one big long clothes ‘I bring such a big, long piece of clothing today.’ 我一进你这儿怎么都挡着。 Wǒ yí jìn nǐ zhè’er zěnme dōu dǎngzhe. I once enter you here how all block PARTICLE ‘How come [everything/every path] is blocked once I entered your place?’ 你看那边儿长出个石头来。 Nǐ kàn nàbiān’er zhǎng chū gè shítou lái. You see that-side grow out MW stone come ‘Look, a stone grew out of there.’

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8 Early acquisition of degrees of modality

Based on the spontaneously produced speech materials of three Mandarin-learning children during the ages of 1;07–4;06, this chapter investigates the early acquisition of degrees of modality. Exhaustive counts show that young children have acquired the degrees of modality. Except for several particular modal words whose acquisition is constrained by syntactic co-occurrence, their order of acquisition generally follows the sequence from possibility to necessity. This order is consistent with the semantic interpretation of different degrees of modality, their semantic formation, and levels of difficulty for comprehension. Based on the timing of acquiring how to use modal adverbs and modals in conjunction, at around 3;00–4;06 years of age, children’s subjectivity gradually develops and matures, and they can adjust the value of modality and quantify subjectivity. The data in this chapter also show that young children begin to exhibit certain pragmatic abilities and understand interpersonal functions, and they already have a general understanding of the world as well as certain levels of reasoning abilities.

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8.1 Research background Modality refers to the speaker’s or writer’s attitude toward the actuality or likelihood variance of the proposition or event expressed by a statement. From the earliest of research regarding modal logic (i.e., modality), the possibility and necessity of a proposition being actual has been an important component. This situation extends from the field of philosophy to linguistics. A  proposition’s deviation from actuality is the degree of modality. Although it is related to the rules, norms, and customs of the material world as well as the agreement among language communities, it mainly reflects our general knowledge and reasoning of the material world (Taylor, 2002, pp.  405–409; Sweetser, 1990, pp.  48–52). Therefore, through the observation of the various possibility expressions regarding a proposition being actual, we can reveal the imprinting effects of cognitive activities and rules on language and explain some of the causes of linguistic phenomena. Its implications are self-evident. What about children? When do they start to have the ability to express degrees of modality? Is this ability obtained in one step? What factors are closely related to the acquisition of degrees of modality? What does it mean to be able to fully

162  Early acquisition of degrees of modality express the degrees of modality? We believe that the observation and interpretation of these issues can reveal the development of children’s language and their understanding and reasoning of the world. It can also facilitate the study regarding modality in Chinese and the typological study of modality. There are not many Chinese or non-Chinese studies of children’s acquisition of degrees of modality. Existing research generally tests children’s understanding regarding semantic contrasts of epistemic and deontic modalities and has arrived at some meaningful conclusions. For instance, three-year-old children cannot distinguish among modal differences, while five-year-olds generally can. Seven- and eight-year-olds are relatively mature in their knowledge of modal differences and so on (Moore, Pure, & Furrow, 1990; Noveck, Ho, & Sera, 1996; Fan, 2010). Much of the literature regarding the acquisition of modality mainly utilizes corpora of spontaneous production or experimental data to explore the order and timing of acquisition of the various modality types, for example Perkins (1983), Stephany (1986), Shatz and Wilcox (1991), O’Neill and Atance (2000), Choi (1991, 1995), Byrnes and Duff (1989), Papafragou and Ozturk (2007), Guo (1995), Wang (2012), and Guo (2013). Yang and Dong (2014) conducted a case study regarding a child’s acquisition of modal verbs from age 01;04 to 03;03. They sorted the learning trends and possible constraining factors of the various types of modality. The observations and conclusions of existing research regarding children’s acquisition of the type and degree of modality are cross-linguistic in their scope and consistent in the learning rules they have discovered. However, there are still some issues that need further consideration, such as, 1

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2

3

Testing the degree of modality is difficult and therefore only children older than three years of age have been recruited as participants. There is also a one-year span. Is it possible that this might lead to the omission of certain details regarding the acquisition of degrees of modality? Test words are limited to predicate modal words, such as modal verbs and certain mental verbs or adjectives with a modal meaning. However, languages also consist of non-predicate words (e.g., modal adverbs) or functional words (e.g., sentence-final modal particles in Chinese), and they are used to express degrees of modality. The acquisition of these non-predicate modal words may not have an identical time line to that of modal verbs. If we ignore the acquisition of non-predicate modal words, can the conclusion of children’s acquisition of degrees of modality be reliable? The examination of children’s acquisition data should be applied based on context. Treating children’s comprehension or production data in isolation might lead to inaccurate judgments regarding whether they have acquired something or not.

Based on the preceding analysis regarding the significance of children’s acquisition of degrees of modality and the status of existing research, the present chapter utilizes materials from a corpus of spontaneous speech in order to conduct a

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 163 diachronic investigation on the occurrence and development of early expressions of degrees of modality in Mandarin-speaking children. This study complements existing research and explores the developmental characteristics and related issues of degrees of modality for children.

8.2 Descriptions of children’s acquisition of degrees of modality 8.2.1  Subject of investigation Modality is a commonly ubiquitous category of human languages. Its means of expression are also universal. Modal verbs are a frequently used expression of modality in various languages and therefore exhibit the most complete degrees of modality. Modal adverbs are also a means of expression for many languages to communicate modality. As agreed by the research community,1 even though children have not acquired all of the modal adverbs, those modal adverbs that have been learned (see Table 8.1) are meaningful. In addition, modern Chinese is a language with sentence-final particles. Sentence-final particles can sometimes indicate speculative questions or affirmations. Therefore, sentence-final particles with a modal meaning can be regarded as modal particles.2 We list words of various degrees of modality as shown in Table 8.1. It should be noted that modality is generally divided into dynamic modality, deontic modality, and epistemic modality. Among them, it is very difficult to establish a clear contrast between possibility and necessity for dynamic modality because of its objective attributes; epistemic modality has the highest correlation with possibility and necessity. Although research on modality began with modal logic and centered on a pair of central concepts – possibility and necessity – logisticians have discovered that the possibility and necessity in modal logic are

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Table 8.1 Expressions of degrees of modality

Modal verbs

Possibility

Probability

Necessity（certainty）

disyllabic

ke3neng2可能 possible

monosyllabic

neng2 能 can Ma 吗1 hao3xiang4 好像 as if

ying1gai1 应该 Probable hui4 会 will ba 吧 cha4dian3r 差点儿 almost mei2zhun3r 没准儿 maybe

yi2ding4 一定3 certainly yao4 要 will ma, ma 嘛、 吗2 Dang1ran2, yuan2lai2 qi2shi2 其实 当然    原来 of course  originally actually fan3zheng4,  ken3ding4  dao4shi4 反正    肯定    倒是 anyway   definitely   just is

Modal particles Modal adverbs

zhun3(shi4) 准（是） must(be)

164  Early acquisition of degrees of modality parallel to permission and necessity in deontic logic (see Peng, 2007, pp. 54–55 for a reference). Linguists have noticed that many of the lexical meanings of modal logic are derived from the lexical meanings that express deontic logic. Therefore, deontic modality can be defined by the possibility and necessity with which we understand epistemic modality. Because of length constraints, however, this chapter only examines the development of children’s ability regarding early expressions of degrees of modality through epistemic modality. The data in this chapter were collected from approximately 400 hours of spontaneous output of participants LXY (01;07–04;06), SYY (01;08–04;06), and JBS (01;07–04;06). 8.2.2  Description of acquisition 8.2.2.1 Acquisition of typical words of degrees of modality The words “kěnéng可能、yīnggāi应该、yídìng一定” are the most typical words of degrees of modality in Chinese. Among them, “kěnéng可能” is a monosemantic word of epistemic modality; “yīnggāi应该” and “yídìng一定” both embody deontic modality meanings, such as “should be or necessarily so from the perspectives of reason or morality”. They also indicate epistemic modality, such as “propositions or events that have relatively large possibility or necessity based on subjective speculation”. Here, we examine their epistemic modality. The levels of subjective certainty of the three words gradually increase, which is identical to may, should, and must in English. Existing studies on English-learning children’s acquisition of degrees of modality also largely revolve around these words. We first investigate the acquisition of these three words. LXY produced “kěnéng可能、yīnggāi应该、yídìng一定” at ages 02;08, 02;09, and 03;06, respectively. It was ages 03;08, 03;011, and 04;05 for SYY, and 02;04, 03;03, and 04;06 for JBS. Some speech examples are as follows:

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（1）    HXT: 三角龙 HXT: Sānjiǎolóng

几个 jǐgè

龙 呀？ lóng ya?

Triceratops how many-MWdinosaur ‘Triceratops, how many dinosaur?’ LXY: 就、就 LXY: Jiù, jiù

这个 zhège

三角龙。 sānjiǎolóng

Just, just this-MW Triceratops ‘Just this Triceratops.’ HXT: 想 HXY: Xiǎng

一 yì

想。 xiǎng.

Think one think ‘Think about it for a bit.’

PARTICLE

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 165 LXY: 可能 在 那儿。 LXY: Kěnéng zài nà’er. May at there ‘[It] may be there.’ LXY: 可能 LXY: Kěnéng

在 zài

这 zhè

屋 wū

里。 (02;08) lǐ.

in this house inside May ‘[It] may be inside this house.’   （2） SSY: 小恐龙 到 SSY: Xiǎo kǒnglóng dào

南极 去 nánjí qù

了 le

吧？ ba?

Small dinosaur to the South Pole go PARTICLE PARTICLE ‘The little dinosaur went to the South Pole, right?’ LXY: 嗯。 LXY: en. Yes ‘Yes.’ LXY: 小 恐龙 LXY: Xiǎo kǒnglóng

应该   去   那边  了。 (02;09) yīnggāi qù nàbiān le.

Small dinosaur should go that-side PARTICLE ‘The little dinosaur should go over there.’   （3） LXY: 这 怎么 LXY: Zhè zěnme

还 hái

不 bù

开始 呀？ kāishǐ ya?

This how come still not start PARTICLE ‘How come this have not started yet?’

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了， 一定 是、一定 是 坏 了。 LXY: 这 坏 yídìng shì, yídìng shì huài le. LXY: Zhè huài le, This broke PARTICLE must be must be broke PARTICLE ‘This is broken; must be, must be broken.’ 在 烧 水 呀？（03;06） LZR: 谁、谁 LZR: Shéi, shéi zài shāo shuǐ ya? Who, who PARTICLE boil ‘Who, who is boiling water?’   （4） JBS: 这 JBS: Zhè

笔 bǐ

water PARTICLE

可能 坏 了。（02;04） kěnéng huài le

broke This pen may ‘This pen may be broken.’

PARTICLE

166  Early acquisition of degrees of modality   （5） JBS: 我去 看 看 JBS: Wǒ qù

小 鱼，应该 吃 够 粮 了。（04;06） kàn kàn xiǎo yú, yīnggāi chī gòu liáng le.

I go look look small fish should eat enough food PARTICLE ‘I’m going to check the little fish. [They] should get enough food.’   （6） SYY: 要是 夏天 过年 一定 很 好玩， 我们 穿着 汗衫 吃 年 夜饭。 （04;05） SYY: Yàoshi xiàtiān guònián yídìng hěn hǎowán, wǒmen chuānzhe hànshān chī nián yèfàn.

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If summer celebrate-new year must very fun we wear-PARTICLE t-shirt eat New Year’s Eve banquet. ‘If [we] celebrated New Year in summer, it must be so much fun. We would go to have the New Year’s Eve banquet wearing our summer clothes.’ From example (1), we can see that child LXY was not sure about where the triceratops was. She speculated that it was inside the room. Example (2) showed that LXY inferred the whereabouts of the small dinosaurs in the story and was not completely certain. In example (3), LXY expressed an opinion in regard to how the water was yet to boil and believed that the reason was that the kettle was broken. This is a necessity inference. Example (6) showed the inference made by child SYY – that it would be funny to be “wearing an undershirt while eating New Year’s dinner” if the New Year’s were to happen in the summer. Judging from the context of the preceding example sentences, the children understood the semantic degrees of “kěnéng可能、yīnggāi应该、yídìng一定”. Regarding the timing of output of the three typical words of degrees of modality, the acquisition process of the Chinese children was not exactly identical to the conclusions from non-Chinese experimental research. The children did not learn epistemic modality particularly late. They began to produce words that resemble degrees of epistemic modality around age 02;06. Based on the extent to which the possibilities differ, Possibility and Necessity exhibited a significant time difference in their acquisition, while Possibility and Probability did not differ so significantly. However, Probability signifies higher possibility and can still be classified as Possibility. Therefore, even though the absolute timing of acquisition differed among the three children, they still all followed the learning sequence from Possibility to Necessity (i.e., from uncertain to certain). 8.2.2.2 Acquisition of meanings of degrees of epistemic modality regarding polysemous modal verbs As mentioned before, expressions of degrees of modality not only consist of three typical words of degrees of modality; many monosyllabic polysemous modal verbs also express degrees of epistemic modality. For instance, the three polysemous modal verbs “néng能”, “huì会”, and “yào要” include the meanings of “possible”, “presumably quite likely” and “inferred as necessary”. We need to further observe

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 167 the acquisition of these types of words by children and see if their learning characteristics are the same as those of the typical words of degrees of modality. It should be noted that “yào要” is often interpreted as “jiāngyào将要, ‘to be’ ”, a temporal marker. However, we suggest that “yào要” not only has to mark the future tense but also indicates the necessity inference of an event being actualized in the future (i.e., the future world) and therefore also embodies degrees of necessity. LXY acquired “néng能(possible)”, “huì会(probable)”, and “yào要(necessary)” at ages 04;03, 02;05, and 02;08, respectively. It was ages 02;10, 02;10, and 03;01 for SYY and, ages 03;03, 02;03, and 02;05 for ZBS. Some speech examples are as follows:   （7） ZFA: 你 看 今天 外面 是 不是 要 下雨 了？ ZFA: Nǐ kàn jīntiān wàimiàn shì bùshì yào xiàyǔ le? You see today outside be not be will ‘Do you think today it is going to rain outside?’ LXY: 那 我 LXY: Nà wǒ

还 hái

能 néng

rain PARTICLE

出去 吗？ （04;03） chūqù ma?

Then I still may out go PARTICLE ‘In that case can/may I still go out?’   （8） HXT: 要 爷爷 HXT: Yào yéyé

呀。 ya.

Want paternal grandfather ‘[You] want grandpa.’

PARTICLE

LXY: 对 呀。 LXY: Duì ya.

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Yes PARTICLE ‘Yes!’ 姐姐 HXT: 要 HXT: Yào jiějiě

吗？ ma?

Want older sister PARTICLE ‘Do you want older sister?’ LXY: 不要 姐姐， 爷爷 LXY: Bùyào jiějiě, yéyé

会 huì

生气。 shēngqì.

Not want older sister, paternal grandfather will mad ‘[I] don’t want older sister; Grandpa will be mad.’ HXT: 妈妈 HXT: Māmā

在 zài

这里。（02;05） zhèlǐ.

Mother in here ‘Mother is over here.’

168  Early acquisition of degrees of modality      (9) SYY: 搁 这 顶 上，待 会儿 我 妈 要 SYY: Gē zhè dǐng shàng, dài huì’er wǒ mā yào 着 了， 就。 （03;01） zháo le, jiù.

找 不 zhǎo bù

Put here top up wait later I mom will find not successful PARTICLE then ‘Put [it] on the top of this. [If you don’t do so,] my mom will not able to find it later.’ 吃。 (10） XWE: 你 看 琳达 看着 你 呢, 琳达 也 想 XWE: Nǐ kàn líndá kànzhe nǐ ne, líndá yě xiǎng chī. You see Linda see PARTICLE you PARTICLE Linda also want eat ‘See, Linda is watching you. Linda also wants to eat [it].’ CLW: 呵呵。 CLW: Hēhē. Haha (laughing sound) ‘Haha.’ JBS: 你 吃了 要 拉稀 的。 JBS: Nǐ chīle yào lāxī de. You eat PARTICLE will diarrhea PARTICLE ‘You will have diarrhea if you eat [something].’ CLW: 嗯? CLW: en? uh ‘Uh?’

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XWE: 它 吃完 要 辣 XWE: Tā chīwán yào là

到 的 dào de

是 吧? shì ba?

It eat-finish will spicy successfully PARTICLE be PARTICLE ‘[If you] finish it, you’ll get hit by the heat/spice, right?’ JBS: 就 别 的 东西 你 也 不行, 也 拉稀。（03;02） JBS: Jiù bié de dōngxi nǐ yě bùxíng, yě lāxī. Modal.ADV other PARTICLE thing you also notacceptable also diarrhea ‘Even other things are not acceptable for you [to eat]; [if you eat them, you’ll] also have diarrhea.’ 哪 能 不 (11） JBS: 这个 这么 简单 JBS: Zhège zhème jiǎndān nǎ néng bú

会 huì

呢。（04;06） ne.

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 169 This-MW this.ADV easy how possible not understand PARTICLE ‘This is so easy. How can [one] not understand [this]?’ (12) JBS: 别 脱 袜子 啊。 JBS: Bié tuō wàzi a. Don’t take off sock PARTICLE ‘Don’t take the socks off!’ ZLZ: 嗯。 ZLZ: en. Yes ‘Yes.’ JBS: 别，脱了 JBS: Bié, tuōle

会 huì

感冒 的， 是 吧？（02;03） gǎnmào de, shì ba?

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Don’t take off PARTICLE will catch a cold PARTICLE PARTICLE ‘Don’t! [If] taking [them] off, [one] will catch a cold, right?’

be

Observing the context of children’s output of polysemous modal verbs, we can see that in example (7), the child was worried that he or she could not go outside to play since the experimenter said that it was going to rain outside – “néng能” indicates possibility in a question.4 In example (9), the child told his or her father to “put it where mother could find”. The child inferred that if it was not done so, it would not be found. This suggested a relatively high level of certainty and indicates necessity. In example (12), the child expressed his or her speculation regarding how a cold could result from taking off the socks; “huì会” indicated probability here. A relatively special case of the acquisition of degrees of modality among polysemous modal verbs was “néng能”. Both LXY and JBS started to produce it quite late and with a low frequency. The reasons are discussed in section 8.3.2. If we exclude the case of “néng能”, the acquisition of monosyllabic polysemous modal verbs in regard to their degrees of modality still follows the order of Possibility (include relatively large possibility) to Necessity. However, their timing of acquisition would be slightly prior to that of typical words of degrees of modality, which generally concurs with the conclusions from non-Chinese developmental studies. Based on this description, we noticed two issues: First, determining when the children acquired the ability to subjectively assess the world solely based on the acquisition of “kěnéng可能、yīnggāi应该、yídìng一 定” would not be holistic – missing details could lead to biased conclusions. Second, the acquisition of the degrees of modality still exhibited a trend from Possibility to Necessity. If this order was disrupted, there usually would be other

170  Early acquisition of degrees of modality functional or cognitive motivations, such as syntactic co-occurrence restrictions, register features, and so on. 8.2.2.3 Acquisition of degrees of epistemic modality of modal particles Different from Indo-European languages, Chinese is a language with sentence-final particles. Sentence-final particles primarily express moods such as statement, question, imperative, and exclamation. However, mood is relatively complex with differences in degrees among its various types. For example, there are simple questions as well as speculative and weak questions and even rhetorical questions; regarding statements, there are simple statements and statements based on subjective inference. Therefore, sentence-final particles sometimes can express the subjective speculations of the speaker in regard to the possible variations of a proposition or event being actual and thus embody the meaning of epistemic modality. We regard this type of sentencefinal particles as modal particles. Modal particles are expressions that also have modal meanings. We identify the exact usage of epistemic modality meanings among the various meanings of sentence-final particles. For instance, for a question with a sentence-final particle, it has to indicate the speaker’s judgment or presumption of the content of the answer.5 Eventually, we confirmed that “吧(speculation-Probability), 吗1(speculation-Possibility), 吗2(inferenceNecessity), 嘛(inference-Necessity)” consist of degrees of epistemic modality. The three children’s acquisition of their various epistemic modal meanings were as follows: （13） HXT:   那 HXT: Nà

是 谁 shì shéi

呀？ ya?

That be who PARTICLE? ‘Who is that?’

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LXY: 是 LXY: Shì

小 xiǎo

兔子 吧？ （01;08） tùzi ba?

Be small rabbit PARTICLE ‘[It] must be a bunny.’ （14） LXY:   维尼 LXY: Wēiní

是 shì

拔 bá

萝卜 luóbo

吗1？ （02;00） ma1?

Winni be pull radish ma1.PARTICLE ‘Did Winnie the Pooh pull the radish?’ （15） SYY:   这 SYY: Zhè

不 bú

有 yǒu

电 diàn

吗2？ （02;09） ma2?

This not have electricity ma2.PARTICLE ‘Isn’t this electrical?/Doesn’t this have power?’

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 171 （16） JBS:   这 JBS: Zhè

不 bú

是 shì

没 méi

This not be not ‘[See,] this is not broken!’

坏 huài

嘛！（02;11） ma!

broke

ma.PARTICLE

（17） JBS:   我 不 是 给 你 叫 过 了 吗2？ （02;08） JBS: Wǒ bú shì gěi nǐ jiào guò le ma2? I not be GEI you call PARTICLE PARTICLE m a 2 . PARTICLE ‘Didn’t I call for you already?’ (18) JBS: 滑板车 JBS: Huábǎnchē

没 了 吧？ （02;00） méi le ba?

Scooter not.have PARTICLE ba.PARTICLE ‘The scooter is gone now?’ （19） SYY   ：蚊子 SYY: Wénzi

可 不 是 咬 人 嘛。 （02;08） kě bú shì yǎo rén ma.

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Mosquito PARTICLE.emphasis not be bite people ma.PARTICLE ‘Of course mosquitos bite people’ “吧” can be used in questions or declarative sentences. The speaker has already inferred the answer, but he or she cannot be certain. Using “吧” softens the question and weakens the affirmative tone. In example (13), the child had already inferred that it was a “bunny” but was not completely certain. “吧” appropriately reflected this lack of complete certainty. “吗1” is used in non-interrogative6 sentences. It questions an affirmative event and turns the event from certain to uncertain. In example (14), the child posed a question regarding “Winnie is pulling out the carrot” and made the event possible either way – that it became an event of possibility. “吗2” is generally used in negative rhetorical questions. It strengthens the affirmative meaning through a questioning tone. It consists of degrees of necessity. From example (15), we can see that the child used this format to strengthen the affirmation “this has electricity” and was very apt at utilizing it. “嘛” can be used in both affirmative and negative sentences. It posits a speculation on the necessity of a proposition or event being actual. Differing from “吗2” is its lack of the tone of an interrogative. In example (16), the child used “嘛” in a double negative sentence, making the affirmative meaning stronger – that it was of degrees of necessity. Overall, observing the example sentences produced by the children, we can see that they were situated in an appropriate context and had a clear meaning of degrees of epistemic modality. This showed that the children had already understood the various meanings of modals and could use them correctly. We first examined the timing of output of the various types of modals produced by the children. Clearly different from modal verbs, their acquisition was greatly advanced. At age 01;08, acquisition had already occurred for the Necessity meaning “吧” and the Possibility meaning “吗1”. As such, Chinese children have the

172  Early acquisition of degrees of modality ability to make subjective inferences of the material world at around age 02;00, which is much earlier than that determined by non-Chinese research. In terms of the degrees of modality, we still observed the tendency of leaning from Possibility to Necessity. “吗2” and “嘛”, meaning Necessity, were both acquired after age 02;06, which was later than the acquisition of “吧、吗1” for Possibility and Probability. “吗” indicates degrees. The one referring to Possibility, “吗1”, was first learned, and the one meaning Necessity, “吗2”, was learned later. 8.2.2.4 Acquisition of degrees of epistemic modality of modal adverbs Traditionally, modal particles are called modal adverbs, which suggest the complex meaning of modal particles – that they have both the meaning of mood and modality, for instance, “hao3xiang4好像 ‘as if’、di2que4的确 ‘indeed’、qian1wan4千万 ‘be sure to’、dang1ran2当然 ‘of course’、qi2shi2其实 ‘actually’、yuan2lai2原 来 ‘originally’、mo4fei1莫非 ‘could it be’、fen1ming2分明 ‘clearly’ ”, and so on. Based on research by Zhang (2000, pp. 55–71), Cui (2002), Shi (2003), Xu (2008, pp. 286–295), Qi (2007), we concluded that there are 159 adverbs of epistemic modal meaning (Zhang & Lin, 2015).7 We then searched the corpus of the three children and discovered that there were very few modal adverbs produced prior to age 04;06. Among them, only these items indicate epistemic modality: “当然” (inference – Necessity)”, “肯定 (inference – Necessity)”, “好像 (speculation  – Probability)”, “原来 (inference  – Necessity)”, “其实(inference  – Necessity)”, “反正 (inference – Necessity)”, “准(是) (inference – Necessity)”, “没准 (speculation – Probability)”, “倒是(inference – Necessity)”, “差点(儿) (speculation – Probability)”. Some speech examples are as follows: （20） LYR:   你 去过 吗？ LYR: Nǐ qùguò ma?

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You go PARTICLE PARTICLE ‘Have you been [there before]?’ LXY: 我 去过， 当然 LXY: Wǒ qùguò, dāngrán

去过 博物馆 qùguò bówùguǎn

啦。 （03;00） la.

I go PARTICLE of course go PARTICLE museum PARTICLE ‘I have been [there]; Of course [I] have been to the museum.’ （21） LXY:   冒 烟 了 吗？ 肯定 冒 烟 了。（03;01） LXY: Mào yān le ma? Kěndìng mào yān le. Emit smoke PARTICLE PARTICLE certainly emit smoke PARTICLE ‘Has [it] emitted smoke? [It] has certainly emitted some smoke.’ （22） LXY:   英语 LXY: Yīngyǔ

老师 叫 . . . ，不 lǎoshī jiào. . ., bù

知道。 zhīdào.

English teacher called not know ‘The English teacher is called. . . [I] don’t know.’

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 173 LZR: 不 知道 呀? LZR: Bù zhīdào ya? Not know PARTICLE ‘[You] don’t know?’ 我 不 知道。（03;08） LXY: 反正 LXY: Fǎnzhèng wǒ bù zhīdào. Anyway I not know ‘I don’t know anyway.’ （23） JBS:   小 猫 差点儿 把 水 里 把 JBS: Xiǎo māo chàdiǎn’er bǎ shuǐ lǐ nòng 水 里 泡。（03;06） shuǐ lǐ pào.

他 bǎ

尾巴 弄 tā wěibā

Small cat almost BA water inside BA he tail do water inside soak ‘The little cat almost in the water, dipped his tail into the water.’ （24） JBS：不   是，其实 不 是 大 地瓜 干 的， 是  米 老 鼠 。 （03;04） JBS: Bú shì, qíshí bù shì dà dìguā gàn de, shì mǐlǎoshǔ. Not be, actually not be big sweet potato do PARTICLE be Mickey Mouse. ‘No, actually it is not Big Sweet Potato who did it, it was the Micky Mouse.’ （25） ZXN:   被子 ZXN: Bèizi

来 lái

了。 le.

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Quilt come PARTICLE ‘The Quilt is here.’ JBS: 呃！ JBS: È! ‘Oh.’ ZXN: 把 ZXN: Bǎ

头 tóu

都 dōu

盖 gài

住 zhù

啊？ a?

BA head all cover firmness PARTICLE ‘cover the head all up?’ JBS: 在 这 倒是 得 盖 这个 小 被子，它 JBS: Zài zhè dàoshì děi gài zhège xiǎo bèizi, tā 边 就 得 盖 大 被子,（04;06） bèizi, biān jiù děi gài dà

在 zài

那 nà

174  Early acquisition of degrees of modality At here on the contrary have to cover this-MW small quilt it at that-side modal.ADV have to cover big quilt ‘On the contrary, [it] has to be under this small quilt over here, and it has to be under the big quilt over there.’ （26） DYI:   这个 是 黄 的， 这 是 一个 小 狗，你 的 吗？ DYI: Zhège shì huáng de, zhè shì yíge xiǎo gǒu, nǐ de ma? This-MW be yellow PARTICLE this be one-MW small dog you PARTICLE PARTICLE ‘This is yellow, this is a little dog, yours?’ JBS: 好像 JBS: Hǎoxiàng

是 shì

豆豆 娃娃。（03;03） dòudou (personal name) wáwa.

Seem be Doudou ‘[It] seems to be Baby Doudou[’s].’

baby

（27） SYH:   下课了 老师 夸奖 齐齐 上课 SYH: Xiàkèle lǎoshī kuājiǎng Qíqi (personal name) 专心 听讲， 你 知道 吗？ shàngkè zhuānxīn tīngjiǎng, nǐ zhīdào ma? Down class PARTICLE teacher praise Qiqi (personal name) up class pay attention listen speech you know PARTICLE ‘The class is dismissed. The teacher praised Qiqi for paying attention in class. Do you know?’ SYY: 当然 SYY: Dāngrán

知道 了。（3;10） zhīdào le.

Of course know PARTICLE ‘Of course, [I] know.’

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（28） SYH:   拍 的 那 球儿，也 不 谁 给 弄 瘪 了。 SYH: Pāi de nà qiú’er, yě bù shéi gěi nòng biě le. Hit PARTICLE that ball also not who for do shriveled PARTICLE ‘That ball that was being bounced. [One does not know] who shriveled it.’ SYY: 准是 苏万成 整 SYY: Zhǔnshì Sū Wànchéng zhěng

的。 de.

Must be Su Wanchang (personal name) do PARTICLE ‘[It] must be Su Wancheng who did it.’ SYH: 苏万成? SYH: Sū Wànchéng? Su Wanchang (personal name) ‘Su Wanchang?’

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 175 SYY: 没准儿 SYY: Méizhǔn’er

军军 吧? （02;11） Jūnjun ba?

Probably Junjun (personal name) PARTICLE ‘Possibly/It could be Junjun.’ （29） JBS:   我 以为 桃子 在 哪儿 呢？ 原来 在 这里 啊！ （04;03） JBS: Wǒ yǐwéi táozi zài nǎ’er ne? Yuánlái zài zhèlǐ a! I

thought peach in where PARTICLE all along in here PARTICLE ‘I wondered where the peaches were. [They] are here all along!’ The acquisition of modal adverbs, especially their degrees of Necessity, were overall learned relatively late – even a bit later than the learning of “可能、应 该” – generally around age 03:00 or after.

8.3 Characteristics and preliminary explanations regarding the acquisition of degrees of modality

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8.3.1  Degrees of modality Generally, degrees of modality can be divided into three semantic levels: Possibility, Probability, and Necessity. Since the degree of modality involves subjective speculation, they are subjective. Thus, the degrees of modality are fundamentally a quantification of subjectivity. The subjective estimate of the degree of likelihood can at least be quantified into three levels – possible, quite possible, and certainty. But precisely because of subjective quantification, the boundaries among these three levels are not necessarily very clear, such that there may be intermediate states in between the levels. This also shows that the degrees of modality in natural language are not as uniform as those of modal logic, and their levels of semantic meanings may have more complicated manifestations. In addition, since the metrics of modality of natural languages for subjective quantification do not have clear boundaries, there should be some adjustments to supplement and refine the modality metrics. Therefore, we paid particular attention to two issues in regard to degrees of modality: first, the order of acquisition of degrees of modality. This is because this order can reveal, to an extent, children’s cognition of the world and its existence; second, the adjustment of modality levels and the acquisition of the supplement of modality. They can indicate the development of children’s subjective quantification and their understanding of interpersonal functions. 8.3.2  Order of acquisition regarding degrees of modality For the various types of modals with different degrees of modality, we calculated the timing of acquisition and the number of outputs of the three participant children (see Table 8.2).

Modal adverbs

Modal particles

Modal verbs

1079/01;11 好像/02;10/12 好像/03;02/11 好像/02;09/4

27/02;11

Total # and average age

LXY

JBS

SYY

Total # and average age

13/03;05

能/04;03/3 能/03;03/5 能/02;10/5

24/02;11

可能/02;08/10 可能/ 02;04/11 可能/03;08/3

吗1/02;00/152 吗1 /02;01/326 吗1/01;08/601

LXY JBS SYY

LXY JBS SYY

49/02;07

没准儿/02;10/37

差点儿/02;05/12

652/01;10

吧/01;08/76 吧/02;00/368 吧/01;11/208

141/02;06

会/02;05/72 会/ 02;03/48 会/02;10/21

15/03;04

应该/02;09/8 应该/03;03/3 应该/03;11/4

word/time/quantity

word/time/quantity

LXY JBS SYY

Total # and average age

Monosyllabic

Total # and average age

Disyllabic

Relatively more possible (probability)

Possible (possibility)

Table 8.2 Descriptive data of the acquisition of degrees of modality in three children (words, timing, and quantity)

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151/ 03;05

当然/03;00/25 原来/03;04/9 其实/03;01/10 反正/03;08/6 肯定/03;01/16 当然/02;11/18 原来/04;03/3 其实/03;04/5 反正/03;11/10 肯定/03;01/19 倒是/04;06/2 当然/03;10/3 原来/03;01/15 准(是)/02;11/3 反正/03;00/3 肯定/03;11/3

132/02;10

嘛/03;07/4 吗2/03;01/7 嘛/ 02;08/21 吗2/02;07/61 嘛/02;08/14 吗2/02;09/25

54/02;09

要/02;08/24 要/ 02;05/17 要/03;01/13

13/04;02

一定/03;06/5 一定/04;06/4 一定/04;05/4

word/time/quantity

Necessary (certainty)

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 177 1200

Possible

1079

1000

More possible

800 625

600

Certainty

400 200

0

156 56 37 Modal verbs

6 67

132 132

49

20 Modal particles

151 151

Modal adverbs

Figure 8.1 Output quantity of words with various degrees of modality

Based on the data in Table 8.2, we used column graphs and line graphs to more intuitively present the output quantities and developmental trends of words with various degrees of modality. From Table 8.2 and Figures 8.1 and 8.2, we can see that

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1

Except for modal adverbs, all types of modals had outputs corresponding to degrees from possible to certain. 2 With the exception of “好像” indicating possibility and “差点(儿)、没 准(儿)” suggesting probability, all adverbs belong to the degree of probability. In addition, they were almost learned en masse by children. Their timing of acquisition was largely in line with that of other words indicating degrees of necessity. 3 Although each child exhibited varied time lines in regard to their output of the various types of words of degrees of modality, overall, their time lines followed the order of developing from Possibility to Necessity. The degree of necessity was generally acquired last of the various types of modals, at around age 03:00 and after. 4 There was a clear outlier in this trend – the output timing of “能” (Possibility) was rather late for two children. We will provide further explanations in the following. 5 Regarding the degrees of modality, possibility and relatively large possibility did not share an identical order of acquisition. The order of acquisition of different modals varied from child to child. In the acquisition of modal particles, two children even acquired “relatively large possibility” (吗2) prior to “possibility” (吗1). Additionally, for JBS, the output timing of the modal adverb “relatively large possibility” preceded that of “possibility”. While we cannot yet explain this learning characteristic, we recognized that “relatively large possibility” still occurred prior to “necessity” and with a very large time span. Therefore, possibility was still acquired before necessity overall.

More possible

Certainty

Possible

More possible

Certainty

Modal adverbs

Modal particles

Disyllabic modal verbs

Monosyllabic modal verbs

SYY:Developmental trends of various types of degrees of modality by age

Possible

Modal adverbs

Modal particles

Disyllabic modal verbs

Monosyllabic modal verbs

More possible

Certainty

Modal particles

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Possible

More possible

Certainty

Modal adverbs

Modal particles

Disyllabic modal verbs

Monosyllabic modal verbs

Three children's developmental trends of various types of degrees of modality by age

0

Modal adverbs

Disyllabic modal verbs

20 10

Monosyllabic modal verbs

30

Possible

JBS:Developmental trends of various types of degrees of modality by age

40

50

60

Figure 8.2 Developmental trend of various degrees of modality by age (individual development and overall development)8

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

LXY:Developmental trends of various types of degrees of modality by age

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Age(month)

Age(month)

Age(month) Age(month)

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Early acquisition of degrees of modality 179 What we are interested in is this: Why does children’s acquisition of degrees of modality go from possibility to necessity and not vice versa? We speculated that this sequential characteristic depended on the semantic features of the various degrees of modality as well as children’s cognitive level and other factors that may interfere. We examined the semantic features of each degree of modality first. The inevitability and possibility in modal logic depend on the interpretation of possible world semantics (Kripke, 2001). In regard to necessity, the semantic interpretation is that a proposition p is inevitable in the possible world w, if and only if p is true in all possible worlds related to w (i.e., whether an inevitability proposition is true or false in a possible world depends on whether the proposition is true or false in other possible worlds related to w). And with regard to possibility, its semantic interpretation is that a proposition p is possible in the possible world w, if and only if there is a possible world w relative to w, where p is true. In a nutshell, inevitability inference implies that each possible world related to the real world is to be conceived of based on the real world that is already true and that there are no counterexamples in these possible worlds, whereas possibility inference does not require the conception of all possible worlds. Propositions can be established as long as they are true in a possible world (including the real world in which it is already true). Probability, though more likely, is still not certainty, and its semantic interpretation can be referenced to that of possibility. Judging from the difficulty of semantic formation and comprehension, necessity is clearly more complex than possibility. Therefore, if uninterrupted by other factors, children should follow the order from possibility to necessity when acquiring the degrees of modality. However, the semantic interpretation of degrees of modality is not a closed system and is bound to be disrupted by factors that would affect the order of acquisition. Based on the participants’ acquisition as described in this chapter, the most prominent impact comes from syntactic co-occurrence restrictions. At the same time, the level of complexity in regard to cognitive interpretation as well as the acquisition of mood also have some effects on learning epistemic modals. The preceding data showed that the degree of possibility was acquired relatively early while the aforementioned “能”, when indicating degree of possibility, was produced relatively late by LXY and JBS with correct meaning, appropriate context, and a very small number of outputs. A careful examination regarding the use of this word revealed that the condition of syntactic co-occurrence for “能” to mean possibility tended to be rhetorical questions. As is commonly known, using rhetorical questions is not about posing questions but rather about providing affirmative information to the listener. However, it utilizes the syntactic form of interrogative sentences. Therefore, both comprehending and using rhetorical questions involve issues regarding the interface of semantics and syntax, and it is necessary to resolve the polar opposition between the surface form and the semantic connotations. This requires complex calculations and relatively skilled pragmatic abilities and is thus not easy for young children to acquire. Since “能” is syntactically restricted when indicating possibility, its function is limited in

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180  Early acquisition of degrees of modality Mandarin. Adults therefore also do not use this semantic meaning with high frequency. However, for children, frequency is not the main factor. The key is that syntactic co-occurrence restrictions of the complex semantic meanings constrain children’s acquisition. When children have acquired the ability to learn a certain linguistic item, learning should occur when there is input. We need to pay attention to two issues regarding the acquisition of modals: First, of the modals, those that mean possibility and probability “吗1、吧” were learned early. But the modals indicating necessity “嘛、吗2” were learned relatively late. Though the latter have to do with their own semantic characteristics, given the fact that the timing of acquisition was very early for both the modal meanings possibility and relatively large possibility, we consider that this delay was largely related to the fact that the condition of syntactic co-occurrence for “嘛、吗2” was rhetorical questions with negation words. For “吗1、吧”, the condition of syntactic cooccurrence was very simple, a plain yes-no question – a declarative sentence with a question word. When studying the development of interrogative questions in a child, Li and Chen (1999, pp. 86–87) also observed that there was a natural output of yes-no questions around age 02:00. Secondly, for the modals that indicate possibility and relatively large possibility, their acquisition preceded that of modal verbs, and their production even occurred prior to age 02;00. We consider this to be the result of the impact of various factors, including mood, complexity of cognitive interpretation, numbers of output, and so on. Modals are also a means of expression for modality, with mood as the most dominant characteristic – mood is present in every sentence. An interrogative mood with a modal meaning can be expressed in intonation or with a mood particle. With the exception of mood particles that only occur in certain difficult sentence structures (for examples, “嘛、吗2” of interrogative sentences with a negation word), mood particles are mostly acquired very early (Wang, 2012; Peng, 2016, pp.  120–132) and are systematically produced at around age 02;00. Therefore, those mood particles that also have a modal meaning are acquired relatively early by children as well, that is to say, the earliest learned degrees of modality are involuntarily acquired by children via the acquisition of mood. However, not all mood particles are learned very early by children. Only those that have simple conditions of syntactic co-occurrence and cognitive interpretation are acquired early. For instance, the “呢” in simple interrogatives (Li & Chen, 1999, pp. 90–92) is learned a little earlier than “吗1、吧”. Its syntactic forms for simple interrogatives are mostly noun words + “呢”, such as “爸爸呢? Dad-ne? ‘Where is dad?’ ”, “这个呢? This-ne? ‘How about this?’ ”. Simple conditions for syntactic co-occurrence usually suggest easy cognitive interpretations and the absence of multi-faceted readings arising from the interface of syntax and semantics. This type of element is often what a child is exposed to as input. We therefore investigated the input. Considering that the language materials prior to SYY turning 01;07 were not very rich, that “能(epistemic modality)、吗2、嘛” are restricted by complex conditions of syntactic co-occurrence, and that “可能、 应该(epistemic modality)” are disyllabic modals, we only performed an exhaustive search on the input of LXY and JBS before age 02:01 regarding their mothers’ production of monosyllabic modals and modal verbs “吧、吗1” and “会(epistemic modality)、要(epistemic modality)”. Results are shown in Table 8.3.

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 181 Table 8.3 Input on four modals for two children

Acquisition

Total # of sentences Input # Proportion

要 Acquisition

Acquisition

Proportion

Total # of sentences Input #

Acquisition

Total # of sentences Input # Proportion

会

吗1 Proportion

Total # of sentences Input #

吧

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LXY 837 535 64% 1;08 1291 1185 92% 2;00 413 17 4% 2;05 838 4 0.05% 2;08 JBS 253 153 60% 2;00 1575 1552 98% 2;01 236 6 3% 2;03 523 9 0.8% 2;05

Here, total number of sentences refers to the numbers of sentence input with mood particles or modals. Input number refers to the numbers of sentences that have an epistemic meaning. The two children were both accompanied by their mothers. We can see that whether it was the input number or the ratio of total number of sentences to input number, the input of “吧、吗1” far exceeded that of “会、要”. The acquisition of modals led us to speculate that degrees of modality in languages with sentence-final particles may be learned earlier than those in languages that do not have sentence-final particles. Meanwhile, this also at least suggests that modality and mood are very closely linked in Chinese and that the acquisition of modality is influenced and constrained by factors related to mood. Given the levels of cognitive abilities of children younger than 03;00, they are yet able to perform necessity inference very well since they do not yet possess the ability to imagine all possible situations. At the same time, they lack adequate experience for causal reasoning, nor do they possess rich knowledge as arguments or the ability to obtain underlying rules from observing phenomena. For example, young children cannot derive the inference that “man must die” by deductive or inductive experience. If they witness the passing of someone, they will pose questions or speculations such as “Will I die in the future?”9 Therefore, young children have many questions, and their general attitude toward a proposition or an event is speculation, inference, and verification, which is Possibility and Necessity. We also see that when the children initially started to use “一定”, they could not be completely certain and therefore produced oxymoronic phrases, such as “可能一 定是真的, possible-certain-is-true, ‘Possibly certainly true’ ”. Additionally, in the world of communication between children and adults, children are often passive and in a non-dominant position. We suspected that this may also be related to children’s learning characteristics of degrees of modality.

8.4 Supplement and refinement of degrees of modality Previously, we have mentioned that degrees of modality are the quantification of subjectivity and that it has three unclear gradients from Possibility to Necessity. So how does language adjust and supplement modal values and levels of subjectivity? Hoye (1997) believed that modal adverbs are complementary to modality and can adjust the objectivity and subjectivity of modal values in utterances. For

182  Early acquisition of degrees of modality instance, modal adverb really and modal verbs can and will can work together to confirm facts, emphasize attitudes, strengthen degrees, and so on. Zhang and Lin (2015) regarded modal adverbs as elements that are on the modality-mood continuum and divided modal adverbs into typical modal adverbs for modality, atypical modal adverbs for mood, and relatively typical modal adverbs in the middle based on the modality-mood continuum. The more mood-like, the richer these modal adverbs are in regard to their interpersonal functionality. They are also of higher subjectivity and are supplements to the degrees of modality, as their interpersonal functions are complex. Although adverbs with significant modality attributes also have interpersonal functions or subjectivity, their main role is to refine the degrees of modality. Therefore, the supplemental role of modal adverbs includes the adjustment of modal values as well as subjectivity and objectivity as mentioned in Hoye (1997). We refer to the adjustment of modal values as refinement, which includes strengthening and weakening. The adjustment of subjectivity level (the modal value remains unchanged) is referred to as supplementing. In this regard, modal adverbs are an important means of adjusting and supplementing modal values and levels of subjectivity. In addition, we believe using modal verbs in conjunction can also adjust modal values. 8.4.1  The refinement and supplemental function of modal adverbs The modal adverbs learned by young children include those that are modalityleaning, such as “肯定、真的、好像”, and those that are mood-leaning, such as “反正、原来”, as well as those that are a mixture of modality and mood, such as “当然、其实”. The number of modal adverbs learned was small, and the acquisition generally occurred after age 03:00. This included the independent use of modal adverbs as well as using them in conjunction with modal verbs. Cases of independent use can be seen in examples (20) to (29). Cases of using them in conjunction is shown below:

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（30） HXT:   累 吗? HXT: Lèi ma? Tired PARTICLE ‘[Are you] tired?’ LXY: 当然 LXY: Dāngrán

会 累， huì lèi,

穿 小 chuān xiǎo

鞋 xié

呀。 （03;00） ya.

Of course will tired wear small shoe PARTICLE ‘Of course [I am] tired. I’m wearing smaller shoes.’ （31） LZR:   它 为什么 LZR: Tā wèishéme

要 yào

把 bǎ

头 伸 tóu shēn

进 去 jìn qù

呀？ ya?

It why want BA head extend enter go PARTICLE ‘Why did it stick the head inside?’

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 183 LXY: 因为 . . .  它 . . . 它 让 别人 看 不见 它，本来 . . .  LXY: Yīnwèi. . .  tā . . . tā ràng biérén kàn bùjiàn tā, běnlái. . .  其实 能 看见。（04;06） qíshí néng kànjiàn. Because   it it let others see not perceived it originally actually able see perceived ‘Because . . . it . . . it let others unable to see it. Originally. . . [one] could actually see it.’ （32） LYI:   啊, 你 怎么 啦, 是 不是 要 感冒? LYI: A, nǐ zěnme la, shì búshì yào gǎnmào? PARTICLE you how PARTICLE be not be will catch a cold ‘Ah, What’s the matter with you? Are you catching a cold?’ JBS: 嗯, 我 JBS: en, wǒ

当然 dāngrán

要 yào

感冒。（03;01） gǎnmào.

Yes I of course will catch a cold ‘Yes, of course I’m catching a cold.’

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Although the number of cases representing acquisition was small, we can still consider that 1 After age 03;00, children can adjust the value of modality. For instance, in example (30), by placing “当然” in front of the epistemic modal verb of necessity, “会”, the degree of certainty was enhanced. 2 Children can provide supplements to degrees of modality after age 03;00. They can adjust the subjectivity level from the perspective of interpersonal functions. For instance, “原来” indicates certainty (Necessity), such that one can confirm the status of a new situation and that such newly discovered situation is unexpected, therefore causing one to suddenly have an epiphany. We can see that in addition to the modal meaning indicating certainty, “原来” also includes the conviction brought by the epiphany of realizing something unexpectedly new. “当然、其实、反正” have intersubjectivity and consist of the speaker’s attention toward the listener’s emotion, attitude, and evaluation. For example, when the speaker notices that the listener might be suspicious of the actuality of the description of an event, he or she can use “当然” to express certainty and imply that “it is reasonable and need not be doubted”. When the speaker detects that the listener may have a differing opinion regarding the event that is being described, he or she can use “其实” to express certainty while implying that he or she is “correcting or adjusting the listener’s opinion”; “反正” implies “the conclusion and result remain unchanged under whatever circumstances” (see Lü, 1999, p. 199 for reference). The speaker then further indicates affirmation is because he or she discerns that the listener may have various different opinions and would like to negate all possibilities. This development of children’s ability suggests that they begin to exhibit some pragmatic competence and understanding of interpersonal functions after age 03;00.

184  Early acquisition of degrees of modality 8.4.2  Co-occurrence of modals The co-occurring modals discussed here include two aspects: one is the co-occurrence of different degrees of modality, and the second is the co-occurrence of epistemic modals and non-epistemic modals. See the following: （33） HXT:   你 拿 着 让 它 在 地上 走， 看 它会 不 会 爬？ HXT: Nǐ ná zhe ràng tā zài dìshàng zǒu, kàn tā huì bú huì pá? You take PARTICLE let it in floor up walk see it able not able crawl ‘You take it and let it walk on the ground, to see if it can crawl.’ LXY: 不 知道，会 吧， 可能。 LXY: Bù zhīdào, huì ba, kěnéng. Not know able PARTICLE possible/may ‘Don’t know, it can [I think (the tone of uncertainty)], possibly.’ HXT: 到底 会 还是 不会？ HXT: Dàodǐ huì háishì bù huì? not able In the end able or ‘[It] can or cannot? (with the tone of emphasizing the question).’ LXY: 会，应该 LXY: Huì, yīnggāi

会。 （03;09） huì.

Able, should able ‘[It] can, [it] should be able to.’ （34） LZR:   什么 LZR: Shénme

时候 shíhòu

回来 呀？ huílái ya?

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What moment return come PARTICLE ‘When will [one] come back?’ 才 回来， 大 灰 狼 就 LXY: 到 了 晚上 jiù LXY: Dào le wǎnshàng cái huílái, dà huī láng 一定 会 睡着 了。（04;05） yídìng huì shuìzhe le. Approach PARTICLE evening Modal.ADV return come big grey wolf then must will fall asleep PARTICLE ‘[One] will not come back until evening. [By then], the Big Grey Wolf must have fallen asleep.’ （35） HXT:   乌云 出来 了， 要 下雨，太阳 都 没有 了。 HXT: Wūyún chūlái le, yào xiàyǔ, tàiyáng dōu méiyǒu le. Dark cloud out come PARTICLE will rain sun all not-have PARTICLE ‘The cloud is coming out. It’s going to rain, and the sun is gone.’

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 185 LXY: 可能   今天 要 LXY: Kěnéng  jīntiān yào

下雨。（04;03） xiàyǔ.

Possible/may today will rain ‘It may rain today.’ （36） LZR:   可以 LZR: Kěyǐ

吃 chī

吗？ ma?

Can/able eat PARTICLE ‘Can [one] eat [something]?’ LXY: 应该 LXY: Yīnggāi

可以 kěyǐ

吃。（04;04） chī.

Should can/able eat ‘Should be okay to eat [it].’ （37） JBS:   看，干 了， 一定 要 把 它 甩 干 了。（04;06） JBS: Kàn, gān le,  yídìng yào bǎ tā shuǎi gān le.

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See dry PARTICLE must will BA it swing dry PARTICLE ‘See, [it becomes] dry, [One] must dry it (by swinging).’ Cinque (1999, p. 77) proposed a hierarchical sequence of modal conjugations, namely the necessity of epistemic modality > possibility of epistemic modality > will of dynamic modality > obligation of deontic modality > ability of dynamic modality/permission of deontic modality. The children’s learning situation described in this chapter largely concurred with Cinque’s (1999) view. The characteristics of their conjunctival use were as follows: if all co-occurring modals were of epistemic modality, their order was generally necessity of epistemic modality before possibility of epistemic modality, as shown in example (34). There were also exceptions; for instance, in example (35), possibility precedes necessity. If two modals were of the same degree, typically disyllables went in front of monosyllables, as shown in examples (33) and (37). If co-occurring modals included both epistemic and non-epistemic modality, the order was epistemic before non-epistemic, as in example (36). The epistemic modal generally appears before non-modals since epistemic modals have stronger subjectivity and should be farther away from the sentence’s core thematic pattern. Here, epistemic modality refines degrees of non-epistemic modality, such as example (36). When two epistemic modals co-occur, if they are of different degrees, then the first refines the latter. For instance, in examples (34) and (37), the preceding Necessity modal increases the expressed possibility of the succeeding Possibility modal, whereas in example (35), the Possibility modal in the front decreases the Necessity of the following modal. Compare the subtle changes in regard to the degrees of modality in the following two groups of sentences: Ⅰ、ⅰ.今天要下雨。 Certainly is confirmed ‘It’s going to rain today.’

186  Early acquisition of degrees of modality ⅱ.今天可能要下雨。 Certainly is possible ‘It might rain today.’ Ⅱ、ⅰ.我会叠一个飞机给她。 High possibility （Probability） ‘I will fold a plane for her.’ ⅱ.我一定会叠一个飞机给她。Confirmed high possibility （Probability） ‘I sure will fold a plane for her.’ Of course, not all epistemic modals can co-occur. For instance, the two clauses “今天可能/一定下雨 Today possible/certain fall-rain ‘It is possible/certain that it will rain today’ ” cannot be used in conjunction, as one clause “今天可能一定下 雨 Today possible-certain fall-rain ‘It is possibly certain that it will rain today.’ ” or “今天一定可能下雨 Today certain-possible fall-rain ‘It is certain that it will possibly rain today.’ ” This may be due to the prosodic characteristics (prosodic foot) of modals or the large difference in the semantic meanings of the degrees. The reasons why co-occurrence cannot happen may be manifold, but the co-occurrence function is often related to the expression of degrees of modality. Children also misuse them, as in the following example: （38） LZR:   电视  里  说  的  冬天  是  真  的？ LZR: Diànshì  lǐ shuō de  dōngtiān shì zhēn de? television inside say PARTICLE winter be true PARTICLE ‘Is the winter mentioned on TV really true?’ 的。 LXY: 你 不 信？ 它可 就 是 真 LXY: Nǐ bú xìn? Tā kě jiù shì zhēn de.

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You not believe it Modal.ADV Modal.ADV be true PARTICLE ‘You don’t believe [it]? It IS true (with emphasis).’ 说 的？ 电视 里 可 不一定 是真 的。 LZR: 谁 LZR: Shéi shuō de? Diànshì lǐ kě bùyídìng shì zhēn de. Who say PARTICLE television inside Modal.ADV not-must/not necessary be true PARTICLE ‘Who said [that]? [Stuff] on TV ARE not necessarily true (with emphasis).’ LXY: 可能  一定  是  真  的。（03;08） LXY: Kěnéng  yīdìng  shì  zhēn    de. Possible/may must  be  true  PARTICLE ‘It is possible that it must be true.’ In the preceding example, the adult said, “What is said on TV is not certainly true”, and the child disputed the adult’s opinion and stated that what was on TV

Early acquisition of degrees of modality 187 “is certainly true”. He or she was, however, not so firm and therefore added possibility “可能” in front of certainty “一定”. Although this was a sentence exemplifying misuse, we could still see that the use of “可能” decreased the level of certainty, which indicated that the former refined the degrees. Sometimes in a sentence, there are modal verbs or modal adverbs but also modal particles in the sentence-final position. This can also be seen as the co-occurrence of modals in a general sense. This type of co-occurrence is mostly the co-occurrence of modals of the same degree. The sentence-final modals usually serve to soften the mood and weaken the degree of modality. See the following examples: （39） HXT:   小 鸭子 来 了 HXT: Xiǎo yāzi lái le Small duck come PARTICLE ‘The duckling is coming.’ LXY: 小 鸭子 会 摔跤   吧？（02;09） LXY: Xiǎo yāzi huì shuāijiāo  ba? Small duck will  fall     PARTICLE ‘The duckling will fall, right?’ （40） LZR:   有 几 只 手？ LZR: Yǒu jǐ zhī shǒu? Have how many MW hand ‘How many hands does [it] have?’ LXY: 有  三只  手，  应该  两只  吧。（04;00） LXY: Yǒu sānzhī shǒu, yīnggāi liǎngzhī ba. Have three-MW hand should two-MW PARTICLE ‘[It] has three hands, [it] should have two.’

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（41） JBS:   它  会  尿床  的，  要不， 它  能  在  那儿  吗1？（03;03） JBS: Tā  huì  niàochuáng  de,  yào bù,  tā  néng  zài  nà’er  ma1? It will wet the bed PARTICLE otherwise it  can  in  there  PARTICLE ‘It will wet the bed, or else, how can it be there?’ （42） SYY:   可能 就 是 老鹰 的 吧。（04;06） SYY: Kěnéng jiù shì lǎoyīng de ba. Possible/may modal.ADV be eagle PARTICLE PARTICLE ‘[It] may be the eagle’s.’ In sum, the co-occurrence and conjunctive use of modals is also part of the complementary mechanism for degrees of modality. The three participant children in this chapter have been using them since age 03;00. Although the number was small, it was still significant. From them, we can see the more refined expression of degrees of modality by children.

188  Early acquisition of degrees of modality

8.5 Conclusions Through the exhaustive examination of children’s diachronic developmental corpus, we have seen that children’s acquisition of degrees of modality is completed before age 04;06. With the exception of certain modals that are constrained by syntactic co-occurrence conditions, the acquisition order is Possibility > Necessity. This order is consistent with the semantic interpretation of the various degrees of modality. It also concurs with the formation of semantics regarding Possibility, Probability, and Necessity, as well as the levels of difficulty in understanding them. From the timing of acquisition of modal adverbs and the conjunctive use of modals, we can see that children’s subjectivity gradually develops and matures after age 03;00. They are also able to quantify subjectivity and begin to exhibit a certain pragmatic ability and understanding of interpersonal functions. Modality is a cross-linguistic and cross-semantic category. However, modal expressions in different languages also have certain characteristics. Therefore, the acquisition of degrees of modality and their expression may differ based on the distinctions among various languages. Chinese is a language with sentence-final particles. At least in regard to Chinese, modality and mood may be a continuum. From the modal verbs that only express modality to the modal adverbs that express both modality and mood and then to the sentence-final particles that include modality, they form a continuum from modality to mood. Because of the influence of the co-occurrence of mood, Chinese children first involuntarily learn modality and degrees of modality through the acquisition of sentence-final particles, which thus results in earlier acquisition of degrees of modality compared to languages without mood particles. Research on the acquisition of degrees of modality can not only reveal children’s cognition of the possibilities in the world and their development of reasoning ability but also provide significant addition or even correction to the ontological research of modality.

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Notes 1 Modal adverbs are different from modal verbs. The modalities expressed by modal verbs embody a typical “non-realism”; whereas some modal adverbs directly express the speaker’s judgment on whether the proposition is true or the likelihood of an event occurring (e.g., “ye3xu3 也许 ‘maybe’, ba1cheng2 八成 ‘most likely’ ”, and so on), some express the speaker’s permission or obligation towards the realization of an event while the event itself may or may not be true (e.g. “bu4fang2 不妨 ‘might as well’, bi4xu1 必须 ‘must’ ”, and so on), and some express the speaker’s evaluation of the event wherein the event itself is true but does not align with the expectation of the speaker, such that it is unrealistic from the perspective of the speaker (see Peng, 2007, pp. 8–83 for a reference). This unreality is different from the unreality of the event itself, but it is also a kind of unreality (such as “yuan2lai2 原来 ‘originally’, ju1ran2 居然 ‘actually’ ”, and so on). Therefore, the degrees of modality expressed by modal adverbs are complex: some directly express degrees of modality. For example, “hao3xiang4 好像 ‘seems’, da4gai4 大概 ‘possibly’, mei2zhun3 没准 ‘could be’, zhun3 准 ‘must’, mo4fei1 莫非

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Early acquisition of degrees of modality 189 ‘could be’ ”, and so on express inference of possibility; “qian1wan4 千万 ‘must’ and wu4bi4 务必 ‘must’ ” express moral judgment and are degrees of certainty. Some are inferences about the speaker’s anticipation or anti-expectation. For example, the connotation of “yuan2lai2原来 ‘originally’ ” suggests that the event’s status as expected by the speaker does not conform with reality, and the speaker confirms this real event that is out of expectation. This kind of conviction (certainty) is different from simple certainty; it is a responsive conviction and has high subjectivity. That is to say, the relationship between adverbs and degrees of modality is very complex: some directly estimate or infer the possibility of the proposition or event, and some indirectly measure the bystander (mostly the speaker) of the proposition or event. Early children’s acquisition of modal adverbs may be incomplete, but if children produce certain modal adverbs, we need to provide analyses regarding their meaning and function from the perspective of degrees of modality. 2 The modal particle ba 吧 can express “probability” inference, and ma 吗can express “possibility” inference. The ma 嘛and ma 吗in rhetorical questions can emphasize the “certainty” inference. 3 Regarding “yi2ding4 一定 ‘certainly’ ”, most scholars consider it to be a modal adverb, such as Lü (1999, p. 604), Zhang (2000, p. 57), Shi (2003), and so on. In recent years, with the specialization of modality research, some scholars believe that “yi2ding4 一定 ‘certainly’ ” has the attributes of both modal verbs and modal adverbs, or it can be a modal verb, such as Xu (2008, pp. 307–309), Zhu (2005), Peng (2007, pp. 130–134), and so on. On the one hand, this is related to the polysemous nature of “yi2ding4 一定 ‘certainly’ ” – it is situated on the continuum of modal verbs and modal adverbs. 一定 has at least two meanings. 一定1 suggests, on one hand, resolute will, which is closer to modal verbs (Li, 2005; Zhang & Xiao, 2015); on the other hand, the highly frequent corresponding translation between 一定2 and the English modal verb “must” may have more impact on the situation (Zhang, 2010). Here we put一定 into the category of modal verbs for strategic reasons: First, in the sequence of possibility, probability, and certainty, modern Chinese does not have a disyllabic modal verb that expresses certainty; second, the boundary between modal verbs and modal adverbs is not very clear. According the criteria proposed by Zhu (1982, p. 61), 一定 basically conforms to the formal characteristics of auxiliary verbs. For instance, it can be produced in isolation and can be placed in the BU construction to form expressions such as “bu4yi2ding4 不一定 ‘not necessarily’ ”, “bu4yi2ding4bu4 不一 定不 ‘not necessarily not’ ”, and so on. 4 According to Coates (1983, pp. 30–44), the meaning of the modals is unstable. As such, the merging of modal meanings refers to the existence of two meanings of modal verbs in context, and they both can be provided with reasonable and clear explanations. The “néng能” can be understood both as deontic modality (as in “may”) and also as epistemic modality, as in “possible”. 5 Some interrogative questions more or less reflect the speaker’s judgment or expectation of the content of the answer; for instance, “Is Winnie the Pooh pulling the radish?” contains the expectation of “Winnie the Pooh is indeed pulling the radish”, whereas “What is mom doing?” does not contain the speaker’s judgment or expectation of the answer. The former has a connotation of subjective inference and can be seen as epistemic modality. 6 Translator note: refers to sentences with a question pronoun but not used as a question. 7 See Y. Zhang, & X. Lin (2015). Functional position of modal adverbs in Modern Chinese. Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Contemporary Chinese Grammar, ICCCG-8. Hangzhou. 8 For children’s age, 1 year consists of 12 months. However, Excel graphs only support the decimal system, and we therefore used the children’s actual age (counted by months) as basic data. The format of xx:xx (year; month) is still used in the manuscript. In addition,

190  Early acquisition of degrees of modality

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LXY did not produce degrees of necessity in his/her output; thus, there are only two data points, “possible” and “certain”, and not a line with a middle point on LXY’s graph depicting the development trend of degrees of modality. In the overall line graph that illustrates “relatively large possibility”, we averaged the ages of the two children JBS and SYY. 9 This example comes from child RXA’s conversation with the author when he/she was 02:10 years of age. It is in the Dynamic Development Corpus of Capital Normal University. Later, the author’s colleague, Professor Jiachuan Wei also provided an identical incidence of his relative’s child (at age 03;00).

9 Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction

This chapter explores the theoretical issues of syntactic development in young children through the ZAI construction. Overall, the output data largely support the usage-based theory of early syntactic development, whereas the experimental data generally support the rule-based theory of early syntactic development. Yet at the same time, we should also see that different types of data are insufficient in their own way and therefore cannot be mutually negated. They reveal the true nature of the ontogeny and development of children’s syntax from different perspectives.

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9.1 Research background Syntactic development during early childhood is the most attractive topic of language acquisition, and it is also where the theories regarding language acquisition differ. There are many in-depth non-Chinese studies on this issue, but research of early syntactic development using Chinese children’s language acquisition data is still very scarce. Existing research includes Erbaugh (1982), Xiao et al. (2006), Lee and Naigles (2008), Yang and Xiao (2008), and so on. Yang (2012) introduced and evaluated the two Western theories on early syntactic development and hoped that such comments could advance the research on Chinese children’s early syntactic development. Prior to this, Yang and Xiao (2008) explored Mandarin-learning children’s early syntactic development by analyzing a 2.5-year-old child’s corpus of naturally produced “Ba” constructions. They argued that the usagebased theory of early syntactic development cannot explain the characteristics and regulations observed in this child’s early acquisition of “Ba” constructions. Therefore, the initial development of “Ba” constructions is neither by imitation nor through the combination of symbols but, rather, may be the result of early parameter setting (i.e., early syntactic development is ruled-based). The preceding review and research triggered great interest in us. To this end, we chose the “zai” construction from the various sentence structures that are learned by children and use its acquisition data to further discuss issues related to early syntactic development. The “zai” construction has a non-uniform structure and consistent semantics and is a prototype sentence category. It can be used to examine children’s acquisition of syntactic structures with gradually combined features when their semantics are equivalent. As such, children’s understanding and production of the

192  Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction “zai” construction is indeed a window for investigating children’s early syntactic development (Cheung, 2009). Regarding the acquisition of the “zai” construction, Li (1991) examined the “zai” and “ba” constructions in Chinese children and analyzed their psychological mechanism of learning the “zai” construction. Liu (2010) also provided basic descriptions of the timing of acquisition and the combining syntactic features of the “zai” construction of a Beijing-dialect child. Cheung (2009) studied three Taiwanese children in regard to their acquisition of the “zai” construction and considered that the development of “zai” is a window to children’s Chinese syntactic development. He also discussed the relationship between mean length of utterance (MLU) and the development of different instances of “zai”, as well as the effect of adults’ input. In general, research regarding the “zai” construction, which is closely related to theories on early syntactic development, still leaves a lot to be done for data processing and theoretical explanations.

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9.2 Syntactic and semantic features of the “zai” construction and the object of study in this chapter Scholars of Chinese conducted much research regarding the syntactic and semantic features of the “zai” construction (e.g., Wang, 1957, 1980; Fan, 1982; Zhu, 1981; Zhang, 1997; Yu, 1999; Shen, 1999; Jin, 1993; Lin, 2003; and so on). They performed comprehensive studies on the part-of-speech, distribution characteristics of “zai + location” phrases, the relationship between various grammatical meanings and their different formats, and the sentence structure and cognitive interpretation of the “zai” construction. Their conclusions provide a good theoretical framework for examining children’s acquisition of the “zai” construction. Simply put, the “zai” construction mainly includes three types of situations from the perspective of the part of speech (POS) of “zai” and the overall function of the sentence. Its POS and syntactic functions are all different: First, it is a verb that indicates the location of people or things and can also express plain existence, which is the predicate in a sentence, such as (1–2). Second, it is a preposition that represents the location, time, and scope of the action. Prepositional phrases led by “zai” can be placed in front of or after the verb, and some can also be placed at the beginning of a sentence as adverbials, such as (3–4). Third, it is an adverb that functions as an aspectual marker and an adverbial in a sentence, such as (5). （1）手机   还 在（，钱包 不见 了） 。 Shǒujī hái zài (, qiánbāo bújiàn le). Cellphone still ZAI (wallet not-see PARTICLE) ‘The cellphone is still here, ([but] the wallet is gone.)’ （2）我   在 学校。 Wǒ zài xuéxiào. I ZAI school ‘I’m at school.’

Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction 193 （3）a.    我 在 黑板 上 写字。 hēibǎn shàng xiězì. a.  Wǒ zài I ZAI blackboard up write-character ‘I write on the blackboard.’ 黑板 上 我 写字。 b.  在 shàng wǒ xiězì. b.  Zài hēibǎn I write-character ZAI blackboard up ‘On the blackboard, I write.’ （4）a.    我 写 在 黑板 上。 shàng. a.  Wǒ xiě zài hēibǎn I write ZAI blackboard up ‘I write on the blackboard.’ b.  我 写字 在 黑板 上。 zài hēibǎn shàng. b.  Wǒ xiězì I write-character ZAI blackboard up ‘I write on the blackboard.’ （5）我   在 写字。 xiězì. Wǒ zài I ZAI write-character ‘I’m writing.’ Generally speaking, there is an evolutionary relationship among the three POS and meaning of “zai” in the preceding sentences, and therefore, they embody the same language identity. We use the following diagram to illustrate this evolutionary relationship: zhèngzài→→→ zàiasp

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zàiv →→→ zàip →→→ zàiasp This figure shows that there are different views on the diachronic change of “zai”. The main focus is on the generation of aspectual markers, such that there are two possibilities for the derivation of the aspectual marker “zai”. The first is that preposition “zai” further grammaticalizes (lexicalizes) and becomes a word-internal element in the form of “zhèngzài正在”. Then the word-internal element “zhèng正” is then lost, and “zai” becomes an independent aspectual marker; The second is that preposition “zai” further evolves and directly lexicalizes into aspectual marker “zai”. Though scholars have different viewpoints on the process and conditions for the generation of aspectual marker “zai”, they all believe that there is an evolutionary relationship among “在asp”, “在v”, and “在p”.

194  Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction For the convenience of discussion, we coded the preceding types of “zai” constructions into Z0 = (1), Z1 = (2), Z2 = (3), Z3 = (4), Z4 = (5). Depending on whether “zai” has a succeeding element and the nature of the succeeding element, we can divide “zai” constructions into isolated “zai” construction (Z0), “zai + NP” (Z1, Z2, and Z3), and “zai + VP” (Z4). From the perspective of early syntactic development, we mainly examined the “zai + NP” construction (i.e., Z1, Z2, and Z3) of the “zai” construction”. Based on syntactic functions, Z1 expresses the location of people or things. The “zai” in the sentence is “zai v”, and it functions as the predicate. Z2 denotes the place, time, and scope in which an action takes place. The “zai’ in this sentence is “zai p”. It forms a prepositional phrase with the noun and functions as the adverbial. Z3 represents the place where the action reaches (Fan, 1982). The “zai” in this sentence is also “zai p”. It constitutes a prepositional phrase with the noun and acts as an adverbial. Although the semantic features of “zai + NP” in the three types of “zai” constructions are not identical, they generally are related to the action and its location and can most prominently reveal children’s syntactic knowledge. At the same time, Z1 is embedded in Z2 and Z3. The three sentences have rather strong graded combinational characteristics. Therefore, through the acquisition data of the three types of sentences, we can observe very well the age at which children are sensitive to the preceding characteristics of the “zai” construction and whether their sensitivity is sudden or gradual. Unless otherwise specified, all “zai” constructions refer to Z1, Z2, and Z3.

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9.3 Origin of data The data in this chapter include two parts: one is children’s spontaneous output; the other is data obtained through experiments. We hope that by examining the data attained from different methods, we can get a fuller and more accurate understanding of children’s syntactic development. The spontaneous output data was from about 80 hours of audio and video recordings of LXY between ages 01;04 and 04;09. When utilizing the speech materials, CLAN was used for both searching and counting in combination with human perceptual discrimination. Regarding data processing, we divided it into two steps based on the different research goals: The first step mainly investigated the initial acquisition of the various “zai” constructions from the emergence of the first “zai” construction to age 02;03. This was done by month. The reason for stopping at age 02;03 was that at this age stage, the child had produced all “zai” constructions, and they had relatively stabilized. The second step investigated the overall development of “zai” constructions from its initial acquisition to age 04;09. This was done by counting every six months as a stage. Data were collected from a residential and private kindergarten in Chaoyang district, an educational play center in Haidian district, and the author’s colleagues’ and neighbors’ children, with a total of 18 children. Experimental sentences were of types Z1, Z2, and Z3. The experimental method was a picture selection task

Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction 195 (McDaniel et al., 1996, pp. 125–146),1 in which one of two pictures was selected. The pictures were shown on a computer. Instructional sentences were played on the computer using synthesized speech in order to avoid environmental influences, so that the objectivity of how they were received by different children was controlled. The children’s ages ranged from 01;06 to 01;11, with an average of 01;08. The youngest participant was 01;06, and the oldest was 01;11. This was due to these concerns. In the spontaneous corpus, the participant child produced Z1 at age 01;07, and he or she was at age 02;00 when producing Z2 and Z3. We therefore wanted to see if children could already understand Z1, Z2, and Z3 structures at the time of Z1 output or before. If they could, it would suggest that the comprehension aspect of children’s early syntactic acquisition is acute and sudden; otherwise, it is gradual. However, because of individual differences, children may spontaneously produce Z1 at different ages. The children in the case studies in this chapter may develop at a faster pace and produce at a relatively early time. Even if this was the case, none of the children in the picture selection experiment exceeded age 02;00, which was prior to the children’s production of Z2 and Z3 types of sentences. The preceding theoretical assumptions for the experimental data are still valid.

9.4 Acquisition data 9.4.1  Acquisition data regarding production

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9.4.1.1 Basic situation The first Z1 instance produced by LXY was at age 01;04. However, this was a case of imitation error and could not be regarded as acquisition. We performed an exhaustive search on LXY’s speech materials from ages 01;04–04;09, a total of about 80 hours. After excluding repetitions, recitations of poetry, erroneous usage, and cases where a judgment could not be made, we obtained 476 sentences of all types of “zai” constructions. Among them, Z1, Z2, and Z3 accounted for 370 sentences. Counting by age stage, before 02;03, there were 130 instances of “zai” construction, and 93 of them were Z1, Z2, and Z3. They had all been acquired with the exception of Z2b (see example in (3b)).2 Since Z2b occurred infrequently in adult speech as well, we can still consider that Z1, Z2, and Z3 have essentially been acquired by LXY before age 02;03 (see Table 9.1).

Table 9.1 Counts of “zai” construction as acquired by LXY before age 02;03 “zai” construction

Z0

Z1

Z2

Z3

Z4

total

Counts Age of acquisition

5 01;05

79 01;07

7 02;00

7 02;00

32 01;10

130

196  Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction Examples of Z1, Z2, and Z3 outputs are as follows: （6）HXT:   妈妈 袜子 在 哪？ HXT: Māma wàzi zài nǎ? Mother sock ZAI where ‘Where are mom’s socks?’ LXY: 在 里面。 （Z1 01;07.22） LXY: Zài lǐmiàn. ZAI inside ‘[They are] inside.’ （7）HXT:   回来 在 这里 玩。 HXT: Huílái zài zhèlǐ wán. Return come ZAI here play ‘Come back to play over here.’ LXY: 在 这里 玩。 （Z2a 01;11.12） LXY: Zài zhèlǐ wán. ZAI here play ‘Play over here.’ （8）HXT:   该 起床 了。 HXT: Gāi qǐchuáng le. Should get up PARTICLE ‘[Someone] should get up.’

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LXY: 坐 在 那儿。（Z3a 02;00.25） LXY: Zuò zài nà’er. Sit ZAI there ‘Sit over there.’ （9）HXT:   咦？ 在 手 上 绕 一 HXT: Yí? Zài shǒu shàng rào yì Eh ZAI hand up circle one ‘Eh? Make a circle around the hand?’

圈儿？ quān’er? loop

LXY: 绕 一 圈儿 在 手 上。（Z3b 02;00.25） LXY: Rào yì quān’er zài shǒu shàng. Circle a loop ZAI hand up ‘Make a circle around the hand.’ Data of the three types of “zai” constructions as learned during different age stages are shown in Table 9.2.

Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction 197 Table 9.2 Acquisition of Z1, Z2, and Z3 by LXY at different age stages Type

Z1

Z2

Z3

0 5 12 35 15 12 28 48 43 13 18

0 0 0 2 4 1 10 14 13 4 12

0 0 0 1 4 2 4 23 16 20 11

0 5 12 38 23 15 42 85 72 37 41

229

60

81

370

Frequency

Counts within stage

Age 01;04–01;05 01;06–01;07 01;08–01;09 01;10–01;11 02;00–02;01 02;02–02;03 02;04–02;09 02;10–03;03 03;04–03;09 03;10–04;03 04;04–04;09 Counts of type

9.4.1.2 Data regarding the characteristics of the speech materials 1  IMITATION DATA

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First for LXY, the timing of output of the three types of “zai” constructions was around age 02;00. The outputs prior to this point, however, were mostly imitations that consisted of two types: one was direct imitation, which was an exact copy of an adult’s sentence, such as (10). They were produced before age 01;10. The other type was confirmational imitation, which was an imitation of an adult’s question of the same structure, such as (11). They were constantly produced with relatively large quantities from age 01;05–02;00. Speech examples are as follows: （10）HXT:   姐姐 在 哪儿？姐姐 在 楼下。 HXT: Jiějie zài nǎ’er? Jiějie zài lóuxià. Older sister ZAI where older sister ZAI downstairs ‘Where is the older sister? The older sister is downstairs.’ LXY: 姐姐 在 楼下。（01;07.22） LXY: Jiějie zài lóuxià. Older sister ZAI downstairs ‘The older sister is downstairs.’ （11）HXT:   企鹅 宝宝 在 哪儿 呢？ HXT: Qǐ’é bǎobao zài nǎ’er ne? Penguin baby ZAI where PARTICLE ‘Where is the Baby Penguin?’

198  Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction 宝宝 在 这。 (01;08.19) LXY: 企鹅 LXY: Qǐ’é bǎobao zài zhè. Penguin baby ZAI here ‘The Baby Penguin is here.’ （12）HXT:   企鹅 宝宝 在 哪儿 呢？ HXT: Qǐ’é bǎobao zài nǎ’er ne? Penguin baby ZAI where PARTICLE ‘Where is the Baby Penguin?’ LXY: 企鹅 宝宝 在 这。 LXY: Qǐ’é bǎobao zài zhè. Penguin baby ZAI here ‘The Baby Penguin is here.’ HXT: 大 象 呢？ HXT: Dà xiàng ne? Big elephant PARTICLE ‘How about the elephant?’ LXY: 大 象 在 这。 (01;08.19) LXY: Dà xiàng zài zhè. Big elephant ZAI here ‘The elephant is here.’ The two sentence types in (9–12) were of the question-answer format, suggesting that children’s confirmational imitation was inevitable. Therefore, imitation output mainly referred to direct imitation. Before the child was 02;00, the proportions of the direct imitation output of the three types of “zai” constructions were as follows: Z1 had 25/69 cases, Z2 had 3/6 cases, and Z3 had 2/5 cases. This was a rather high ratio, indicating that external input had a certain degree of influence.

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2  CHARACTERISTICS OF WORD USAGE FOR THE “ZAI” CONSTRUCTION

First, we examined the characteristics of verb use. LXY started producing Z2 and Z3 at age 02;00. In these two types of “zai” constructions, verbs were used with low frequency, and they included eight verbs: “站 zhan4 ‘stand’, 玩 wan2 ‘play’, 睡觉 shui4jiao4 ‘sleep’, 坐 zuo4 ‘sit’, 买 mai3 ‘buy’,绕 rao4 ‘wind’, 飞 fei1 ‘fly’, 放fang4”. Among them, “sit” was used with relatively high frequency, which occurred five times; it was then followed by “play”, which occurred three times. All other verbs were only produced once. However, after age 02;03, the number of verbs increased drastically. In addition to the eight verbs that had been previously learned, the following were also added, for instance, 看书 kan4shu1 ‘read book’、飘来飘去piao1lai2piao1qu4, ‘floating around’、见 jian4 ‘see’、爬 pa2 ‘crawl’、 死掉 si3diao4 ‘die’、趴 pa1 ‘lie’、骑 qi2 ‘ride’、搁 ge1 ‘put’、呆 dai1 ‘stay’、放 fang4 ‘put’、 躺 tang3 ‘lie’、绊倒 ban4 ‘stumble’、打 da3

Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction 199

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‘beat’、藏 cang2 ‘hide’、躲 duo3 ‘avoid’、加 jia1 ‘add’、打滚儿 da3gun3er ‘roll around’、跳来跳去 tiao4lai2tiao4qu4 ‘jump around’、杵 chu3 ‘poke’、 吹 chui1 ‘blow’、跳舞 tiao4wu3 ‘dance’、游来游去 you2lai2you2qu4 ‘swim back and forth’、跑 pao3 ‘run’、装 zhuang1 ‘adorn’、听ting1‘listen’、挂 gua4 ‘hang’ 、⾛ zou3 ‘walk’、倒 dao4 ‘pour’、拿 na2 ‘take’、住zhu4 ‘live’、摔 shuai1 ‘fall’、等 deng3 ‘wait’、戴 dai4 ‘wear’、摆 bai3 ‘arrange’、掉 diao4 ‘fall down’、收 shou1 ‘receive’、拍 pai1 ‘pat’、 转圈zhuan4quan1, and so on. We then examined the characteristics of use of the NP after “zai”. We found that the children were the most sensitive to the “zai + NP” structure that refers to location. It was acquired before age 02;03 and indicated the location of people or events. The numbers of “NP” were also limited to a small group of words that are deictic words, locative words, and place nouns, of which the most frequently used were deictic words “这、那” and compound directional words: the former had 61 cases and the latter 14 cases, together accounting for 57% of all sentences of the “zai” construction. The various locative words used before age 02;03 are listed here: 01;07：wai4mian4外面 ‘outside’ 1、lou2xia4楼下 ‘downstairs’ 1、na4那 ‘there’ 1、li3mian4里面 ‘inside’1 01;08：zhe4这 ‘here’ 6 01;09：zhe4这 ‘here’ 1、jia1家 ‘home’ 2、201（referring to room）1、da4dong4li3大洞里 ‘inside big cave’ 1 01;10：zhe4这 ‘here’ 15、na4那 ‘there’ 1、hou4mian4后面 ‘behind’ 1、tian1shang4天上 ‘in the sky’ 2、wu1li3屋里 ‘inside the room’ 1、shen2medi4fang1什么地方 ‘what place’ 1 01;11：zhe4 这 ‘here’ 10、zhe4li3这里 ‘here’ 4、 hou4bian1后边 ‘back’ 1 02;00：zhe4这 ‘here’ 5、zhe4li3这里 ‘here’ 2、na4那 ‘there’ 2、na3哪 ‘where’ 1、hou4mian4后面 ‘behind’ 2、shang4mian4上面 ‘above’ 1、li3mian4里面 ‘inside’ 1、tian1shang4天上 ‘in the sky’ 1、shou3手 ‘hand’ 1、bao3bao3zui3li3宝宝嘴里 ‘in baby’s mouth’ 1、chu4zili3厨 子里 ‘in cupboard’ 1、wei4sheng1jian1li3卫生间里 ‘inside bathroom’ 1、hua1cong2li3花丛里 ‘in flower bush’ 1 02;01：zhe4这 ‘here’ 6、zhe4li3这里 ‘here’ 3、na3哪 ‘where’ 1、hou4mian4后面 ‘behind’ 3、wai4mian4外面 ‘outside’ 1 02;02：zhe4这 ‘here’ 7、zhe4shang4这上 ‘on here’ 1、na4 那 ‘there’ 2、na3bian1哪边 ‘which side’ 2、hou4mian4后面 ‘behind’ 1、li3mian4里 面 ‘inside’ 1 02;03：zhe4 这 ‘here’ 4、zhe4li3这里 ‘here’ 2、zhe4bian1这边 ‘this side’ 3、na4li3那里 ‘there’ 1、na3li3哪里 ‘where’ 1 The characteristics of use of the preceding “NP” were very different from those of adults. The “NP” of “zai” constructions in the adult language can not only represent locality but also indicate time, category, conditions, and so on, whereas the “NP” acquired by LXY before age 02;03 are only locational, and they are mostly deictic words or compound directional words that have specific references in particular language contexts. After age 02;03, the “NP” in LXY’s “zai + NP”

200  Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction structure changed slightly. In addition to deictic words and directional words, “NP” also included temporal components, abstract locative components, and structurally more complex NPs, for example: （13）HXT:   干 嘛 呀， 给 他？ HXT: Gàn ma ya, gěi tā? Do what PARTICLE give him ‘What [are you] doing, for him?’ LXY: 挖 土 呗， 小 恐龙 在 之前 死掉 了。 （02;07.14） LXY: Wā tǔ bei, xiǎo kǒnglóng zài zhīqián sǐdiào le. dig dirt PARTICLE small dinosaur ZAI before die PARTICLE ‘Digging a hole, The little dinosaur died before.’ （14）LXY:   对 啊， 在 秋天 拍 的。（04;06.07） LXY: Duì a, zài qiūtiān pāi de. Yes PARTICLE ZAI autumn shoot PARTICLE ‘Yes, [it is] taken/shot in Autumn.’ （15）LXY:   我 和 宝宝 在 一起 做 游戏。（02;10.14） LXY: Wǒ hé bǎobǎo zài yìqǐ zuò yóuxì. I and baby ZAI together do game ‘The baby and I are playing games together.’ （16）LXY:   在 周围 转圈 啊。 （04;00.08） LXY: Zài zhōuwéi zhuànquān a. ZAI around whirl PARTICLE ‘Whirl around [here].’

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（17）LXY:   小 猪 在 悬崖 底下。 （02;11.10） LXY: Xiǎo zhū zài xuányá dǐxia. Small pig ZAI cliff under ‘The little pig is under the cliff.’ （18）LXY:   每天 我 都 在 维尼 的 肚子 上 摸 一 LXY: Měitiān wǒ dōu zài wēiní de dùzi shàng mō yì 摸 。 （04;07.19） mō. Every day I all ZAI Winnie the Pooh PARTICLE belly up touch one touch ‘I touch Winnie the Pooh’s belly every day.’ 3  ACQUISITION DATA REGARDING GRADUAL CHANGE

According to the acquisition of the “zai + NP” structure, the participant child LXY first acquired Z1 at age 02;07, and it was a verb-object sentence with two words. After five months, and at around the same time, he or she acquired Z2 and

Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction 201 Z3, within which Z1 was embedded. They were mostly sentences with three or multiple words. We can see that the child was sensitive to Z1 first and then to Z2 and Z3. This suggests that children’s acquisition of syntactic and semantic features of the “zai” construction occurs sequentially. Semantically, the component after the “zai” in the “zai” construction, regardless of zai being a verb or preposition, can refer to location, time, category, or conditions. However, the children were most sensitive to its locality first and then to the time or abstract locality. Syntactically, syntactic functions differ depending on the variations in the POS of “zai”. Acquisition data showed that the children were sensitive to the declarative functions first and only then were sensitive to the restrictive and complementary functions. In other words, using Z1 as a basis, the children gradually accumulated material under the guidance of adult input and learned Z2 and Z3, thus acquiring the multi-word “zai” construction. 9.4.2 Acquisition data regarding comprehension

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9.4.2.1 Experimental method The experiment had two steps. The first step tested children’s comprehension of Z1. Children were instructed to choose from one of the two pictures. Whether they chose correctly or not, they would enter the second step of testing. The second step aimed to investigate children’s comprehension of Z2 and Z3. The experimental sentences in the picture selection task consisted of two groups and six sentences (see Table 9.3). During testing, each sentence was presented with three pictures. One picture matched correctly with the sentence while the other two were incorrect and served as control pictures. In each group, the pictures only differed in one aspect (minimum contrast pair). Two selections were performed among the incorrect control pictures and the correct picture in order to make sure that only one factor in the picture was impacting children’s choice. If they were correct on both groups, it suggested that children had understood both the syntactic and semantic features represented in the picture. The left-right position of the correct picture was counterbalanced in two test steps to avoid children choosing by proximity or under the influence of the previous choice. Examples of experimental pictures are shown in Figure 9.1. Table 9.3 Sentences in the picture-selection experiment

第一组

第二组

1 小猴子在床上扔苹果 ‘Little monkey is 1 小兔子在桌子上扔萝卜 ‘Little bunny is throwing apples on the bed’ throwing carrots on the table’ 2 小兔子站在桌子上 ‘Little bunny is 2 小猴子站在床上 ‘Little monkey is standing in the bed’ standing on the table’ 3 小猴子把苹果扔在床上 ‘Little monkey 3 小兔子把萝卜扔在桌子上 ‘Little bunny throws the apple onto the bed’ throws the carrot onto the table’

202  Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction

Figure 9.1 Examples of experimental pictures Table 9.4 Experimental data of the picture-selection task Age

# of subjects

Average # and proportion correct in the 1st test step

Average # and proportion correct in the 2nd test step

Comprehension of the “zai” construction (sensitivity)

01;06 01;06

2 2

– 1 50%

–   3.5 29%

01;07

3

3 100%

  7 58%

01;08

3

3 100%

  8 66.6%

01;09 01;10 01;11

3 3 2

3 100% 3 100% 2 100%

12 100% 12 100% 12 100%

Invalid result Insensitive (No comprehension） May be sensitive (possible comprehension) May be sensitive (possible comprehension) Sensitive (comprehension) Sensitive (comprehension) Sensitive (comprehension)

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9.4.2.2 Experimental data Table 9.4 shows the descriptive data of children’s picture selection task. Specifically, 2 of the 18 children tested did not cooperate with the test, and their data were therefore invalid. They were not included in the analyses of the results. The other 16 children were able to cooperate with the experiment and produced valid data. Among them, there were three types of situations: 1

2 3

The accuracy of two children aged 01;06 on Z1, Z2, and Z3 pictures was very low and without any patterns. We cannot determine whether they accidentally chose the correct sentences or they could already correctly comprehend these sentences. It can be considered that at age 01;06, the children were insensitive to the connotations of these three types of “zai” constructions. The accuracy of eight children aged 01;09 to 01;11 on all picture groups was 100%. It can be considered that these children were completely sensitive to the connotations of all three types of “zai” constructions. Relatively difficult were the data from six children who belonged to two groups: age 01;07 and age 01;08. They were all sensitive to Z1. But for Z2

Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction 203 and Z3, three children aged 01;07 cooperated well during the first test but were not fully cooperative or uncooperative on the second test. The three children aged 01;08 were also uncooperative or impatient during the second test. Their accuracy on the second test, however, was slightly higher than that of children aged 01;07. If we strictly follow the criterion where “the child must choose the correct picture on both groups in order to be considered capable of understanding the syntactic and semantic features represented in the picture”, then the six children did not comprehend Z2 and Z3, but they did understand Z1. Children of this age group had not acquired the three types of “zai” constructions and had only learned Z1. However, we also saw that the selection errors committed by the six children mainly occurred during the second test, which suggested that the most likely reason was their inability to concentrate due to long experimental procedures. Synthesizing the results of the first test of the two groups, we speculated that they should have understood the meaning of Z2 and Z3. In order to verify the preceding hypothesis, we conducted a second test session on the six children. We reversed the order of the two test images in the Z2 and Z3 groups, that is, the pictures that were unselected or selected incorrectly because of the six children’s possible inattention were placed in front of the ones that they had chosen correctly. The test time was a week later. However, due to circumstances uncontrollable by the author, only four children participated. The results were still promising, since the children who participated in the experiment were still correct for the match of the first test images. The second test images did not yield cooperation or elicit incorrect selections.

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9.4.2.3 Conclusions First, the experimental data generally supported the rule-based theory of early syntactic development. However, the data also showed that at the earliest, the children were not sensitive to the syntactic features of the “zai” construction until age 01;07. They were unable to comprehend the “zai” construction at age 01;06. Second, data also indicated that by age 01;09, children were completely sensitive to Z2 and Z3. This time point was three months earlier than their spontaneous output and could also be regarded as far earlier than their spontaneous output.

9.5 Theoretical discussion on early syntactic development 9.5.1  Regarding the role of input The usage-based theory of early syntactic development emphasizes the role of usage, placing great emphasis on the role of adults in children’s language acquisition. It argues that children are the best learners and that their early speech is learned completely from the input of people around them. The first “zai” constructions produced by the participant child LXY in this chapter, regardless of them being Z1, Z2, or Z3, were all imitative outputs. They copied adults’ “zai”

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204  Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction construction input and then gradually became spontaneous in their output of “zai” constructions with clear meaning and appropriate context through interaction with adults or people around them. Until around age 02;00, LXY still produced a high proportion of imitative “zai” constructions as output. Among them, Z1 constituted 36%, Z2 accounted for 50%, and Z3 comprised 40% – an average of 43%. In other words, the spontaneous output data supported the constructivist theory that input plays an important role in early syntactic development. In addition, we also made detailed counts on the adult input of Z4 of two children including LXY. Between them, LXY produced Z4 at age 01;10. Before that, his or her mother, HXT, generated 70 instances of direct input in a speech corpus of more than 9 hours, which could be described as high-frequency input. Another child, SYY, produced Z4 at age 02;03 – much later than LXY. SYY obtained only 3 instances of direct input before age 01;10 and only a total of 14 instances until age 02;03, which could be regarded as low-frequency input. In this case, the presence and frequency of input had a moderately strong and positive correlation with children’s acquisition, they may even have a certain correlation with the timing of acquisition. However, regarding the relationship between input and acquisition, we generally first consider the nature of the components, their quantity, and the timing of output from children’s production and then investigate the input of such components. We rarely first examine the types of input and whether the input language components are produced soon. The preceding input data showed that the input received by children was an important precipitating factor in the parameterization of their acquisition of the target language. But must there be output if one receives input? The answer is negative. We also exhaustively investigated the Z2 and Z3 inputs obtained by LXY before his/her acquisition of Z1 and found that only counting the input from his or her mother, HXT, there were 48 instances, which cannot be regarded as low-frequency. However, the child did not acquire Z2 and Z3 at the same time as Z1. Rather, they were learned five months after the acquisition of Z1. This showed that although the role of input in the acquisition of the “zai” construction was important, it was not the only triggering factor. The nativism theory states that since children’s language input embodies the “poverty of stimulus” and yet they can still master their native language within a short period of several years while exhibiting a clear understanding of some language universals, it is due to the innate language knowledge (including some elements, structures, and principles) wired in the human genes (Li, 2008, pp. 169– 191). The process of children’s language acquisition is therefore the process of parameter-setting. Gene expression is staged, and language acquisition is also sequential. As such, situations where only the input but not the output is observed can be understood as follows: despite the large input of some language components, the relevant language knowledge written in the genes has not been differentiated at this stage, so output still cannot be acquired. In nativism theory, input refers to the input of linguistic rules (or linguistic knowledge). In this sense, the input is indeed impoverished, since we generally do not speak to children and teach them to speak by instructing them with abstract rules. However, is it the case that children can rely on their internalization ability

Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction 205 (Li, 2004, pp. 291–301) to summarize the abstract and correct linguistic knowledge using direct or indirect sentence input from daily life and then apply this knowledge in creating new sentences? If this is possible, children still receive indirect language input, and such input is not impoverished. In sum, we can consider that input plays an important role in children’s acquisition of the target language and is a necessary condition for the acquisition of the target language (parameterization). Without input, children do not have the sample material for parameterization. However, the triggering effect of input is subject to innate biological mechanisms. Innate mechanisms dictate when the input will have an effect. In other words, early syntactic development is the combined result of innate mechanisms and environmental factors.

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9.5.2 Regarding gradual and abrupt changes The usage-based early syntactic development theory states that the early development of syntax is gradual. The initial syntactic acquisition mainly revolves around the combination of verbs. When a certain syntactic structure is acquired, the verbs in the structure have often been repeatedly used before. Children gradually accumulate speech material from the acquisition of specific lexical items and specific linguistic structures and eventually learn abstract syntactic structures. The spontaneous output data in this chapter also supported this view. “Sit” and “play” in Z2 and Z3 were high frequency verbs. Especially for “sit”, prior to age 01;06, it occurred in LXY’s corpus 20 times, only second to “take” (29 times). “Play” occurred 122 in the corpus from ages 01;07 to 02;05 (Hou, 2012, pp. 29–34) (i.e., verbs “sit” and “play” had been exercised many times before entering Z2 and Z3). At the same time, the preceding data suggested that the acquisition of the syntactic features of the “zai” construction was not accomplished in one move. From Z1 as two-word sentences to Z2 and Z3 as multi-word sentences, from locative NPs to temporal and categorical NPs, from the eight verbs before age 02;03 to the several dozens of verbs after age 02;04, all of these suggested that early syntactic development changed gradually instead of abruptly. Complex “zai” constructions were derived from simple, previously used sentences. Children use supplements, expansions, and replacements in the formation of the “zai” construction (Tomasello, 1992). However, we also see from the spontaneous output data that Z2 and Z3 were acquired at the same time without order differences. We also examined the acquisition status of Z2 and Z3 of the other two children, SYY and WSY, in the corpus. Z2 and Z3 were also acquired later than Z1 by the two children and were learned at the same time – age 02;01. If we look at the historical changes of Z2 and Z3 and the “zai” in these two types of sentences and their semantic relationship with Z1, we might assume that Z2 should be first acquired and then followed by Z3.3 This is, however, not the case. We also studied the input status of Z2 and Z3 before age 02;00 and the average length of utterance (MLU). The conclusion was that the input of Z2 is slightly higher than that of Z3 (86:60), and there was no significant difference in the average length of utterance between the two. In addition,

206  Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction

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we considered whether the “zai” in Z3 had a higher degree of lexicalization and was more bound to the verb and therefore impacted the acquisition of Z3. For instance, Li (2004, pp. 14–20) suggested that “V + zai + NP” should be divided into “(V + zai) + NP” instead of “V + (zai + NP)”, such that the “zai” in Z3 was bound to the verb before it. It is thus possible that the children regarded Z3 as a verb-object structure during acquisition. However, an investigation of the early production of verb-object structures by LXY revealed that this structure began to be produced in relatively large quantity by age 01;06, and by age 01;08, its overall output surpassed that of the subject-predicate structure. From this point of view, the simultaneous acquisition of Z2 and Z3 was difficult to explain from the perspectives of motivation of cognitive function and the influence of input. However, the rule-based early syntactic theory states that the development of children’s syntax is abrupt and acute. The experimental data in this chapter generally supported this view. Of particular note were the experimental data after age 01;09, where almost all children who cooperated with the experiment could correctly match the pictures. From the perspective of time, the children understood the three types of “zai” constructions before they could produce them. This suggested that the children were completely sensitive to the basic syntactic features of the “zai” construction before they could produce Z2 and Z3. However, in contrast to the experimental data, we also saw that the correction rate of the picture selection task increased with the age of the children. Children under the age of 01;07 cannot match correctly at all, just as the maturation theory in the rule-based camp describes, “universal grammar does not operate smoothly in all aspects from the beginning, and some syntactic structures take time to mature” (Yang, 2012, pp. 606–615). This shows that children’s early understanding of syntactic knowledge is phasic. In general, the abrupt changes in early syntax are not absolute and are abrupt changes in a continuum. From this perspective, data from the spontaneous output did not fully support the view where early syntactic changes are gradual; the experimental data cannot fully explain the abrupt view of syntactic development either. 9.5.3 Mechanism and process The preceding analyses have shown that the role of adult input is not absolute, and the abrupt development of syntax is not that simple. According to recent biolinguistic views (Chomsky, 2006; Pinker, 1994, etc.), though we are willing to believe that children are naturally born with the adult-like syntactic categories and rules, the comprehension and production of syntactic rules are divided into stages. The comprehension and production of a syntactic rule in a certain stage may be influenced by various factors, such as cognitive ability, pragmatic system, and language environment. That is to say, the nature-based biological factors and cognitive and environmental factors are interactive during early syntactic development. Among them, gene expression in the biological sense is the underlying constraining factor, and cognitive and environmental factors are the triggers.

Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction 207 In fact, on the one hand, we see that the early syntactic development is gradual, and on the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that the development of children’s syntax is not rule-based. A more appropriate understanding may be that the internal mechanism of early syntactic development is rule-based, yet its development is usage-based. If this is the case, the two theories regarding early syntactic development are not in opposition and cannot negate each other. They each reveal the truth of children’s syntactic development from different perspectives.

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9.6 Remarks: what are “acquisition” and “input”? Using the “zai” construction as the subject, we aimed to discuss issues related to early syntactic development through spontaneous output data and experimental data. We consider that the mechanism of early syntactic development is rulebased, yet its process is usage-based, such that early syntactic development is the result of a combination of innate biological factors and external environmental factors. As far as the theories are concerned, many scholars hold the view that children’s language development is due to the interaction of nature and nurture. However, it is not easy to verify through acquisition examples. Different theories have different definitions of some basic issues. Thus, the long-term division of theories regarding early syntactic development is inevitable. First of all, what is “acquisition”? The definitions of “acquisition” in the two schools’ theories regarding syntactic development are different: If children can understand sentences, does it mean that they possess the grammatical knowledge pertaining to these sentences? If the answer is yes, then early syntactic development leans toward abrupt changes; if the types of sentences are only considered to have been acquired when they can be correctly produced, then early syntactic development leans toward gradual changes. With different connotations of “acquisition”, there are different ways to obtain data, and these various types of data then support their own differing views. Therefore, simply depending on the data, it is very difficult to judge which one is superior. The key is how to understand “acquisition”. Secondly, what is “input”? Nativism theory considers input as the input of linguistic knowledge. As such, children indeed receive impoverished input. Since children can acquire a language within a few years, it can only indicate that they have inborn linguistic knowledge and have carried out parameter setting at an early stage – that they would acquire abruptly at a certain stage. Constructivism theory states that input is the daily language input from people surrounding the child. Then the input children receive is no longer impoverished. Input plays a significant role in the development of children’s language. Children gradually understand the meaning of words and the use of sentences in their communication with people around them. From simple to complex, language is gradually learned. In general, children’s comprehension of language precedes production, and the same is true for the acquisition of the “zai” construction in this chapter. Children’s acquisition regarding comprehension occurs first (age 01;09) and production later (age 02;00). From comprehension to production, what changes have taken place in children’s physical, cognitive, and linguistic environment? What factors make

208  Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction children understand language before they produce it? And what factors make children unable to produce even if they have long understood the language? I think these are issues more worthy of in-depth research.

Notes

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1 See D. McDaniel et al. (1996, pp. 125–144) for a reference of the experimental method regarding picture selection. 2 The acquisition criteria for spontaneously produced speech material is that a feature is naturally produced at least three times and with clear semantic meaning and appropriate context. 3 From the pre-Qin period to the Song Yuan Dynasties, the usage frequency of Z2 is much higher than that of Z3. Z3 remained scarce until the Tang and Five Dynasties and only began to occur in large quantities after the Song (Shao, 2005, pp. 119–124). The “zai” in Z2 is closer to it semantically in Z1; for instance, the “在这儿 ‘be here’ ” in “咱们在这儿. ‘We are here’ ” and “咱们在这儿玩. ‘We are playing here’ ” are highly consistent in their semantic characteristics. The gradual combination of features is more pronounced as Z2 is based on Z1.

10 Early acquisition and development of the ditransitive construction

This chapter examines in detail the diachronic development of ditransitive constructions in three Chinese children before the age of 04;06 and discovers that the acquisition process of children’s ditransitive constructions is exceptionally consistent. Through the output and input data of children of a certain age group, this chapter finds that the temporal-quantity characteristic and the time sequence of the output do not correspond completely. Therefore, it is insufficient to explain the acquisition characteristics of this construction by children using usage-based frequency features, whereas the syntactic derivation analysis of generative grammar can better explain the three children’s acquisition process. However, this chapter suggests that we cannot use a single theory to explain the acquisition characteristics of the ditransitive construction. Innate factors, interactive input, and cognitive factors are all related to the acquisition of syntactic structures. The ditransitive construction is essentially syntactically mature for four-year-old Chinese children. Some ditransitive constructions of the non-current domain are not produced; this is not due to syntax but the result of life experiences.

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10.1 Research goals and research background This chapter aims to explore the early acquisition characteristics of the ditransitive construction and their rational interpretation through the spontaneous speech corpora of three young Chinese children. On this basis, theoretical issues regarding early syntactic development are discussed. We also hope to find external evidence for some of the controversial issues in the structural ontological research through children’s acquisition data of the ditransitive construction. 10.1.1 Exploring the early acquisition and related theoretical issues of the ditransitive construction The ditransitive construction is a relatively common syntactic structure in human languages. As a rather complex argument structure, its generative mechanism is different from regular sentences with just one object, and its two objects can be disassembled to be expressed separately. For instance, “(我)给你 ‘(I) give

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210  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction you’ – (我)给两本书 ‘(I) give two books’ – (我)给你两本书 ‘(I) give you two books’ ”. Therefore, it is a good example of how we may study early syntactic development. There has been little research on children’s acquisition of the ditransitive construction in Chinese, with research mainly done by Zhou (1997), Zhou and Wang (2001), Zou (2012), and Liang (2017). Zhou (1997) found that Chinese children begin to produce the GEI “给give”-type double-object construction formed with the verb GEI “给give” at age 01;06, but these structures only have one object. The other object and the subject are supplemented by the people and objects at the scene. At age 02;00, both objects of GEI “给give” appear in the construction. After age 02;06, the double object construction with combined verbs “V给” starts to appear. Variations of the double object construction also begin to occur, as well as double object constructions formed by speech act verbs. At age 03;00, children start to produce the predicate-object DOC of the GEI type; double object construction of the “obtain” type also emerges. Guoguang Zhou also explored the acquisition mechanism of the double object construction. He believed that the onset of the acquisition of the double object construction is to acquire the double object verb GEI. When children have understood the action represented by GEI and the syntactical meaning embedded in its syntactic structure, through the means of syntactic expansion and syntactic coupling, their double object constructions become increasingly complex and can be linked with other structures. Zhou and Wang (2001) mainly focused on the development of various types of GEI sentences. They found that at age 02;00, children begin to produce the “N + GEI + N + N” structure, which is also a ditransitive construction. They believed that children’s production of the ditransitive construction during this period is primarily due to the meaning of the verb GEI and the development of their valence function. Zou (2012) performed a detailed examination on the acquisition of a child’s GEI sentences and summarized the process of children’s acquisition of different forms of the GEI sentences: GEI→ GEIN2→ N3 GEI N2→ GEI N3→ GEI N2N3→把N3 GEI N2. The author considered children’s syntactic acquisition to be based on verb items and that as a high-frequency verb, the semantic rules of GEI provide a basis for the summarization of the “GEI N2N3” structure. Children use a categorization mechanism to summarize. The final summary mechanism can rise from specific verbs to the argument structure. Liang (2017) utilized a picture selection experiment to investigate whether 3- to 5-year-old children would interpret single and double argument single-object GEI sentences following the semantic role sequence of a typical DOC (i.e., S give RO). The experimental data showed that the older the children were, the more they comprehended in the order of the semantic roles of typical DOC sentences. They even comprehended “N GEI” more as a typical double object construction. In the context of the controversy regarding ontological studies of whether the DOC and the dative construction have a transformational relationship, Snyder and Stromswold (1997) investigated 12 English-learning children’s acquisition process of the DOC and the dative construction. Their data did not support syntactic derivations between the transformations of these two types of structures. In addition, studies related

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 211 to the acquisition of the DOC mainly focused on the acquisition and transformation of the dative construction by English- and Chinese-learning children (Gropen et al., 1989; Chung & Peter, 1998; Campbell & Tomasello, 2001; Conwell & Demuth, 2007). The preceding research based on natural speech and experimental corpora provides referential insights for the study of children’s ditransitive construction. However, there are some issues that require further consideration. For instance, how do children acquire the syntactic rules of the ditransitive construction? If the density of linguistic material is high enough, may we be able to observe children’s acquisition process in more detail? If we inspect the high-density linguistic material of more children, can we still observe consistency in their acquisition patterns? And if there is a pattern of acquisition consistency, how do we explain it? Regarding theories of early childhood syntactic development, the most influential are the nativism theory and the usage-based constructivism theory: The former states that early syntactic development is controlled by genetic inheritance, and it is the innate and inborn Universal Grammar that determines children’s rapid acquisition of syntactic structures. Experiences only have a triggering effect. The latter considers early syntactic development to be constructed based on general cognitive abilities (i.e., the ability to interpret intention and the ability to discover patterns) and through children’s interaction with others. The input in the interactions is very important and has a rather great influence on children learning language patterns. Here, we do not claim a preference regarding a specific theory, nor do we make assumptions regarding which theory the data from children’s acquisition of the DOC might support. We will investigate young ­Chinese ­children’s acquisition characteristics of the DOC based on the data and then provide discussions.

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10.1.2 Searching for external evidence for ontological disputes The ditransitive construction (traditionally referred to as the double object construction) has long been valued in the study of sentence patterns. The research content mainly focuses on three aspects: scope, classification, and the level and semantic relationship among components (e.g., Zhu (1979, 1982), Li (1984), Ma (1992), Fan (1996c), etc.). After the introduction to construction grammar (CxG), Chinese scholars were most familiarized with research by Goldberg (1995) and changed the terms from DOC to ditransitive construction following Goldberg. Goldberg considered the semantic features of the English DOC to be “causereceive ” and its syntactic representation as “V ”. The meaning of the ditransitive construction and the meaning of the verb are interactive. The ditransitive construction is also a prototype category that includes typical and atypical members. Based on Goldberg, Zhang (1999) suggested that modern Chinese has the ditransitive construction and that its semantic core is “intentional transfer of giving”. He further specified some syntactic features of a typical ditransitive construction using example sentences such as “老李给我一本书 ‘Old Li gives me a book’ ”. For instance, it is generally

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212  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction possible to add the genitive case of the agent before the patient; it is generally not possible to put the receiver before the verb using GEI, but one can put the patient in front of the verb using BA“把”. These syntactic features reflect the corresponding semantic features, for instance, transfer of the possessive relationship between agent and patient and clear characteristics of on-site delivery and the disposability of the patient. Zhang also accepted the typical category view of constructions and considered the aforementioned syntactic and semantic features to be characteristics of the typical ditransitive construction. The typical ditransitive construction and some atypical ditransitive constructions together form a “radiating” category, in which various atypical ditransitive constructions have different syntactic and semantic manifestations. For example, extending from the manner of giving (i.e., the meaning of the verb), there could also be meanings such as a sudden throw, to convey information, to remotely give, to promise and assign, and to name, all of which are extensions of manners of giving based on the basic meaning of the concrete conferring of an object at a particular moment of the typical ditransitive construction. Generative grammar studies of the ditransitive construction mainly focus on the source of the structure and the process of syntactic derivations. For example, Larson (1988, 1990) believed that the DOC is derived from the dative construction (e.g., “John sends a letter to Mary”) and is formed through a series of shifts and passive transformations. Some Chinese scholars accepted this notion and accordingly analyzed the syntactic operations regarding how the Chinese DOC is derived from the dative construction (e.g., “张三送一本书给李四 ‘Zhang San gives a book to Li Si’ ”) (Gu, 1999; Zhou, 2000, etc.). There certainly are also those with the opposite view: that the DOC is base-generated and the dative construction is derived from the DOC, for instance, research by Aoun and Li (1989). Some scholars believe that there is no source and derivational relationship between the DOC and the dative construction and that they are independently generated, such as in research by He (2011). In addition, from the perspective of the meaning of DOC, many scholars have performed syntactic derivations of the DOC of different languages. Kayne (1984), Pesetsky (1995), Harley (2002), Beck and Johnson 2004), and Zhang (1998) considered that the indirect and direct objects of the DOC bear a causation-possession relation and that the syntactic analysis should be based on this semantic relationship. Based on the syntactic analysis that Bantu languages promote a certain component that has no thematic relation with verbs to applied object through specific markings, Pylkkänen (2008), Anagnostopoulou (2003), Miyagawa and Tsujioka (2004), Tsai (2007), Sun (2015), and others performed applicative structural analyses on the DOC of English, Greek, Japanese, and Chinese. Pylkkänen (2008) also proposed that the applicatives are subdivided into low applicatives and high applicatives. The DOC is the result of low applicatives. After the application, the possessed element of the direct object shifts from the subject to the indirect object. Different schools of thought have produced a rich literature regarding the research of the ditransitive construction and provided an ontological framework of reference for this chapter. However, there are still some disputes in these

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 213 studies: 1) the meaning of ditransitive constructions, including the give meaning (i.e., causing to accept or to possess) and the transmit meaning; 2) the source of the ditransitive construction, including its derivation from the dative construction or it being base-generated; 3) the source of the meaning of the ditransitive construction. Some are derived from the conceptual structure of typical verbs, some from sentential structure, and some from the functional genre (G, F) or the applicative marker (e.g., “to” in English, “give, walk” in Chinese). Given the relationship between children’s language acquisition and linguistic argumentation, we attempt to respond to the preceding controversial issues using children’s acquisition data.

10.2  Definition of concept and description of data

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10.2.1  Definition of concept From the literature review, we can see that there are still some controversies regarding the scope, type, and meaning of the ditransitive construction. In terms of its scope and type, some studies have included at least two formats, i.e., “S + V + O1 + O2” and “S + V + O2 + GEI O1”. While some research only targets the “S + V + O1 + O2” format, it also does not clearly exclude “S + V + O2 + GEI O1” or “S + GEI O1 + V + O2” and “S + V GEI + O1 + O2”. Although different formats may have large semantic associations, their internal components and their distributional characteristics should be homogenous as a construction. Therefore, we classify “S + V + O1 + O2” and “S + V GEI + O1 + O2” as one type and confirm these formats to be the ditransitive structure. From the perspective of semantic features, the ditransitive construction expresses the process of transferring a patient (a concrete object or a non-concrete object) from one participant to another. This process is a complete event, including the action, direction of the action, and participant and involves three arguments: the agent, the receiver (or the source), and the patient. The receiver (or the source) argument is generally a concrete and living entity, and the patient argument typically refers to a non-living object. The former also tends to be definitive whereas the latter is usually indefinite. 10.2.2 Description of speech materials The speech materials in this chapter were still obtained from three children’s speech in the Mandarin Children’s Language Development Dynamic Corpus at the Capital Normal University (CNU-MCLDDC). Their names and the lengths of the speech materials were SYY (01;08–04;06), LXY (02;02–04;06), and JBS (01;02–04;06). Although there are many verbs that can be used to form the ditransitive construction, according to our analysis of the corpus, there were only 13 verbs that children could enter into a DOC. Among the 13 verbs, the earliest one learned was the ditransitive construction with GEI. Ditransitive constructions formed

214  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction with other words were acquired later than the ditransitive construction with GEI, and even with very long intervals. There were no exceptions among the three children. Therefore, given the order of language acquisition, we began by examining the acquisition of the ditransitive construction with GEI. In addition, the three children learned the three-argument ditransitive construction with GEI at age 02;03 at the latest. Therefore, we extended our investigation of the ditransitive construction with GEI only to age 02;06, with a total of 170 hours of audio and video materials. The complete ditransitive construction involves three arguments, which are agent, recipient (the source), and patient. The word order characteristic of the arguments is “N施+ V给+N接受者+N受”. To simplify our annotations, we coded “N施”, “N接受者”, and “N受” into S, R, and O, respectively. Furthermore, there were many expressions related to the ditransitive construction, such as “他给我带一本书 He GEI I bring a book”, “他带给我一本书 He bring GEI I a book”, and “他把一本书带给我 He BA a book bring GEI I”. However, young children have not yet systematically produced these constructions. This chapter only examines the format of “S + V + R + O” from children’s output.

10.3 Early acquisition of the ditransitive construction Because of length constraints, the diachronic process of the acquisition of the ditransitive construction with GEI is described using one child, LXY, as an example. The other two children’s data are provided in the later sections regarding the time and quantity of acquisition in order to reflect the commonality among the three children as well as their individual learning characteristics. 10.3.1 Single-word GEI sentence

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Observing children’s initial acquisition, we can see that the earliest GEI sentences produced by participant child LXY all consisted of just the bare-verb GEI without arguments.1 We could not discern which argument was omitted based on context either. At age 01;02.28, LXY first produced the one-word GEI sentence, as follows: （1） GFE: 宝宝 弄好 了， 喔喔，给。 GFE: Bǎobao nòng hǎo le, ō ō, gěi. Baby do ready PARTICLE oh oh give ‘Baby is ready, oh oh, here you go.’ LXY: (儿童低语，听不清） LXY: (the child is mumbling, unable to hear clearly) GFE: 不给， 阿姨 不给 你，不给，不 GFE: Bù gěi, āyí bù gěi nǐ, bù gěi, bù Not give aunt not give you not give not ‘Not [gonna] give, aunt is not going to give you, not giving, not’

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 215 LXY: 给。 LXY: Gěi. Give ‘Give me.’ GFE: 说 谢谢，谢谢。 GFE: Shuō xièxie, xièxie. Say thank thank ‘Say thank you, thank you.’ The child wanted to get something from the adult, but the adult said, “[I’m] not giving it”. When the child was in imminent need, he or she clearly produced GEI but was unable to provide the agent (e.g., “auntie GEI”) or the patient (e.g., “GEI me”) arguments. After age 01;03, LXY’s production of the verb GEI increased, including the negative sentence “不给 ‘not giving’ ”, for example: （2） HXT: 给 HXT: Gěi

叔叔 shūshu

玩玩儿 wán wán’er

give uncle play play ‘Let uncle play for a bit.’ LYZ: 来，给我 LYZ: Lái, gěi

玩儿 wǒ wán’er

吧。 ba. PARTICLE

一下。 yíxià.

Come give me play one down ‘Come, let me play for a bit.’ LXY: 不给。 LXY: Bù gěi. Not give ‘[I will] not let [you].’

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LYZ: 不给 就 抢 了 啊。 LYZ: Bù gěi jiù qiǎng le a. Not give modal.ADV snatch PARTICLE PARTICLE ‘[I] will snatch it [if you do] not let [me].’ HXT: 抢 了 啊。 HXT: Qiǎng le a. Snatch PARTICLE PARTICLE ‘Snatch!’ The emerging phase of LXY’s acquisition of the GEI construction was from age 01;02 to age 01;05. During this period, he or she spontaneously produced nine single-word GEI sentences. This was not accidental and can be seen as the child having acquired it stably.

216  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 10.3.2  The initial configuration of the arguments of GEI The initial configuration of the arguments of GEI changed two or three months after the child’s initial production of the single-word GEI construction. At age 01;05, both LXY and JBS produced a GEI construction with one argument. SYY also produced a GEI construction with one argument in his or her earliest speech recordings. The children had initially acquired the ability to assign an argument to a verb. LXY spontaneously produced a GEI construction with one argument at age 01;05.28, with the format of “GEI + R”, for example, （3） LXY: 给。 LXY: Gěi. Give ‘Give [something] (to listeners).’ LZR: 给 姐姐， 给 小弟弟， 给 哥哥。 LZR: Gěi jiějie, gěi xiǎo dìdi, gěi gēge. Give older sister give little younger brother give older brother ‘Give [something] to older sister, to little brother, to older brother.’ HXT: 给 哥哥 吗? HXT: Gěi gēge ma? Give older brother PARTICLE ‘Do [you] give [it] to older brother?’ LXY: 给 哥哥。 LXY: Gěi gēgē.

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Give older brother ‘Give [it] to older brother.’ HXT: 宝宝 现在 会说 xx 那个 妈妈 坐 大巴 宝宝    坐 大巴。 HXT: Bǎobao  xiànzài huì shuō xx  nàgè  māma zuò  dàbā  bǎobao zuò  dàbā. Baby  now will say  xx  that-MW mother sit  big bus baby sit  big bus ‘Baby now will say xx that mother takes big bus [and] baby takes big bus.’ LXY: 给。 LXY: Gěi. Give ‘Give [something] (to the listener).’

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 217 （4） LZR: 给 姐姐 穿 小鞋。 LZR: Gěi jiějie chuān xiǎoxié. Give older sister wear small shoe ‘Let older sister wear small shoes.’ LZR: 说 给 姐姐 给 她。 LZR: Shuō gěi jiějie gěi tā. Say give older sister give her ‘[I] said let older sister, let her.’ 穿 啊? HXT: 谁 HXT: Shéi chuān a? Who wear PARTICLE ‘Who wears?’ LXY: 给、给 姐姐。 LXY: Gěi, gěi jiějie. Give give older sister ‘Let, let older sister.’ HXT: 给 姐姐 干嘛? HXT: Gěi jiějiě gàn ma? Give older sister do what ‘Let older sister to do what?’ LZR: 穿 鞋。 LZR: Chuān xié Wear shoe ‘Wear shoes.’

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LXY: 给 姐。 LXY: Gěi jiě. Give older sister ‘Let older sister.’ Although the first output “给哥哥 ‘give big brother’ ” was in response to the adult’s question “给哥哥吗 ‘[Will you] give old brother’ ”, in the same speech segment, the child also produced “给姐姐 ‘give older sister’ ”, “给姐 ‘give older sister’ ”, thus proving that he or she had the ability to assign arguments to GEI. Afterward, LXY successively produced single-argument formats “GEI + O” and “S + GEI”, for example, （5） LZR: 给 弟弟 说话。 LZR: Gěi dìdi shuōhuà.

218  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction Give younger brother speak ‘Let younger brother talk/Talk to younger brother.’ HXT: 给 弟弟 干嘛? HXT: Gěi dìdi gànmá? Give younger brother do what ‘Let younger brother do what?’ LZR: 给 弟弟 送 x弟弟 说 LZR: Gěi dìdi sòng x dìdi shuō Give younger brother send x younger brother say ‘Send younger brother x; Younger brother said.’ LXY: 给 鞋。 LXY: Gěi xié. Give shoe ‘Give [him] shoes.’ LZR: 给 弟弟 穿 LZR: Gěi dìdi chuān

给 gěi

弟弟 dìdi

穿 小 chuān xiǎo

Give younger brother wear give younger brother wear small ‘Let younger brother wear, let younger brother wear small.’ HXT: 给 谁 穿 啊 HXT: Gěi shéi chuān a Give who wear ‘Let who wear?’

PARTICLE

LZR: 给 姐姐 穿 小鞋。 （01;05） LZR: Gěi jiějie chuān xiǎoxié.

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Give older sister wear small shoe ‘Let older sister wear small shoes.’ （6） HXT: 给 姐姐，给 姐姐 吧，给 妈妈，给 HXT: Gěi jiějie, gěi jiějie ba, gěi māma, gěi 叔叔，给 姐姐。 shūshu, gěi jiějie. Give older sister give older sister PARTICLE give mother give uncle give older sister ‘Give [something] to older sister, give [it] to older sister, would you? To mother, to uncle, to older sister.’ ZYY: 你 怎么 不 给 姐姐 啊？ ZYY: Nǐ zěnme bù gěi jiějie a? You how come not give older sister PARTICLE ‘How come you do not give [it] to older sister?’

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 219 LXY: 妈妈 给。 LXY: Māma gěi. Mother give ‘Mother can give [it to older sister].’ HXT: 妈妈

给 啊， 妈妈 没有，叔叔 有， 你 叫 叔叔 给。 HXT: Māma gěi a, māma méiyǒu, shūshu yǒu, nǐ jiào shūshu gěi. Mother give PARTICLE mother not have uncle have you ask uncle give ‘[You want] mother to give [it to the older sister]. Mother does not have [it], uncle has [it]. You can ask uncle to give [it to the sister.]’ LYR: 你 说 叔叔 给。 LYR: Nǐ shuō shūshu gěi. You say uncle give ‘You said that uncle will give.’ HXT: 叔叔 好 就 给 你 了。（01;06） HXT: Shūshu hǎo jiù gěi nǐ le.

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Uncle good modal.ADV give you PARTICLE ‘If uncle is okay with it/kind, he will give [it] to you.’ In example (6), there were no pauses in “妈妈给 ‘mom gives’ ”. Viewed in its context, LXY wanted his/her mother to give someone something. Therefore, “mom” here was not a title, nor was it the receiver of GEI, but rather the agent of GEI. From ages 01;05.28 to 01;06.10, LXY gradually assigned the receiver, agent, and patient to GEI. This indicates that the child attempted to configure various arguments of GEI, but they all appeared in the form of single-argument. It can be seen that although LXY had initially obtained the ability to assign arguments to the verb, the learning process was incomplete. This process lasted for one month, and the three argument forms were acquired gradually. Here, we must pay particular attention to the fact that the child can assign various arguments to GEI, the “GEI + R” format was produced first and with the largest number. By age 02;06, there were a total of 109 cases of the three types of single arguments, and “GEI + R” accounted for 101 instances, which was 93% of the total number. 10.3.3 On the acquisition of the monotransitive GEI construction with two arguments After the three children acquired the single-argument GEI construction, they successively produced dual-argument GEI constructions. However, none of ­ the dual-argument GEI constructions initially produced by the children were

220  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction ditransitive constructions – the two arguments were assigned to the subject and object positions. Although the arguments assigned by the three children to the subject and object positions did not have identical roles, and some dual-argument monotransitive constructions were even acquired after the ditransitive construction, overall, children configured the GEI construction and assigned it with a “subject-verb-object” format first, and then assigned the “predicate-indirect object-direct object” format to the ditransitive construction. Before acquiring the ditransitive construction, LXY first learned the “S + GEI + O” structure and then learned the “O + GEI + R” and “S + GEI + R” after having acquired the ditransitive construction. Acquisition examples of “S + GEI + O” are given here: （7） LYR: 哎呦， LYR: Āi yōu,

掉了。 diào le.

Opps fall PARTICLE ‘Opps, it dropped.’ LXY: 妈 LXY: Mā

给 gěi

球球。 qiúqiu.

Mom give ball-ball ‘Mom gives [someone] the ball.’

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HXT: 宝宝，你  住 哪里 呀，   你  住  哪里， 知道 吗？ 告诉  妈妈 你 住  哪里。 HXT: Bǎobao, nǐ zhù nǎlǐ ya, nǐ zhù nǎlǐ, zhīdào ma? Gàosù māma  nǐ   zhù    nǎlǐ. Baby you live    where PARTICLE you live where know   PARTICLE tell mother you live      where ‘Baby, where do you live, where do you know, do you know? Tell mother where you live.’ LYR: 你 住 哪里，哪里。 LYR: Nǐ zhù nǎlǐ, nǎlǐ. You live where where ‘Where, where do you live.’ LXY: 打 你。 （01;07.15） LXY: Dǎ nǐ. beat you ‘[I’m going to] hit you.’ This dual argument GEI construction was a spontaneous output without adult guidance. The dialogue between the child and the adult also appeared to be incomprehensible. GEI was assigned both the agent argument and the patient argument,

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 221 be incomprehensible. GEI was assigned both the agent argument and the patient argument, which signified the further enhancement of the child’s ability of syntactic allocation for the GEI construction. We can therefore observe the gradual process of children’s syntactic acquisition. 10.3.4 The emergence and maturation of the ditransitive construction 10.3.4.1 Ditransitive construction without subject When the children had acquired one or two types of dual-argument monotransitive GEI construction, they began to produce a large number of ditransitive constructions. In the children’s initial output, the ditransitive construction of GEI did not have a subject. LXY first produced it at age 01;08.05 and SYY and JBS at ages 01;10.20 and 02;02.13, respectively. LXY’s speech example is as follows: （8） HXT: 妈妈 帮忙。 HXT: Māma bāngmáng. Mother help ‘mother [will] help [you].’ LXY: 帮忙。 LXY: Bāngmáng. help ‘Help.’ HXT: 帮忙。 HXT: Bāngmáng.

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Help ‘Help.’ LXY: 给 姐姐 这。 LXY: Gěi jiějie zhè. this Give older sister ‘Give this to the older sister.’ GFI: 谢谢。 GFI: Xièxiè. Thank ‘Thanks.’ HXT: 给  妈妈  苹果  好  不 好，给  妈妈  苹果，哦，给 妈妈 苹果。 HXT: Gěi māma píngguǒ hǎo bù hǎo, gěi māma píngguǒ, ò, gěimāma píngguǒ.

222  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction Give mother apple good not good give mother apple oh give mother apple ‘Can you give mother apples? Give mother some apples, oh, give mother some apples.’ This was the child’s spontaneous output without adult guidance. Although the semantic feature of the patient argument was definitive, which was not consistent with the fact that the ditransitive construction’s patient argument tends to be indefinite, it still did not impede the semantic expression and syntactic configuration since the child’s conversation occurred at a particular time and place and it was easy to assign the patient as definitive. During the three months from ages 01;08.05 to 01;11.05, LXY produced 10 sentences of the “GEI + R + O” format: （9） 给 Gěi

姐姐 jiějie

这（01;08.05） zhè

Give older sister this ‘Give this to the older sister.’ (10） 给 你 一颗（01;08.26） Gěi nǐ yìkē Give you one-MW ‘Give one to you.’ (11） 再 给 你 一颗（01;08.26） Zài gěi nǐ yìkē Again give you one-MW ‘Give you once again / give you another one.’

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(12） 给 宝宝 一个（01;08.26） Gěi bǎobao yígè Give baby one-MW ‘Give baby one.’ (13） 给 妈妈 一个（01;09.03） Gěi māma yígè Give mother one-MW ‘Give one to Mother.’ (14） 给 妈 一个（01;10.08） Gěi mā yígè Give mom one-MW ‘Give mom one.’ (15） 给 我 帽子（01;10.29） Gěi wǒ màozi Give me hat ‘Give me the hat.’

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 223 (16） 给 妈妈 椅子（01;11.05） Gěi māma yǐzi Give mother chair ‘Give mother a chair.’ (17） 给 宝宝 肥 猪（01;11.05） Gěi bǎobao féi zhū Give baby fat pig ‘Give baby some fat pig.’ We can be certain that LXY’s ditransitive GEI construction was not produced by accident but rather a steady development. While at this stage, the compositions of the child’s receiver and patient arguments were relatively simple, with the receiver always being a personal pronoun or appellation word and the patient usually being a structure referring to quantity, the receiver and patient arguments still co-occurred with the correct word order, thus signifying children’s initial acquisition of the ditransitive GEI construction. 10.3.4.2 Ditransitive construction with subject

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Within one to three months after the production of the ditransitive construction without the subject, the child successively produced ditransitive constructions with the subject. At age 01;11.08, LXY produced a ditransitive GEI construction with three arguments. Its word order was correct, and the patient was indefinite. Example sentences follow: (18） LXY: 鸭梨。 LXY: Yālí. Chinese white pear ‘White pear.’ HXT: 大 鸭梨。 HXT: Dà yālí. Big Chinese white pear ‘Big white pear.’ LXY: 大，谁 给 我 大 苹果？ LXY: Dà, shéi gěi wǒ dà píngguǒ? Big who give I big apple ‘Big, who gives me a big apple?’ LXY: 大 苹果， 一个 LXY: Dà píngguǒ, yígè

大 苹。 dà píng.

Big apple one-MW big apple ‘Big apple, a big apple.’ LZR: 咬 它 一口。 LZR: Yǎo tā yìkǒu.

224  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction Bite it one-MW ‘Have a big bite.’ HXT: 敢  咬 HXT: Gǎn yǎo

吗? ma?

Dare bite PARTICLE ‘Do you dare bite?’ (19） LZR: 一个 两个 三个 他们 每个 人 LZR: Yígè liǎnggè sāngè tāmen měigè rén

都 撅着 屁股 呢。我们 给 一个 游泳 圈。 dōu juēzhe pìgu ne. Wǒmen gěi yígè yóuyǒng quān.

One-MW two-MW three-MW all stick up-PARTICLE hips PARTICLE we give they every-MW person one-MW swim ring ‘One, two, three, [they are] all sticking up their hips. We give each of them a swim ring.’ LXY: 我 不 给 LXY: Wǒ bù gěi

宝宝 一个。 bǎobao yígè.

I not give baby one-MW ‘I do not [want to] give the baby one.’ LZR: 不 LZR: Bù

给 宝宝 一个，宝宝 给 你 这个 吧。 gěi bǎobao yígè, bǎobao gěi nǐ zhège ba.

Not give baby one-MW baby give you this-MW PARTICLE ‘Do not give the baby one; [then,] the baby give you this.’ LZR: 宝宝 拿 LZR: Bǎobao ná

这个。 zhège.

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Baby take this-MW ‘Baby takes this.’ There were occasional errors in LXY’s output of the ditransitive construction with a subject, as seen in example (19). But overall, by around age 02;00, this child’s ditransitive GEI construction was already mature.

10.4 Acquisition characteristics and explanations of the ditransitive GEI construction 10.4.1  Learning patterns of the ditransitive GEI construction We first counted the GEI constructions based on type, timing of acquisition, and frequency and then obtained learning patterns from these descriptive data regarding children’s acquisition of this construction.

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 225 Based on these descriptive data, we used line charts to show how the three children’s GEI constructions developed from a bare verb to ditransitive constructions with subjects2 (see Figure 10.1). We then further calculated the output numbers of the various types of GEI constructions in order to examine the output characteristics of these different types (see Figure 10.2). Through Table 10.1 and the figures, we can see that the children’s acquisition characteristics of the ditransitive GEI construction are manifested as follows: 1 2

3 4 5

Each child matured gradually from the bare-verb GEI sentence to the ditransitive GEI construction. This process took about 10–12 months. Each child’s acquisition process presented several key nodes. Although the absolute times of acquisition of the key nodes were not identical among the three children, the order of acquisition of several key types of constructions was exactly the same. This is detailed in Table 10.2. Regarding the number of output, the key nodes were used more frequently than the other types. This was especially true for “GEI + R”, which was the case for all three children. When the children produced various types of single argument constructions, the initial type was “GEI + R” rather than “GEI + O” or “S + GEI”, and so on. Before the emergence of the ditransitive structure without the subject, the three children all experienced the process of assigning the three arguments of GEI. Such that the children learned all of the single-argument and even some dual-argument monotransitive constructions before they acquired the ditransitive constructions.

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10.4.2 Discussions regarding the acquisition pattern of the ditransitive GEI constructions Based on the output data, the children acquired “GEI + R” prior to acquiring the ditransitive construction “GEI + R + O”. Is it possible that the “GEI + R” has omitted the object or the subject? Experimental research on two- to four-year-old children by Wang, S. and Wang, A. (1992) indicated that like English-learning children, Chinese children also produce empty subject (null subject parameter) sentences; yet different from English-learning children, Chinese children produce empty object sentences as well. Based on the spontaneous speech data, if children’s “GEI + R” omits S (subject) or O (direct object), they should learn “GEI + O” and “S + GEI” at the same time as they learn “GEI + R”, even if the first two types of constructions have a smaller number of outputs. According to Table 10.1, only LXY among the three children produced “GEI + O” and “GEI + R” at the same time. Of the other two children, JBS produced “GEI + O” significantly later than “GEI + R” and with extremely low numbers. SYY did not produce “GEI + O”. For all three children, “S + GEI” was produced later than “GEI + R”. Given these data, we consider the acquisition of the ditransitive GEI

30

0

5

10

15

20

25

SYY

JBS

LXY

30

0

5

10

15

20

25

Figure 10.1 Three children’s acquisition trends of the ditransitive GEI construction (individuals on the left and average on the right)

Age(unit:month)

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Age(unit:month)

Average

300

259

250 200 150

100

123 74

50

6

0

38

24

12

24

7

Figure 10.2 Three children’s acquisition counts of the various types of GEI constructions

Descriptive data of three children’s acquisition of the ditransitive GEI Table 10.1  construction LXY Time Verb

GEI GEI +R GEI +O S+ GEI Monotransitive *R+ GEI O+ GEI +R S+ GEI +R S+ GEI +O GEI +R+O Ditransitive S+ GEI +R+O

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Total # of output

JBS Counts Time

SYY Counts Time

Counts

Total # of type

01;02 51 01;05 101 01;05 5 01;06 3 0 0 01;10 6 01;10 3 01;07 1 01;08 16 01;11 3

01;03 23 01;05 53 02;00 1 01;08 4 02;00 2 01;11 6 01;10 4 02;03 1 02;02 10 02;03 3

01;08 105 0 0 01;10 5 0 0 01;08 12 01;11 31 01;10 5 01;10 97 01;11 18

74 259 6 12 2 24 38 7 123 24

189

107

273

568

Table 10.2 Three children’s order of acquisition of the key types of GEI constructions bare-verb GEI sentence

→“GEI+R”

→ “GEI+R+O”

→ “S+GEI+R+O”

LXY

14 months

17 months

20 months

23 months

JBS

15 months

17 months

26 months

27 months

SYY

0

20 months

22 months

23 months

Average

14.5 months

18 months

22.7 months

24.3 months

228  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction construction by Chinese children to be a process that gradually matures following the established sequence.3

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10.4.2.1 Inadequacy of explanations based on input or cognition The acquisition characteristics of the aforementioned children’s ditransitive GEI construction are intuitively supported by the usage-based theory of syntactic acquisition (Tomasello and Brooks, 1999; Tomasello, 2003). Of course, conversely, this theory can also be used to explain the children’s acquisition characteristics, because according to the usage-based theory of syntactic acquisition, children’s ditransitive construction is gradually formed via interaction with adults. Using the bare-verb GEI as a basis (item-based), children gradually build sentences that are close to those of adults through methods such as extensions and additions. However, some issues are intriguing. For instance, adults provide input for various types of GEI constructions, but why does children’s composition of the ditransitive construction manifest itself as several key node types, and why do they exhibit consistency regarding the order of acquisition of the node types? When children can assign an argument to GEI, why do they first assign it to the receiver argument and not the agent argument? When two arguments can be assigned, children give priority to the subject and object positions of GEI, and there is no priority given to the output of a ditransitive construction without the subject. These acquisition characteristics are difficult to explain with the usage-based theory of syntactic acquisition. We first examined the relationship between the temporal features of the input and the acquisition characteristics. By investigating the caregivers’ input of GEI constructions during their interaction with the children, we found that there was a certain degree of correlation between the adults’ input and children’s timing of acquisition and quantity of output of the various types of GEI constructions. For example, the temporal and quantitative features of the input of the three types of single argument structures were related to an extent to those of the output. Yet at the same time, there were also areas where they were not related. For instance, for the dual-argument ditransitive construction without the subject, both the timing and quantity of its input exceeded those of the other dual-argument ditransitive constructions, yet the children did not produce it first – but rather, its production was significantly delayed. See Table 10.3 for both situations.4 From Table 10.3, “GEI + R” was the most frequently used format in adult language, with an average ratio of input at 43.7%. It also constituted the earliest and the largest number of the children’s output, with an average of 69.6%. This phenomenon was in line with the rules proposed by Lieven and Tomasello (2008), such that “the more frequently children hear a particular morpheme, word, or construction, all things being equal, the earlier they acquire it”.5 However, even though this rule played a significant role in the acquisition of the single argument

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 229 Table 10.3 Comparison of adult input and children’s output of the various types prior to the acquisition of ditransitive constructions

S+给 给+R 给+O O+给+R S+给+R S+给+O

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给+R+O

Children output count

Before 18 5.5 Before 01;06 01;08 Before 138 42.1 Before 01;05 01;05 Before 2 0.6 Before 01;05 02;00 Before 63 19.2 Before 01;10 01;11 Before 15 4.6 Before 01;10 01;10 Before 2 0.6 Before 01;07 02;03 Before 90 27.4 Before 01;08 02;02

1

Proportion

Count

JBS01; 05–02;01 Time of output

Proportion

Count

LXY01; 05–01;07 Time of output

Proportion

Count

JBS01;02–02;01

Time of input

Proportion

Count

LXY01;02–01;07

Time of input

Construction

Adult input count

0.6 01;06

4 12.9 01;08

8 19.5

73 45.3 01;05

25 80.6 01;05

24 58.5

0

01;05

1

3.2 02;00

1

2.4

19 11.8 01;10

0

0

01;11

4

9.8

14

8.7 01;10

0

0

01;10

4

9.8

0

01;07

1

3.2 02;03

0

0

54 33.5 01;08

0

0

0

0

0

0

02;02

GEI construction, it was no longer viable in acquisition of the ditransitive constructions – the ditransitive constructions were produced with a very substantial delay. The corpus showed that when the two children were at age 01;02, the adults had already begun to provide the ditransitive GEI construction without the subject as input. The input frequency for this construction was also rather high. It was not only much higher than the frequency of “S + GEI” and “GEI + O” constructions, but also much higher than those of “O + GEI + R”, “S + GEI + R”, and “S + GEI + O”. It had an average of 30.5%, which was only second to the input percentage of “GEI + R”. However, children acquired it far later than they acquire the single-argument GEI construction and sometimes also after the acquisition of the other three types of dual-argument monotransitive GEI constructions. In other words, in addition to the two formats in which “O” was added directly after GEI, adults provided rather adequate input for the other GEI constructions. Why did the children still not produce them at the same time or within a short period of time? The usage-based theory of acquisition considers children’s syntactic acquisition to not be a process for which the parameters are set a priori and then triggered at certain age stages. But rather, it is based on the ability of intention reading and

230  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction pattern finding constructed through repeated use. However, this view cannot fully explain the consistency of the three children discussed here in their acquisition of the key types. Can we then explain the aforementioned features from a cognitive perspective? We believe that there are still insufficient interpretations. For example, we could not confirm that “GEI + R” was easier to comprehend than the other two; furthermore, we could confirm that “GEI + R” was easier to comprehend than “GEI + R + O” but could not prove that “GEI + R + O” was easier to comprehend than “S + GEI + R” or “S + GEI + O” and “O + GEI + R”. Of course, there were issues in the ordering of the two objects of the ditransitive construction, and the indirect object tended to be definitive while the direct object tended to be indefinite. But other “subject-verb-object” structures also had the issue of the definitive preceding the indefinite, so this explanation may not be sufficient. 10.4.2.2 Derivation of the syntactic structure

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According to the minimalist program of generative grammar, syntax is a hierarchical structure that consists of the verb phrase (VP), the inflectional phrase (IP), and the complementizer phrase (CP) (i.e., [CP[IP[vP[VP]]]]). This hierarchical structure goes from the bottom to the top, the right to the left, and is binarily jointed at each level. The syntactic structure involves a series of derivational rules in its merging and branching. Chinese children’s acquisition of ditransitive GEI construction is a diachronic process in terms of its maturation. From the beginning of the emergence of GEI constructions to the initial argument assignment of the “GEI + R” construction and then to the appearance and maturation of the ditransitive constructions, it seems that this process follows an innate “blueprint” and merges gradually from the bottom to the top, eventually becoming fully mature. Although the rules may be inborn, the characteristics of children’s obtaining the rules are still gradual. To explain the diachronic process of acquiring the ditransitive GEI constructions using generative derivation, two key issues need to be explained: 1 2

Being single-argument constructions, why is “GEI + R” learned earlier than “S + GEI” or “GEI + O”? Being dual-argument constructions, why is “GEI + R + O” learned later than “S + GEI + R”, “S + GEI + O”, and “O + GEI +S”?

The principles of Universal Grammar consider the recipient R to be after the object O. According to the earliness principle proposed by Pesetsky (1996), v’ attracts the nearest R (I0) to its specifier position as soon as possible in order to satisfy the EPP (extended projection principle) of v’. R can be attracted to the specifier position not only as a result of syntactic derivation but also as related to the semantic features of R, that is, R has the semantic feature of giving, acquiring, or possessing O. According to Li’s (2014) research, the earliest argument

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 231 structure produced by children tends to be subject-predicate and conforms to the extended projection principle. But it is contrary to this Universal Grammar feature when assigning arguments to GEI: the indirect object is preferentially configured instead of the agent argument. The two seem to be contradictory, but if the aforementioned indirect object has the attribute of the specifier in the position of the specifier, they no longer contradict each other. The merging of verbs and specifiers should be prioritized. As a general principle, the EPP is innate and plays a more decisive role in the initial stage of syntactic acquisition. Continuing to look at the acquisition characteristics of “GEI + R + O”, we can explain why “GEI + R + O” is acquired later than some dual argument “subjectverb-object” constructions. According to the minimalist program framework, the case, pronoun, and number of the argument need to be assigned in syntactic derivations. Therefore, the formation of “GEI + R + O” needs to undergo several shifts to check the above-mentioned semantic features of the lexical items. We use the research by He (2011) as an example, because He believed that there is a functional category (G) in the DOC that determines the direction of transmission of the conveyed meaning expressed by this construction (positive value is rightfacing, e.g., “GEI”; negative value is left-facing, e.g., “ZOU 走 walk”). Therefore, “GEI + R + O” experiences three shifts (He, 2011, p. 140), as shown in Table 10.4. Here, V is first shifted to the position of the functional category G, and then the indirect object moves to the position of the specifier to meet G’s EPP requirement. Then V and G move to the position of v’ and merge with the subject (He, 2011, pp. 145–146). The steps of syntactic processing are very complex for DOC, and the rules of generative derivation for regular single-object constructions are much simpler; because the subject-predicate structure constrained by EPP has already

Table 10.4 The formation of “GEI + R + O” vP v’

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T(Subj) ᕐй

VGv

GP

㔉 (G’) IO

G’

ᵾഋ t(VG)

VP

t(㔉 G’) t(IO) t(ᵾഋ)

V’ t(V)

DO

t(㔉 аᵜҖ

232  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction Table 10.5 The example of the rules of generative derivation for regular single-object constructions vP T(Subj)

v’

ᕐй V-v Ҡ

VP t(V)

Obj

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t(V) t(Ҡ)

Obj аᵜҖ

been acquired first, it is only necessary to shift the verb once here (He, 2011, p. 128), as shown in Table 10.5. If this is the case, we can explain why young children acquire “GEI + R + O” later than “S + GEI + R” or “S + GEI + O” and “O + GEI +R”. It is due to the reason that generative derivation is more complex for the DOC than it is for single-object constructions. Using the syntactical derivation of generative grammar to explain these characteristics of the acquisition of the ditransitive construction is concise and straightforward. It is not necessary to consider both input and cognitive factors. However, if we further analyze the data in Table 10.3, we can see that the relationship between the input and output of acquisition was a necessary but insufficient relationship, such that if there was no input or sporadic input, there would be no output or sporadic output. But with high-frequency input, there may still not be output: For example, the input to “GEI + O” and “S + GEI + O” was sporadic, and the acquisition output was also sporadic or none at all; while “GEI + R” and “GEI + R + O” both had high frequency input, the former was learned early and with high numbers of output, yet the latter did not get produced at the same time as or within a short period after the former. These data illustrate that children’s acquisition characteristics of the ditransitive constructions cannot be explained by a single theory. The innate blueprint for acquisition, the input from interaction, and the cognitive factors are all related to the development of the ditransitive constructions. Among them, the procedure of acquisition follows the innate blueprint, which is realized by the interactive input from experience, and they gradually bring children’s ditransitive constructions close to those of adults.

10.5 Acquisition by extension of the ditransitive construction 10.5.1  Types of ditransitive constructions Xu (2004) listed 452 verbs that can enter the DOC. As mentioned earlier, we utilized CLAN to sort out the use of 452 verbs by children and found that children only produced 48 of them. Only 13 of the 48 participated in the formation of the ditransitive construction. According to Zhang’s (1999) classification

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 233 of ditransitive constructions, we classify the 13 verbs into four types: Those that belong to the type that refers to conferring something at a particular time and place “给 gei ‘to give’、 送 song ‘to deliver’、 喂 wei ‘to feed ‘、 偷 tou ‘to steal’、 拿 na ‘to take’、奖 jiang ‘to reward’、 罚 fa ‘to fine’、借 jie ‘to borrow’ ”; those that describe throwing something in a transient and parabolic manner “扔 reng ‘to throw’ ”; those that refer to transmitting information “告诉 gaosu ‘to tell’、 问 wen ‘to ask’、教 jiao ‘to teach’ ”; and those related to naming “叫 jiao ‘to call’. The children did not produce ditransitive constructions formed by the types of verbs that describe “to remotely give” or “to promise and assign”. 10.5.2 Children’s acquisition by extension of various types of ditransitive constructions Among the 13 verbs, the earliest acquired and matured was the ditransitive GEI construction. Even though some of the other words were produced as single-word sentences when the children were relatively young – for instance, “NA” was produced at age 01;02.28 – their formation into ditransitive constructions was later than the ditransitive GEI construction and even with long intervals. There were no exceptions among the three children (see Table 10.6). The patterns shown in Table 10.6 are as follows: 1

The type that refers to giving at a particular time and place was the type most often acquired by the three children. Although not every subtype of the construction was acquired by every child, its overall number was still large. 2 The ditransitive GEI construction was acquired the earliest and with the greatest number of outputs. But in terms of time sequence, all other words that formed the “giving” type were not acquired earlier than the “throwing”, “transmitting”, and “naming” types except for the GEI construction. 3 There was no significant timing pattern for the acquisition of the “throwing”, “transmitting”, and “naming” types of non-GEI ditransitive constructions.

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10.5.3 Discussion of the characteristics of acquisition by extension Although the diachronic learning process of the ditransitive GEI construction is a process constrained by innate blueprints, we still cannot ignore the effects of cognitive and functional factors on the acquisition of this construction. Through young children’s acquisition characteristics of the overall category of ditransitive construction, we can see that the ditransitive construction is acquired as a prototype. Children first acquire the ditransitive GEI construction. This is related to the fact that the GEI construction is used more often than ditransitive constructions formed with other verbs, and it has a higher input frequency. However, we believe that the more intrinsic rationale should be related to the important position of GEI in the formation of the ditransitive construction. Clark’s (1978) study showed that the verbs associated with constructional meanings are learned the earliest and used most frequently.6 The meaning of GEI is “to give the other

234  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction Table 10.6 Three children’s acquisition data of the various types of ditransitive construction LXY

to give on-site

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to throw in a transient and parabolic manner to transmit information

to name

JBS

SYY

Time

Count

Time

Count

Time

Count

gei3 给 give song4 送 deliver wei4 喂 feed tou1 偷 steal na2 拿 take jiang3 奖 reward fa2 罚 fine jie4 借 borrow reng1 扔 throw

01;08

16

02;02

10

01;10

97

0

0

02;03

5

0

03;08

1

0

0

03;02

10

03;03

1

03;10

1

02;10

9

0

0

0

0

02;01

7

04;06

2

02;10

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

02;04

21

0

0

0

0

02;06

1

0

0

0

0

03;00

1

gao4su4 告诉 tell wen4 问 ask jiao1 教 teach jiao4 叫 call

03;08

1

02;04

3

02;06

4

0

0

03;02

6

01;11

7

03;03

2

02;11

4

02;06

20

02;11

3

03;08

24

02;01

12

0

something or some type of encounter”,7 which is a typical act of “intentional transfer of giving”. This conceptual structure is the foundation of the semantic construction and categorization of the ditransitive construction. The meaning of “SONG送deliver” is “to bring something to someone”.8 It is close to the

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Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 235 meaning of GEI, and also indicates “intentional transfer”. They differ in the fact that GEI can be a dative case marker and SONG cannot. GEI can be used as a dative case marker, similar to “to” in English. In non-DOC, GEI needs to appear before the dative, such as “张三送一本书给李四 ‘Zhangsan gives a book to Lisi’ ” and “张三给李四送一本书 ‘Zhangsan GEI Lisi a book’ ”. In DOC, GEI can also appear after verbs of the “giving” type in order to indicate the direction of the giving, which is from the agent to the patient. For example “张三送给李 四一本书 ‘Zhangsan SONGGEI (‘gives’) Lisi a book’ ”, “张三借给李四一本 书 ‘Zhangsan JIEGEI (‘lends’) Lisi a book’ ”, “张三扔给李四一本书 ‘Zhangsan RENGGEI (‘throws’) Lisi a book’ ”, and “张三拿给李四一本书 ‘Zhangsan NAGEI (‘brings’) Lisi a book’ ”. In this sense, GEI functions as a dative case marker and is therefore more typical than SONG regarding its “giving” meaning. From the perspective of children’s acquisition, although the child JBS did not learn SONG very late, the other two children did not produce the ditransitive SONG construction at all. Even though the verb “NA拿 take” was acquired very early, its transfer direction in the ditransitive construction was opposite to GEI. In order to get the same direction as GEI, we would need to attach GEI after NA, for example “张三拿给李四一本书 ‘Zhangsan NAGEI (‘brings’) Lisi a book’ ”. Thus, its conceptual structure cannot be the basis for the semantic construction of the ditransitive construction. In the children’s corpora, the number of singleobject constructions formed with NA is considerable, but only one child formed a ditransitive NA construction. Goldberg (1995) suggested that there is a corresponding relationship between the participants’ roles associated with the verbs and the argumentary roles associated with the constructions.9 Wang (2011) proposed the concept of “lexical suppression” and believed that the meaning of the construction is derived from the usage of typical verbs.10 From these perspectives, the children’s acquisition characteristics support the idea that the ditransitive construction is derived from the conceptual structure of typical verbs, and they also prove that there is an interactive relationship between the constructive meaning and verbs. Because of the completion of the formation of the ditransitive construction, children can extend the manner of giving and can acquire other types of ditransitive constructions that refer to giving off-site. The prioritization of the ditransitive GEI construction also showed that the giving meaning is a typical meaning of the Chinese ditransitive constructions. Children also prioritize the learning of the ditransitive construction, which is a typical member of the prototype category. As a typical member, it possesses simpler cognitive patterns, is easy to recognize, and is most frequently used. Based on the children’s acquisition process of the ditransitive constructions, the acquisition data did not support the view that DOC is derived from the dative construction but rather, the DOC is base-generated. The Chinese children did not acquire the “V + O + GEI + R” and “GEI + R +V + O” formats indicating giving and transmitting before acquiring the ditransitive GEI constructions. Only one child produced two case of the “给+R+打电话 GEI + R + make a phone call” format by imitation of adult output before he or she acquired the ditransitive construction without the subject. For example,

236  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction (22） ZLZ: 典典 给 谁 打 电话？ ZLZ: Diǎndian gěi shéi dǎ diànhuà? Diandian (personal name) GEI who ‘Who does Diandian call?’

hit

phone

JBS: 给 婆婆 打 电话。 JBS: Gěi pópo dǎ diànhuà. Give grand ma hit phone ‘Call grandma.’ ZLZ: 给 婆婆 ZLZ: Gěi pópo

打 dǎ

电话  啊。（01;11） diànhuà a.

Give grandma  hit  phone  PARTICLE ‘Call grandma.’ (23） ZLZ: 你 ZLZ: Nǐ

今天 给 jīntiān gěi

谁 打 shéi dǎ

电话 了？ diànhuà le?

You today give  who  hit  phone PARTICLE ‘Who did you call today?’ JBS: 给 庆庆 姐姐 JBS: Gěi Qìngqing jiějie

打 电话 了。 dǎ diànhuà le.

Give Qingqing (personal name) older sister hit phone PARTICLE ‘[I] called older sister Qingqing.’ ZLZ: 给 庆庆 姐姐 ZLZ: Gěi Qìngqing jiějie

打 dǎ

电话 了。（02;00） diànhuà le

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Give Qingqing (personal name) older sister hit phone PARTICLE ‘Called older sister Qingqing.’ From the data in Table 10.4, we can also see that the young Chinese children first formed the most typical ditransitive construction with GEI and gradually acquired other types of ditransitive constructions. However, their acquisition of the ditransitive construction was not identical to that of the adults: First, there were two types of ditransitive constructions that they had never encountered. Second, not every child produced the ditransitive constructions formed by the 13 verbs; Third, although children produced 48 verbs that could enter the ditransitive constructions, there were only 13 that formed the ditransitive constructions. In spite of these issues, we can still conclude that the ditransitive construction of young Chinese children was syntactically mature and that those atypical construction members who had not been produced would gradually be acquired as their life experience expanded.

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 237 10.5.4 The acquisition of ditransitive constructions with extensional verbs We attempted to disentangle the constructions formed with the preceding 13 verbs to see if these verbs also followed the same learning rules as the ditransitive GEI construction. However, apart from producing all five verbs “给 gei, 偷 tou, 告诉 gaosu, 教 jiao, 叫 jiao”, the children produced other words with mixed data of ditransitive constructions, see the preceding Table 10.6. As such, we aim to focus on combing through the acquisition data of the four verbs “偷 tou, 告诉 gaosu, 教 jiao, 叫jiao” (see Table 10.7). The data in Table 10.7 showed that the acquisition characteristics of the subtypes formed with the four verbs “TOU, GAOSU, JIAO, JIAO” had both similarities and differences to those of the ditransitive GEI constructions: 1

2

The differences are as follows: None of the three children experienced the stage of single-verb acquisition. The initial output of verbs all had argument structures. Some verbs even first occurred as ditransitive constructions, e.g., GAOSU by JBS; the three children did not have a clear sequence of characteristics from a bare-verb to the “V + R” structure and then to the ditransitive construction. Some verbs, such as TOU and JIAO (J4), were not produced in the “V + R” structure by the children at all. The similarities are as follows: The ditransitive constructions formed with the four verbs were all acquired after the output of some single argument and dual argument monotransitive constructions. There were no exceptions for

Table 10.7 Basic acquisition data of ditransitive construction with the four verbs

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TOU偷（coded as T） GAOSU告诉 (coded as G）

JIAO教（coded as J1） JIAO叫（coded as J4）

T+0 S+T S+T+O S+T+R +O G+R S+G S+G+R G+R+O S+G+R+O S+J1 JI+R S+J1+R S+J1+R+O J4+O S+J4+O J4+R+O S+J4+R+O

LXY

JBS

SYY

02;04 03;03 03;01 03;04 03;08 01;09 02;00 03;03 01;10 01;08 02;11 -

02;04 02;06 03;10 02;04 02;04 02;04 02;04 02;07 02;04 02;00 02;11 01;11 01;07 03;08

02;09 02;09 02;10 01;10 02;06 02;06 01;10 01;11 02;06 01;08 01;08 02;01

238  Acquisition of the ditransitive construction the three children. This was the same as how the ditransitive GEI construction emerged last. It is meaningful to compare the acquisition data in Table 10.7 to the acquisition data of the ditransitive GEI constructions. Although TOU, GAOSU, JIAO (J1), and JIAO (J4) did not have a consistent sequence of acquisition from the bareverb to “V + R” and then to the ditransitive construction, the characteristic that the ditransitive construction was acquired last can still further verify that the ditransitive construction gradually matured following the innate blueprint. However, since these four verbs are not typical verbs that form the ditransitive construction, their timing of acquisition was later than that of the ditransitive GEI construction. In addition, once there was output, it was a verb structure with an argument. This suggests that the ditransitive construction is a prototypical category and that the children learned following the path of extension from typical members to atypical members. The children did not produce the “TOU/JIAO (J4) + R” construction at all. This may be related to the conceptual structure of such words. The conceptual structure of TOU highlight “V what” instead of “V whom” (Goldberg, 1995, pp. 45–48; Shen, 2000). JIAO (J4) is the same as TOU in regard to its meaning of to name. GAOSU and JIAO (J1) conceptual structures highlight “V whom” and not “V what”. This situation also showed that the construction was a syntactic projection of the conceptual structure of a typical verb and that the meaning of the construction was generalized based on typical verbs.

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10.6 Remarks In the previous section, we examined young Chinese children’s acquisition of the ditransitive construction. In general, the Chinese children initially obtained the structural rules based on the syntactic derivation of the typical ditransitive constructions (ditransitive GEI construction), indicating that children’s initial syntactic development is rule-based since the decisive constraint is the most significant at the beginning of acquisition. However, the children’s acquisition characteristics of the ditransitive construction cannot be explained by a single theory. Innate blueprints, input from experience, as well as factors regarding cognitive functioning all relate to the successful acquisition of the ditransitive construction. Innate rules determine when the input would work, yet the input from the interaction is still a necessary condition for the successful implementation of the innate blueprint. When the rules of the ditransitive construction are learned, children make extensions based on the rules and acquire other members in the category. During the acquisition process, children substitute verbs that do not have the typical “giving” meaning (e.g., “罚 fa ‘fine’, 问 wen ‘ask’, 叫 jiao ‘call’ ”) into the ditransitive constructions and grant these verbs the meaning of “giving” in the ditransitive constructions, thus realizing the interaction of verbs and syntactic constructions. Young children’s acquisition data regarding the ditransitive construction can also provide support for ontological research: The ditransitive construction is based on the projection of the meaning of typical verbs, not the syntactic transformation of

Acquisition of the ditransitive construction 239 the dative construction; the ditransitive construction is a typical category, and the meaning of giving (i.e., the meaning of causing to receive or causing to possess) is the typical meaning of the construction. The typical meaning of giving does not rule out the atypical meaning of transmitting. We further speculate that the experience required for language acquisition only has an effect for humans and does not impact chimpanzees. Even those who hold thoroughly empiricist views, including Tomasello (1999, 2008), also consider that only humans can interpret the intentions of others through experiences of interactions, and only humans can categorize experiences. In other words, the cognitive ability to process linguistic experience is also innate, thus, we hold a more open view of nativism. However, nothing can be gained without effort; even if the syntactic rules are innate, they still need to be triggered by experience. Therefore, we should tease out the levels of effects of the innate and empirical factors on early syntactic development in order to seek the truth of children’s syntactic acquisition.

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Notes 1 Of the three children, SYY’s recorded speech materials missed the beginning stage and started at age 01;08. Therefore, the initial appearance of his/her GEI sentence structure could not be seen. However, at the age of 01;08, the speech materials suggest that this child has acquired the GEI construction with one transitive argument, which is the same as LXY and JBS. We therefore can speculate on SYY’s initial acquisition. 2 Here, we convert age into months in order to make the figure. Otherwise, Excel charts cannot read the age and the line charts cannot be created. 3 The fact that children do not produce the ditransitive GEI construction does not mean that they cannot comprehend the meaning of the construction. For this purpose, one can obtain children’s comprehension data using experimental methods. However, experimental design pertaining to young child is extremely difficult, and it is not easy to control the variables. However, if one is concerned with the process of young children’s syntactic acquisition, it may be better to find rules based on spontaneous speech corpus that has the quality of homogeneity and continuity for individuals. 4 We need to specify that the speech recordings began relatively late for SYY. Compared to the other two children, SYY’s input is not comparable in regard to time and quantity. Therefore, the following table only shows the input and acquisition characteristics of LXY and JBS. 5 See page 172 in M. Tomasello, and E. Lieven (2008). Children’s first language acquisition from a usage-based perspective. In Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition (pp. 168–196). London: Routledge. 6 See Eve V. Clark (1978). Discovering what words can do. In Papers from the Parasession on the Lexicon, CLS14, 34–57. 7 See Xiandai Hanyu Cidian (2012). [Modern Chinese Dictionary] (6th ed.), p. 442. The Commercial Press. 8 See Xiandai Hanyu Cidian (2012). [Modern Chinese Dictionary] (6th ed., p. 1237). The Commercial Press. 9 Goldberg, A. E. (1995). Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Translated by Haibo Wu, edited by Qi Feng. Beijing University Press, p. 48. 10 This chapter agrees with Wang’s view that the meaning of constructs derives from the meaning of typical verbs, but we still believe that the typical constructional meaning of ditransitive constructions is to give rather than to transmit.

11 Acquisition of simplex relative clauses1 Acquisition of simplex relative clauses

This chapter explores the interpretive dimensions of the implicational universals of relative clauses through the initial acquisition characteristics of the relativization of simplex clauses by children. The initial acquisition characteristics of types of relative clauses by cross-linguistic children do not completely support the implicational universals proposed by Keenan and Comrie (1977): Output and experimental data from Chinese children suggest that children prioritize the acquisition of object relative clauses and then acquire subject relative clauses; whereas children of English-type languages acquire subject relative clauses much earlier than object relative clauses regardless of judging from the output or experimental data. Based on the two cognitive function principles of the interpretation of word order proposed by Lu (2005), this chapter predicts the accessibility of subject and object extractions. We suggest that the NPAH should be further refined into two principles based on the positional characteristics of the relative clause and the word order of S, V, and O. The refined NPAH can explain not only the early acquisition characteristics of relative clauses in Chinese- and English-type-language children but also provide a theoretical explanation for the existence of NPAH.

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11.1 Why is the question raised? When it comes to transforming simple sentences into relative clauses, one cannot miss the renowned NP accessibility hierarchy (NPAH). Keenan and Comrie (1977) proposed that the process of relativization of simplex clauses is universal based on data from about fifty languages. This means that in regard to the accessibility to the main component during the relativization of simplex main clauses, the degrees of difficulty differ depending on which NP positions are being accessed: its SU (subject), DO (direct object), IO (indirect object), GEN (possessor), or OCOMP (object of comparison). Among them, SU is the most accessible, and GEN and OCOMP are the least accessible. They therefore form the accessibility hierarchy (AH) of NPs, such that SU > DO > IO > GEN > OCOMP. For a language, if the relativized GEN and OCOMP positions are accessible, then the IO, DO, and SU positions are also accessible, for instance, in English and Chinese. No language can only relativize the later positions but not the earlier positions. Different languages all follow the NPAH as far as relativization is concerned. They differ in how far along the AH relativization is allowed.

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 241 Comrie (2010) regarded NPAH from a more statistical perspective and suggested that each node on this AH corresponds to a certain language type. According to this view, the universality revealed by the NPAH is more descriptive than explanatory, which is to say that even if the NPAH is completely correct, it still does not explain why the relativization of clauses in human languages would exhibit such commonalities. Since Keenan and Comrie first proposed the NPAH, some linguists have adjusted and supplemented various aspects of the universality of the NPAH, using different languages, such as the types of its clauses and complementary conditions for relativization in specific languages (e.g., Johnson (1977), Maxwell (1979), Fox (1987), Tallerman (1990), Hawkins (2007, 2010), and so on). Chinese scholars have also conducted research from the perspectives of types of relative clauses, syntactic marking, textual features, experimental support, and relativization strategies in English versus Chinese, for example, Liu (2005), Tang (2007), Jiujiu Xu (2008), Zhou et al. (2010), Liu (2011), Xu (2012), and so on. Overall, we find more descriptive research regarding the NPAH; rarely do we see explanations for a specific research subject. We are intrigued to understand why the universality of the relativization of clauses is as such in human languages? And furthermore, we speculate that because of the high degree of correlation between children’s language acquisition and linguistic argumentation, if the NPAH is completely correct, then children’s initial acquisition of various types of clauses should be in accordance with the NPAH, such that the acquisition of subject relative clauses occurs first, followed by object relative clauses and finally, the oblique relative clauses. Therefore, we hope to start with the characteristics of Chinese children’s initial acquisition of simplex relative clauses and compare them with those of English-learning children in order to explore the explanatory dimensions of the NPAH. At the same time, it could also explain cross-linguistic constraints regarding children’s acquisition of simplex relative clauses.

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11.2 Existing research Children’s acquisition of simplex relative clauses has long attracted attention from linguists, for example, Diessel (2004); Adams (1990); McDaniel, McKee, and Bernstein (1998); Labelle (1996); Adani (2008, 2011); Friedmann, Belletti, and Rizzi (2009); Belletti and Contemori (2010); and Belletti (2010) investigated children’s production or comprehension of languages such as English, French, Italian, and Hebrew and suggested that the subject relative clause (SRC) was acquired significantly earlier than the object relative clause (ORC). SRC also dominated in terms of quantity. Research on Japanese children’s acquisition of relative clauses (Hakuta, 1981; Ozeki & Shirai, 2007) showed that children’s acquisition of SRC and ORC exhibited diverse characteristics. Research has also been done regarding Chinese children’s acquisition of relative clauses, and it mainly investigated whether Chinese children asymmetrically comprehend SRC and ORC. Chang (1984) suggested that there is no significant asymmetry in the understanding of SRC and ORC among children of 7–12 years

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242  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses of age; the data of Lee (1992), Hsu, Hermon, and Zukowski (2009), and Hu and colleagues (2016) indicated that children’s output and understanding of SRC are superior to those of ORC in all age groups; Cheng’s (1995) experimental data showed that 03;00–05;00-year-old children comprehend or produce more SRC; research by Su (2004) revealed that children at ages 05;00–06;00 exhibit a slightly lower rate of correct response to SRC than to ORC, but she believed that this difference may not be meaningful; Yang (2013) conducted two studies and showed that the output of the 02;04–03;00 group yields a higher correction rate on the ORC than the SRC. However, the author considered this distinction to be possibly due to the differences in the deep structure of the two experimental sentences. In the other task that involved guided production and comprehension, there was no difference in the understanding of SRC and ORC among children of various age stages in the 03;00–06;00 age group. Chen and Shirai (2015) utilized corpus analysis to examine the output of four children aged 00;11–03;05. They found that ORC occurred earlier than SRC in spontaneously produced language, and there were also more instances of ORC. In addition, Yip and Matthews (2013)2 studied children who were Cantonese-English bilingual, with Cantonese being the dominant language. Regarding these bilingual children’s acquisition of the English ORC, they found that the children placed the English ORC in front of the main word, for example, “Where’s the Santa Claus give me the gun?” (i.e., Where is the gun Santa Claus gave me?), which is different from native English-learning children’s placement. Overall, there has been much research regarding Chinese children’s acquisition of relative clauses. However, most of the acquisition data were experimental data from children aged 03;00 and above, with only Chen and Shirai’s (2015) research utilizing spontaneous speech material from children aged 0;11. Based on the data from children’s naturally produced speech, age 3;00 is not the starting point of children’s acquisition of relative clauses. Therefore, it is necessary for us to start at a younger age for both the experimental and corpus analysis approaches. Furthermore, if we could synthesize the experimental data and the corpus analysis data, we would be able to conduct a more comprehensive observation regarding children’s acquisition of simplex relative clauses. With regard to the acquisition characteristics discovered in previous studies, existing explanations include movements and shortest dependencies and the influence of the word order of the main clause (e.g., Wanner & Maratsos, 1978, etc.), the parallel function hypothesis (e.g., Sheldon, 1974), merging (i.e., nonmovement) (e.g., Yang, 2013), and the effect of native language word order (e.g., Crain et al., 1990; Yip & Matthews, 2013). We consider these types of explanations to be possibility superficial. Some languages (e.g., Malagasy) can only relativize the subject and thus cannot verify the preceding explanations. In addition, given the research goal of this chapter, existing research and explanations do not link the explanations of children’s acquisition characteristics to those of the NPAH. We not only utilize children’s acquisition data to validate the NPAH but also hope to discover an explanation from the perspective of the NPAH through children’s acquisition.

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 243 As a universal rule, the NPAH should be consistent with children’s acquisition characteristics in different languages. The word order of the attribute in Chinese relative clauses is different from that of English-like languages.3 Do Chinese children exhibit identical acquisition characteristics compared to English-learning children? What is the significance if they do or do not? Through the present study, we hope to provide a reliable description and explanation to these issues.

11.3 Chinese children’s early acquisition of the simplex relative clause

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11.3.1  Data obtainment We consider two important issues while searching for data: First, if the rules obtained from a type of corpus data are correct, then the same rules should be corroborated by other methods. Based on this understanding, we used both corpus analysis and experimental methods to acquire data; second, the selection of the experimental age group should be based on the time of acquisition as shown in the corpus analysis. If children have already acquired relative clauses by age 02;00, then the experimental group should at least include children of the 02;00 age group; otherwise, the experimental data may not be completely reliable. Therefore, the youngest age group in this experiment was at age 02;00. The natural language corpus came from the Mandarin Children’s Dynamic Development Corpora at the Speech Acquisition Laboratory of Capital Normal University. Three children aged 01;06–04;11 were selected as observation samples for this chapter. The three children’s names and their sections of language materials were LXY (01;07–04;09), SYY (01;08–04;06), and JBS (01;07–04;11). Statistics of acquisition quantity were based on tokens but excluding cases of continuous use and repetition as well as instances that occurred in nursery rhymes and poetry recitation. Furthermore, for those with no head structure (e.g., “爸爸用的 ‘for daddy’, 给姐姐的 ‘for sister’ ”, etc.), if we could infer the relational marking based on context, they were included in the output counts; otherwise, they were excluded. But the timing of acquisition was based on cases with a head only (e.g., “打电话的姐姐 ‘the sister who is calling’ ”). The experimental data in this chapter came from 98 toddlers at the Qinhuangdao Early Education Center Oriental Baby Care and a private kindergarten in Fangshan District, Beijing. A total of 98 children participated in the study. Among them, 36 were two years old (male = 21, females = 15), 35 were three years old (males = 14, females = 21), and 27 were four years old (males = 12, females = 15). All participants grew up with normal mental abilities and in Mandarin environments. The experimental task included an elicited imitation task, a picture selection task, and an elicited production task. Each child completed four elicited imitation trials, four picture selection trials, and four elicited production trials in a quiet environment. The whole procedure of the experiment was videotaped. Afterwards, experimenters repeatedly examined the videos to manually identify and score the participants’ choice and output. The adult data came from a graduate

244  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses class at Capital Normal University, which included 8 males and 12 females – a total of 20 participants. Their average age was 25. The criteria for children’s correct completion of the tasks were as follows: In the picture selection task, we carefully observed the behavior and demeanor of the participating children. Of the three types of situations that included choosing after thinking, choosing at will, and choosing after suggestion, the latter two were considered incorrect and were not counted towards the correction rate. In the elicited imitation and production tasks, the answer was considered correct when the children’s output was consistent with the expected answer. For some children, they initially produced incomplete sentences but could supplement them into complete ones after some elicitation, though their output was not relative clauses (for instance, using a subject-predicate sentence “bunny eats carrot” to describe a relative clause “the carrot eaten by the bunny”). Relative clauses that were inconsistent with the expected answer, for instance, saying, “the carrot eaten by the bunny” instead of “the bunny that’s eating the carrot”, and incomplete utterances, for example, referring to “the piggy that’s eating the carrot” as “piggy” or “carrot” were all considered as incorrect output. A lack of participation or expression during the tasks was regarded as invalid and were not counted toward either the correct or incorrect rates. Examples of experimental pictures are shown in Figure 11.1. Picture selection Elicited imitation Elicited production Which one is the bunny that is This is a bunny How about this? Which little bear is going home? held by the bear that is held by the sister that eats a carrot (In this animation, the bear that picks the (both bunnies blink their eyes) apple moves toward the house)

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11.3.2 Acquisition data The classification of relative clauses related to the NPAH is based on the syntactic role of the head in the relative clause after relativization. They are divided into subject relative clause (SU), direct object relative clause (DO), indirect relative clause (IO), and oblique relative clause (OBL), thus constituting the simplex

Figure 11.1 Examples of experimental pictures

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 245 relative clauses. Some research also classifies relative clauses into subject relative clauses (SUBJ), object relative clauses (OBJ), oblique relative clauses (OBL), adverbial noun clauses (NP), and so on, depending on the syntactic role of the head in the main clause (e.g., Diessel & Tomasello, 2000; Diessel, 2004). Based on the spontaneous speech produced by young Chinese children and the goals of this chapter, here we only examine the classification based on the syntactic role of the head in relative clauses and mainly investigate the subject relative clause and the object relative clause, which are coded as SR and OR. 11.3.2.1 Data from spontaneous speech We discovered that Chinese children could not produce oblique relative clauses before age 05;00. Indirect object relative clauses were sporadically produced after age 04;00, while subject relative clauses and direct object relative clauses were produced with large numbers.4 We classified the direct and indirect object clauses both as object relative clauses. In addition, the relative clauses in this chapter did not include the sentences that omitted the head, since we found it difficult to separate relative clauses without a head from sentences that utilized “DE” to express the indicative mood or emphasis through observing the initial output of children’s relative clauses. For example, “妈妈：（拿着玩具）这是谁买的？儿童：姑姑 买的。 ‘Mother: (holding a toy) who bought this? Child: Auntie bought it.’ ” It was also the case that for sentences with “DE” but without a head, the “DE” was generally at the end of the sentence. Let us first look at the statistical counts of the acquisition of relative clauses and then examine some of the output examples (see Tables 11.1 and 11.2). Table 11.1 Three children’s timing and number of outputs of the various types of relative clauses

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Child

SYY LXY JBS Total

Age

1;08–4;06 1;07–4;09 1;07–4;11

SR

OR

OBL

Count

Time

Count

Time

Count

15 35 53 103

2;03 2;05 2;04

90 58 185 333

1;11 2;00 1;09

Ø Ø 1 1

Total Time

4;03

105 93 239

Table 11.2 Types of the first 10 relative clauses produced by three children Child

Age

SR

OR

SYY LXY JBS Total

1;08–2;03 1;07–2;06 1;07–2;03

1 2 0 3

9 8 10 27

246  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses Examples of spontaneously emerged sentences are as follows: （1）SYH:   谁 的 书包？ SYH: Shéi de shūbāo? Who PARTICLE schoolbag ‘Whose schoolbag?’ SYY: 我 拿 的 小书包。 （01;11） SYY: Wǒ ná de xiǎo shūbāo. I take PARTICLE small schoolbag ‘The schoolbag I take.’ （2）SYY:   打针  SYY: Dǎzhēn

的 那个。（02;03） de nàgè.

Inject PARTICLE that-MW ‘The one that injects.’ （3）HXT:   是  哪个 小老鼠 呀？ HXT: Shì nǎge xiǎo lǎoshǔ ya? Be which-MW small mouse PARTICLE ‘Which small mouse is it?’ LXY: 宝宝  玩的 老鼠。 （02;00） LXY: Bǎobao wán de lǎoshǔ. Baby play PARTICLE mouse ‘The mouse that the baby plays with.’ （4）LXY:   我  是 吃肉的 恐龙。 （02;05） LXY: Wǒ shì chī ròu de kǒnglóng.

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I be ear meat PARTICLE dinosaur ‘I am the dinosaur who eats meat.’ （5）WSS:   来,  给我  滑, 啊呀, 这是 什么  拳呀? WSS: Lái, gěi wǒ huá, aya, zhè shì shénme quán ya? Come give me play PARTICLE this be what hand game PARTICLE Come, play with me, Ah-ya, what hand game is this? JBS: 洋洋  JBS: Yángyáng

打的 拳。 （01;09） dǎ de quán.

Yangyang (personal name) play PARTICLE hand game ‘The fist that Yangyang threw.’ （6）JBS:   我  还有     一个 姐姐, 一个 打电话的  姐姐。（02;04） JBS: Wǒ hái yǒu yīgè jiějie, yīgè dǎ diànhuà de jiějie.

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 247 I still have one-MW older sister one-MW hit phone PARTICLE older sister ‘I have another older sister, an older sister who makes phone calls.’ （7）JBS:   给  它 JBS: Gěi tā

消毒的 那个，手 伸进去。（04;03） xiāodúde nàgè, shǒu shēn jìnqù.

Give it sterilize PARTICLE that-MW hand extend enter-go ‘The [thing] that sterilizes it, put your hand in (by extending the hand).’ We then used pie charts and line graphs to visually describe the development of the quantity of the output, the proportions, age, and frequency (see Figures 11.2 and 11.3). Data produced by Mandarin children show that children’s early acquisition of object relative clauses dominates from the perspectives of both time and number of acquisition. In addition, we also considered the possibility that one type of relative clause being acquired prior to another was affected by the syntactic role of the head in the main clause. Therefore, we further observed the three children’s relative clauses 80% 70% 60%

50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Series1

SRC 24%

ORC 76%

Obl.RC 0%

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Figure 11.2 Proportions of various types of clauses produced by Chinese children 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

SRC ORC

1;07-2;06

2;07-3;06

3;07-4;11

Figure 11.3 The development of age and frequency of various types of relative clauses in Chinese children

248  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses for which their head played a different syntactic role in the main clause versus the relative clause. This included SS (subject in both the main and the relative clauses), SO (subject in the main clause and object in the relative clause), OS (object in the main clause and subject in the relative clause), OO (object in the main clause and object in the relative clause). We again use a table to show the three children’s production: Table 11.3 Three children’s timing and quantity of output regarding complex relative clauses Child Age

SYY LXY JBS

SS

SO

OS

OO

Count Time

Count Time

Count Time

Count Time

 7 11 14

2 3 5

3 5 9

1;08–4;00 1 1;07–4;00 3 1;07–4;00 2

2;05 2;08 2;07

2;01 2;04 2;04

3;00 3;02 3;09

Total

2;03 2;05 2;04

13 22 30

Examples of children’s output are as follows: （8）JBS:   我  要 穿  你 给我 买的 那个鞋。（OO）(03;00） JBS: Wǒ yào chuān nǐ gěi wǒ mǎi de nàgè xié. I want wear you give me buy PARTICLE that-MW shoe ‘I want to wear the shoes that you bought for me.’ （9）JBS:   不听话的  小孩  不发（指发放礼品）什么。(SS)（03;02） JBS: Bù tīnghuà de xiǎohái bù fā (zhǐ fāfàng lǐpǐn) shénme. Not obedient PARTICLE small child not distribute what ‘Children who are not obedient do not get anything (gift)/do not get distributed anything (gift).’

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（10）JBS:   妈妈 买的 枪 JBS: Māmā mǎi de qiāng huàile.

坏了。（SO）（02;04）

Mother buy PARTICLE gun broke PARTICLE ‘The gun that Mother bought is broken.’ （11）JBS:   抓  不听话的  小孩。(OS)（04;03） JBS: Zhuā bù tīnghuà de xiǎohái. Catch not obedient PARTICLE small child ‘Catch the children who are not obedient.’ （12）SYY:   我  老姑  给我  买的  我  收起来  了。（SO）（02;04） SYY: Wǒ lǎo gū gěi wǒ mǎi de wǒ shōu qǐlái le. I old aunt give I  buy PARTICLE I put away up-come PARTICLE ‘I put away the things that my old aunt bought for me.’

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 249 （13）SYY:   挑 那 偷 酒 喝 的 小老鼠。（OS）（03;00） SYY: Tiāo nà tōu jiǔ hē de xiǎo lǎoshǔ. Pick that steal alcohol drink PARTICLE small mouse ‘Pick the small mouse that stole the alcohol to drink.’ （14）LXY:   我  要 吃的 糖 找不  着，吃掉  了。（SO）（02;09） LXY: Wǒ yào chī de táng zhǎo bùzháo, chī diào le, I want eat PARTICLE sugar find not successfully eat fall PARTICLE ‘The candy I want to eat cannot be found; [someone] ate it.’ （15）LXY:   这样 就 可以 做 一个 洗脸的 恐龙（OS）（03;02） LXY: Zhèyàng jiù kěyǐ zuò yígè xǐliǎn de kǒnglóng In this way modal.ADV can do one-MWwash-face PARTICLE dinosaur ‘In this way, [one] can make a dinosaur that washes face.’ The data suggest that the three children’s prioritization of a particular type of relative clause was not notably affected by the syntactic role of the head in the main clause. Although there was no significant advantage in the number of ORs when the head functioned as an object in the main clause, its timing of acquisition was still far earlier than SR. Overall, regardless of whether the head functioned as a subject or an object in the main clause, the time and the number of cases of extracting the object took precedence over the extraction of the subject. The most prominent example was JBS. The child produced 30 sentences of the four types before the age 04;00. Among them, there were 23 sentences for SO and OO, 7 sentences for SS and OS, and the time of output of SS and OS were both later than SO and OO.

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11.3.2.2 Experimental data In the experimental task, each child needed to complete an elicited imitation task, a picture selection task, and an elicited production task. The elicited imitation task involved the simplest relative clauses (e.g., “吃萝卜的小兔 ‘the bunny that eats the carrot’ ” and “小兔吃的萝卜 ‘the carrot eaten by the bunny’ ”). But in addition to understanding the content of the pictures, the child must also imitate using the sentence structure that was given. For the picture selection task, it consisted of two subject extractions (e.g., “抱着拿着小熊的小兔的姐姐 ‘the older sister that is holding the bunny that is holding the bear’ ”) and two object extractions (“姐姐抱着的小熊拿着的小兔 ‘the bunny that is held by the bear that is held by the older sister’ ”) and involved rather complex relative clauses (relative clauses with embedded structures), thus resulting in a more difficult task than the elicited imitation task. The elicited production task provided an animation clip and linguistic context and allowed the child to spontaneously produce the expected relative clause using the animation and the context (e.g., “SS: 摘苹果的小熊回家了

250  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses ‘the bear that picks the apples goes home’ ”, “SO: 小熊摘的苹果变大了 ‘the apple picked by the bear is getting bigger’ ”, “OS: 小兔亲了摘苹果的小熊 ‘the bunny kisses the bear that picks the apple’ ”, “OO: 小猪咬了小熊摘的苹果 ‘the piggy bites the apple picked by the bear’ ”). It examined the acquisition of the relative clauses when the head functions as different syntactic roles in the main clause. This task exhibited an even higher level of difficulty. The correction rate of various age groups on the experimental tasks was as follows: Table 11.4 Experimental data of Chinese children’s acquisition of relative clauses

           group   % correct Task SR OR Picture selection SR OR Elicited SS production SO OS OO Average within group

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Elicited imitation

Adults mean = 25 years

Two-yearolds mean = 2;07

Three-yearolds mean = 3;04

Fouryear-olds mean = 4;05

Average of children’s groups

100% 100% 95% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 99.4%

57% 62% 42% 64% 37% 80% 50% 63% 56.9%

73% 72% 56% 63% 63% 78% 63% 88% 69.5%

94% 90% 60% 74% 83% 79% 67% 88% 79.4%

74.7% 74.7% 52.7% 67% 61% 79% 60% 79.7%

Considering that some of the children may not completely understand the intentions of the experimental tasks and that some used non-relative clauses or loose phrases to substitute for relative clauses when describing the animations and that several children may be influenced by other factors, such as their personality, we cannot be certain that the children had not completely acquired the various types of relative clauses before five years of age. However, based on the preceding data, children’s comprehension regarding the various types of relative clauses improved in its correction rate as they grew older. This chapter is most concerned with the acquisition order of the subject and object relative clauses. Regarding this issue, we saw the most differences in the two-year-old group, where various experimental tasks all suggested that the children acquired the object relative clause prior to the subject relative clause. Since the elicited imitation task involved the simplest relative clauses, even though there were differences between the correction rates for the subject relative clause and the object relative clause, these discrepancies were not large. In the picture selection task, children exhibited relatively large differences in regard to the correction rates for extracting the subject versus the object – 42% and 64%, respectively. The elicited production task examined the acquisition of complex relative clauses. The gaps among the two-year-old group’s output correction rates were still very large. If we combined SS and OS and SO and OO, the correction rates of subject relative clauses and object relative clauses would be 43.5% and 71.5%, respectively.

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 251 The correction rates of output in the three-year-old group were almost the same in the elicited imitation task. In the picture selection task and the elicited production tasks, the correction rates for the subject relative clause and the object relative clause became increasingly distinctive, though compared to the two-year-old group, their differences had decreased. In the elicited production task, the discrepancy between the correction rates for extracting the subject versus the object grew larger. After combining SS with OS and SO with OO, the correction rates for the subject relative clause and the object relative clause were 63% and 83%, respectively. For the four-year-old group, children’s correction rate was higher for the subject relative clause than the object relative clause in the elicited imitation task. In the picture selection task, the correction rate for the object relative clause was higher than that for the subject relative clause. The output correction rate of SS was higher than SO while the output correction rate of OS was lower than OO in the elicited production task. Therefore, we consider that for the four-year-old group, their comprehension and production were of approximately comparable accuracy. In summary, the experimental data of Chinese children’s comprehension, elicited imitation, and elicited production of relative clauses showed that the younger the Chinese children, the more the acquisition of the object relative clause took precedence over the subject relative clause. This acquisition characteristic is generally consistent with what is shown by the data of the spontaneous speech output. 11.3.3 Comparison with English-learning children’s acquisition data

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English-learning children’s acquisition data regarding simplex relative clauses also consisted of production data and experimental data. We can refer to Diessel’s (2004) research on four young English-learning children for production data. The four children were Adam (02;03–04;10), Sarah (02;03–05;01), Nina (01;11–03;04), and Peter (01;09–03;02). During the listed age range, the four children together produced 297 relative clauses. Among them, there were 169 subject relative clauses, 110 object relative clauses, and 18 oblique relative clauses. Some example sentences are as follows:   （8）Nina: I want to see some ducks that do that too. （03;02）   （9）Adam: People dat can jump in dere. （04;00） （10）Adam:   I gon draw everything I like.（03;05） （11）Sarah:   These are my duties I have to do.（04;10） （12）Peter:   You left this toy I am playing with. （03;01） Following Diessel’s work, we used bar graphs and line graphs to visually represent the proportion of the various types of relative clauses regarding children’s age and quantity of acquisition (see Figures 11.4 and 11.5). In terms of the subject and the object relative clauses alone, the output data showed that the early acquisition of English-learning children’s subject relative clauses dominated in both the time and the number of acquisitions.

252  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 70 60

57.3

Percentage

50 37

40 30 20 10

5.7

0 subj

obj

obl

0

0

io

gen

Figure 11.4 Percentage of output of various types of RCs for English-learning children 100 subj obj

80

obl

60 40 20 0 0 object relative clause; for Chinese children, it is object relative clause > object relative clause. This is to say that the acquisition characteristics of children of English-like languages are consistent with the NPAH; however, the acquisition characteristics of Chinese children are not.

11.4 Preliminary explanations of Chinese children’s acquisition characteristics regarding the simplex relative clauses 11.4.1  Existing views The explanations of children’s acquisition characteristics of the simplex relative clauses are mainly based on English-like languages. Representative explanations include movements and shortest dependencies and the influence of the word order of the main clause. De Vincenzi (1991) believed that relative clauses are implemented through movement analysis. But there are issues related to the shortest chain, for instance, in the following sentences. Sentence A is a shorter chain, while sentence B is a longer chain.

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A the horsei [that i is chasing i the lions] B the horsei [that i lions are chasing i] The shorter chain is easier to process, whereas the longer chain is harder to process. Similar explanations include Rizzi’s (1990, 2004) relativized minimality, for instance, in the configuration “X . . . Z . . . Y”, if Z has certain characteristics in common with X, then Z will intervene between X and Y with regard to the local structural relation, and Y cannot move over Z towards X. In other words, when sentences such as “X lions[Z] are chasing the horse[Y]” relativize, the subject interferes with the moving of the object.5 Both the parallel function hypothesis by Sheldon (1974) and the filler-gap hypothesis by Wanner and Maratsos (1978) can be seen as views regarding the influence of the word order of the main clause. For example, the parallel function hypothesis suggests that children are influenced by the word order of the main clause when interpreting relative clauses. Therefore, English-learning children find it easier to comprehend subject relative clauses. The filler-gap hypothesis considers that the distance between the head and the gap element of the

254  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses relative clause will affect children’s interpretation of the relative clause. If they are close to each other, it is easier to comprehend. We can see the example sentences below: C Animal (head) that (gap) eat grass D The grass (head) that animals eat (gap) After relativizing “animals eat grass”, it is clear that the “(gap) eat grass” in sentence C is parallel to its main clause, and the head is also closer to the gap compared to sentence D. Using this hypothesis to examine Chinese relative clauses, we can also explain Chinese children’s acquisition characteristics well. For example, E (gap) 吃草的动物 (head) ‘the animal that eats the grass’ F 动物吃 (gap) 的草 (head) ‘the grass eaten by the animal’ In sentence F, “animals eat (gap)” is parallel to the main clause, and the head is closer to the gap than they are in sentence E. Thus, sentence F is acquired first by children.

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11.4.2 Syntactic processing or computation The word order of the main clause clearly has an effect on children’s acquisition of the types of relative clauses. But why is children’s acquisition affected by the word order of the main clause? The preceding hypotheses cannot provide further explanations. We believe that this phenomenon should be largely related to the cognitive processing of the syntactic relativization of clauses or that the level of complexity regarding the cognitive processes is the fundamental constraining factor for children’s acquisition characteristics. Syntactic processing of the various types of simplex relative clauses includes adding relational markers, movement, and adding a back-referring marker (preserving the pronoun). Some relativization involves relatively few steps of processing while some consists of many steps. For young children, it is inevitable that they prioritize the acquisition of the relative clauses that require few processing steps. For example, there are more steps involved for the extraction of the oblique than there are for the subject or the object. Regarding movement, theoretically, there may be long-distance movements with intervals and short-distance movements without intervals. The former, such as “张三吃饭 ‘Zhangsan eats food’ ”, requires a long-distance movement for “Zhangsan” to be extracted and put after “eats food” in order to form “吃 饭的张三 ‘Zhangsan who eats food’ ”. In English, for the sentence ‘Animals eat grass’, in order to extract ‘grass’, it needs to be moved and positioned in front of ‘Animals eat’ through a long-distance movement, which results in ‘The grass that animals eat’. The latter can be seen in examples where

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 255

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Table 11.5 Syntactic processing difficulty of Chinese and English relative clauses Chinese

Relational marker

Movement

Back-referring English-like (preserving languages pronoun)

Processing difficulty

ORC SRC OBL-RC

+ + +

– + +

– – +

Low Medium High

SRC ORC OBL-RC

the object ‘food’ is extracted from “张三吃饭 ‘Zhangsan eats food’ ” and ‘animals’ is extracted in ‘Animals eat grass’. However, short-distance movement and adding relational markers are almost completed at once. Therefore, for the convenience of enumerating parameters, we temporarily consider short-distance movement as non-movement. Table 11.5 shows the degrees of difficulty regarding syntactic processing. We can see the relative clauses that are parallel to the word order of the main clause and are prioritized in learning; for example, the ORC in English and the ORC in Chinese have the fewest steps during the syntactic processing of relativization. They involve easier cognitive operations and are therefore acquired first by children in two types of languages. This indicates that during relativization, regardless of whether it is the subject or the object that is extracted, if only one step of processing can complete the relativization, then children from any language would certainly acquire this type of relative clauses first. And then they will acquire relative clauses that require two processing steps. After that, relative clauses involving three processing steps will be learned. Not only do children learn this way, adult language is also subject to this effect. Tang (2007) described the word order of both the relative-internal structure (demonstrative – relative clause – noun head) and the relative-external structure (relative clause – demonstrative – noun head) and found the relationship and correspondence between the different word orders and written versus spoken language with respect to relativization (subject or object): In written language, the relative-internal structure is related to the relativization of the subject, while the relative-external structure is related to the relativization of the object. In spoken language, the relative-internal structure scarcely occurs, whereas the relative-external structure is so prevalent that it almost dominates. This also means that it is more common to extract the object in spoken language. Liu (2005a) described the types of relativizers in the Suzhou dialect of Wu dialect and Cantonese in Hong Kong and found that multiple methods of relativization in Chinese preferentially extract the object. He also agreed with Tang (symposium discussion) on how extracting the object better confers with the economic principle.

256  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses

11.5 Cognitive explanation for the NPAH and predictions regarding the acquisition of relative clauses As mentioned earlier in Liu’s (2005a) research, although Liu agreed with Tang’s view (symposium discussion), he emphasized that the effort saved during the extraction of the object could only be manifested in languages for which the word order is of a particular type (before the head), such that the advantage in relativizing the object in Chinese is constrained by the word order of the relative clause. Lu (2005) proposed a cognitive explanation of word order dominance. He argued that the word order of human language is subject to the identifiability hierarchy and semantic relatedness and referred to these two constraining factors as the “identifiability hierarchy principle” and the “semantic relatedness principle”. According to the types of word order in Greenberg’s work (1963), human languages should be divided into six types. However, based on the statistics in Greenberg (1963), the mass majority are SVO, SOV, and VSO, with SVO and SOV being the absolute dominating types. Lu’s view can explain the asymmetric distribution regarding word order types. In general, the level of identifiability is higher for the subject than it is for the object, and the object is more semantically related to the verb than the object to the verb. Therefore, SVO and SOV both conform to the “identifiability hierarchy principle” and the “semantic relatedness principle”. We agree with Lu’s cognitive explanation with respect to the constraining factors of word order. Can these two principles explain the NPAH from the perspective of cognitive function? Of course, another word order matter related to the NPAH is the positional issue of the relative clause mentioned by Liu (2005a) (before or after the head, a.k.a. noun). We first combined the word order features of human languages with the word order features of relative clauses and then predicted whether or not it was possible to extract the subject and the object from different languages by matching the two principles of cognitive functions proposed by Lu (2005). See Table 11.6.

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Table 11.6 Features of two types of word order and predictions of the accessibility of subject and object extraction Word order type Position of relative clause SVO SOV OVS OSV VSO VOS

left (before the extracted head) right (after the extracted head) left (before the extracted head) right (after the extracted head) left (before the extracted head) right (after the extracted head) left (before the extracted head) right (after the extracted head) left (before the extracted head) right (after the extracted head) left (before the extracted head) right (after the extracted head)

Subject extraction Object extraction VO/S S/VO OV/S S/OV OV/S S/OV OV/S S/OV VO/S S/VO VO/S S/VO

SV/O O/SV SV/O O/SV VS/O O/VS SV/O O/SV VS/O O/VS VS/O O/VS

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 257 are the word orders that meet both the principle of identifiMarked with ability hierarchy and the principle of semantic relatedness. That is, if the word order after the extraction of the subject or the object is as such, it is more stable, which also means it is easier to extract. In this sense, interpretation of the NPAH should take into account the factor of word order, in which the positional characteristics of the relative clause seem to be more important: For all of those that have the relative clause on the right side, it is easier to extract the subject – the extraction of the subject meets both principles. For those that have the relative clause on the left side, there are only three types of word order (i.e., SVO, SOV, and OSV), it is easier to extract the object – the word order after object extraction meets both principles. Regarding the explanation of the NPAH, it is also important to consider the type of word order: For those word order types that are originally quite stable (i.e., SVO and SOV), if the relative clause is on the left, then the object is easier to extract than the subject; for those word order types that are originally unstable (i.e., OVS, OSV, VSO, and VOS), only one type of word order (i.e., OSV) can meet both the identifiability hierarchy principle and the semantic relatedness principle when the relative clause is on the left and the object is being extracted. Therefore, we believe that the reason for the subject relative clause in the NPAH to be at the top of the sequence is that it is determined by the universally constraining factors of the word order of human language: the identifiability hierarchy principle and the semantic relatedness principle.

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11.5.2  Refinement of the NPAH Table 11.7 is a description based on the two cognitive principles. This description shows that the subject relative clause is not only statistically significant in regard to its position at the top of the NPAH but is also the result of the underlying effects of cognitive factors. However, we also see that there are three types of languages (i.e., SVO, SOV, and OSV) for which when the relative clause is on the left (i.e., before the extracted head), object extraction simultaneously meets the two cognitive principles. Although it is not necessary that the relative clause is on the left for all three languages, Chinese is one of such languages. Therefore, the NPAH should be further refined, namely, Relative clause after the head: subject > direct object > indirect object > oblique Relative clause before the head: direct object > subject > indirect object > oblique In other words, although the explanation for the NPAH is greatly related to word order (the word order of the main clause, type of word order, and the position of the relative clause), there are more fundamental factors that underlie word order – cognitive strategy, including the identifiability principle, and the semantic relatedness principle.

258  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 11.5.3  Prediction of young children’s acquisition of relative clauses The preceding explanation of the accessibility of the primary object is built upon the predictions made based on the type of word order and the position type of the relative clause. Given this prediction, we can further foresee that

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1 For SVO-type languages, if the relative clause is on the left, children will first acquire the object relative clause. If the relative clause is on the right, children will first acquire the subject relative clause. 2 For SOV-type languages, if the relative clause is on the left, children will first acquire the object relative clause. If the relative clause is on the right, children will first acquire the subject relative clause. 3 For OSV-type languages, if the relative clause is on the left, children will first acquire the object relative clause. If the relative clause is on the right, children will first acquire the subject relative clause. The early acquisition characteristics of relative clauses by Chinese- and English-learning children are completely consistent with predictions for the SVO-type languages. We then examined Japanese children’s early acquisition of relative clauses. The word order type of Japanese is SOV, with occasional alternations with OSV, and the relative clause is on the left (prenominal modification). According to Table  11.7, regardless of the word order, Japanese children should acquire the object relative clause first and then acquire the subject relative clause. Hakuta (1981) explored several factors that influenced the comprehension and production of children’s relative clauses through multiple experimental studies. Among them, 12 experimental studies of children aged 05;03 to 06;02 years of age6 showed that if the head noun’s syntactic role is not considered in the main clause, Japanese children first comprehend the left branch clause and the extraction of the object also takes precedence over the extraction of the subject. Experimental data from Japanese children did not conform with the NPAH, nor was it consistent with the parallel function hypothesis. The author believed that these two theories were based on grammatical relations. In fact, the more general and deeper explanations that underlie the theories may be related to the stacked features of nouns, in that the non-stacked comprehension takes precedence over the stacked ones. In addition, Hakuta also believed that if the head noun was to the left of the relative clause in a language, then extracting the subject should take precedence over extracting the object; if the head noun was to the right of the relative clause, then extracting the object should precede that of the subject. Ozeki and Shirai (2007) studied the output of relative clauses of Japanesespeaking children. They studied the acquisition of Japanese children and Englishspeaking children based on the data of relative clauses produced by five Japanese children before the age of 03;11 in the CHILDES database and found that the production characteristics of the five children clearly differed from those of the English-speaking children. From the initial ten types of relative clauses and the total number of different types of overall outputs, there was no difference between

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 259 the subject and object relative clauses of the Japanese children. This acquisition characteristic was not consistent with the NPAH. The author considered this to be related to the features of the word order of the Japanese relative clauses and even suggested that Japanese is not a relative clause language but an attributive clause language. There is no clear relational marking in Japanese. Children’s acquisition of relative clauses is an extension based on the already learned adjective modifiers (Ozeki & Shirai, 2005). From these studies, the acquisition characteristics of Japanese children’s relative clauses do not conform to the NPAH. Although the relative clauses in natural language corpora do not have a significant learning bias, it at least proves that our further refinement regarding the NPAH based on the positional features of the relative clauses and the head noun is correct. At the same time, based on the combined experimental and output data, our predictions regarding the acquisition of SOV and OSV languages are generally reliable. Japanese children’s spontaneous output of various types of relative clauses may be balanced with the word order feature of the Japanese language and its relative clauses as well as its lack of clear markings of the relative clauses. However, in the experimental data with regards to comprehension, because of the controlled experimental conditions, the acquisition of all kinds of relative clauses is no longer balanced, and the priority of the acquisition of the object relative clauses is revealed. At present, we have not yet found acquisition materials for children’s relative clauses in languages with word orders other than SVO or SOV and therefore cannot fully verify all the rules derived in Table 11.7. However, since the main word orders of human languages are SVO and SOV, we believe that the preceding prediction is likely to be verified.

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11.6 Remarks Given the high relevance of children’s language acquisition to linguistic argumentation, we started with the external argumentation of children’s language acquisition to seek the interpretation of the NPAH. Through the intricate relationship between the NPAH and children’s cross-linguistic acquisition characteristics, we found that this rule needed to be further refined based on the positional relationship between the relative clause and the head noun. Furthermore, the refined NPAH is constrained by both the complexity of the syntactic processes and the cognitive principle regarding the stability of the word order. These two factors are also certainly the constraining factors of children’s cross-linguistic acquisition characteristics with regard to the simplex relative clauses. In sum, children’s acquisition characteristics of the simplex relative clauses are subject to the double constraints of syntactic computational complexity, the identifiability hierarchy, and the semantic relatedness principle and are the result of the combined effects of syntactic processing and functional computation. We further revealed that: 1) When examining the motivation of children’s syntactic development, we should examine the initial acquisition of a certain syntactic structure, because the decisively restrictive motivation must be performed

260  Acquisition of simplex relative clauses most prominently in the initial acquisition. 2) The syntactic structure of children’s initial acquisition is subject to both cognitive factors and syntactic processing complexity. When the two are contradictory, the effect of syntactic operations may be prioritized. 3) Data on children’s language acquisition prompted us to review the NPAH’s explanatory dimensions. They also showed that children’s language acquisition can be objectively verified. Acquisition characteristics can validate certain assumptions about the essential attributes of language and the rationality of linguistic analyses while setting higher goals for linguistic analyses.

Notes

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1 This chapter was given as a talk at the 24th Annual Conference of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics (Beijing Language and Culture University, 2016). Prof. Thomas Hun-tak Lee and Dr. Shen’ai Hu raised some valuable questions for this study, which greatly facilitated the completion of this research. A part of the collection of the natural language corpus was assisted by graduate student Mi Xiong. The experimental data were completed with the assistance of graduate students Liang Gao, Ji Wang, and Lulu Han. The author would like to thank and acknowledge their help here. 2 Translator note: The authors used a 2013 Chinese translation of Yip and Matthews (2013). 3 Pérez-Leroux (1995) identified two types of languages regarding the distribution of resumptives in movement constructions: One is the type in which the resumptives are limited and can only be extracted from syntactic islands or from inaccessible positions. The other is the type for which the resumptives can freely alternate with gaps. English belongs to the first type, which is referred to as English-like languages, same below. 4 There are also some relative structures for which the head and the relative clauses do not have a syntactical relationship but are only loosely related (e.g., “the thing involved in going to Australia” or “小明午睡的时间 ‘the time of Xiaoming’s nap’ ”). Comrie (1996, 1998) regarded these as the Asian-type noun-modifying clauses. Yang (2013) referred to them as the typical Chinese-style relative structure. Since this type of relational structure is not comparable in its syntactic role to the extracted roles of other relativized clauses, it is not included in the discussions of this chapter. 5 See Yang (2013) for a review. 6 The data of Hakuta (1981) are cited here. The experimental method is not the same as the experimental method in this chapter. However, because of the limitation of research conditions, it is very difficult to use Hakuta’s method on Japanese children to replicate the experiment, so we only quote Hakuta’s conclusions here.

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Index

acquisition see distransitive construction; expressions of subjectivization; Le 了; fundamental frequency; locative category; primary vowels; syntax; tones; Zai 在 construction acquisition (defined) 1 – 3 acquisition assessment criteria 10 Adams, C. 241 Adani, F. 241, 252 affrication 51, 54, 63 Anagnostopoulou, E. 212 Aoun, J. 212 aspiration 51, 54 assimilation 51, 60 Atance, C. M. 162

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BA construction 137, 153, 191, 192 Bar-Shalom, E. 252 Beck, S. 212 BEI construction 133, 134, 137, 153 Belletti, A. 241, 252 – 253 Bernstein, J. B. 241, 252 Burchinal, M. 60 Byrnes, J. P. 162 Capital Normal University (CNU) 9 Capital Normal University Mandarin Children’s Dynamic Development Corpus (CNU-MCLDDC) 9 Chao, Yuen-Ren 105 Chen, C. 132 Chen, J. 242 Chen, Q. 132, 180 Cheng, S. Y. Y. 242 Cheung, H.T. 8, 192 Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) 9 Choi, S. 162 Cinque, G. 185

Clark, E. V. 233 cognition (children’s): acquisition of locative words and 112; development of children’s 118; inadequacy of explanations based on 228; order of acquisition of degrees of modality and 175, 188; regarding time 128 – 129; temporal orders 127; see also distransitive construction Comrie, B. 125, 240, 241 constraints on language development 6 – 8 constructivist theory 2, 3, 4, 204 Contemori, C. 241 Crain, S. 252 crossing 51, 54, 60, 61, 62, 63 Cui, X. 134, 141, 149, 172 data description 8 – 10 Davis, B. L. 14 deletion 60 deviations 54; see also initials De Vincenzi, M. 252, 253 Diessel, H. 241, 251 Ding, L. 132 Ding, S. 105 distransitive construction (acquisition and development): acquisition by extension of the ditransitive construction 232 – 238; acquisition of ditransitive constructions with extensional verbs 237 – 238; acquisition of the monotransitive GEI construction with two arguments 219 – 221; acquisition pattern of ditransitive GEI constructions 225 – 232; characteristics of acquisition by extension 233 – 236; children’s acquisition by extension of various types of ditransitive constructions 233; definition of concept 213; derivation

282 Index

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of the syntactic structure 230 – 232; description of speech materials 213 – 214; ditransitive construction without subject 221 – 223; ditransitive construction with subject 223 – 224; exploring early acquisition and related theoretical issues 209 – 211; inadequacy of explanations based on input or cognition 228 – 230; initial configuration of the arguments of GEI 216 – 219; learning patterns of the ditransitive GEI construction 224 – 225; search for external evidence for ontological disputes 211 – 213; single-word GEI sentence 214 – 215; types of ditransitive constructions 232 – 233 Dong, Y. 162 dual mechanism theory 3 Duff, M. A. 162 elision 51, 60 epenthesis 52, 63 Erbaugh, M. S. 8, 121, 191 Esling, J. H. 14 expressions of subjectivization (acquisition and development): acquisition data of 还 (hái) 144 – 147; characteristics and explanations of the acquisition of subjective meanings 147 – 149; development of subjectivization and syntax 152 – 153; expressions of subjectivization and cognitive abilities 141; extensions of the subjective meanings of “还 hai2” and their mechanism 141 – 144; means of expressions of subjectivization for young children 132 – 139; participant child SYY’s MLU5 at different ages 156 – 159; research goal and theoretical background 131 – 132; results 139 – 141; supporting evidence from other polysemous adverbs 149 – 152 focus construction 133, 137 Footo, M. M. 60 Friedmann, N. 241, 252 – 253 front-posing 60; see also preposing fundamental frequency: definition 18 – 19; females’ development of 25 – 27; males’ development of 24 – 27; primary vowel development and 16; relationship between characteristics of, and gender, and age 20 – 27; stages of the

development of 19 – 20; tone acquisition and 81, 82, 83, 95, 100, 103; voice change and 26 – 27 Gao, Z. 134, 141 generative grammar 6, 7, 209, 212, 230, 232 genetics 2, 3 – 4, 11, 211 Goldberg, A. E. 211, 235 grammar: children’s 3, 8; construction grammar 211; generative grammar 6, 7, 209, 212, 230, 232; markedness theory of relevance and 125; subsystems of 8; Universal Grammar 2, 3, 206, 211, 230, 231 Greenberg, J. H. 256 Guo, J. 8, 162 Guo, R. 141, 148 Guo, T. 162 Guo, X. 105 Guo, Z. 133, 134 Hakuta, K. 256 Harley, H. 212 He, X. 212, 231 He, Y. 134 Hermon, G. 242 Hopper, P. J. 109 Hoye, L. 181, 182 Hsu, C. C. N. 242 Hu, D. 132 Hu, J. 8 Hu, S. 242 initials (acquisition and development): data from dialect and Englishspeaking children 60; definition of concept and background of research 47 – 48; deviation phenomena in case study 48 – 52; further analyses on inevitable deviations 60 – 63; LXY mispronunciations of initials, age of occurrence, and examples of deviations 64 – 68; quantitative analysis of deviation 52 – 60; quantitative comparison of deviation types 53 – 54; target words with initial deviations (list) 69 – 70; three children’s percentage statistics of deviations of initials 71 – 77; trajectory of total numbers of deviation 52 – 53 innate (defined) 3 – 4 input (defined) 4 – 5

Index  283 interpretation of basic concepts 5 item-based learning theory 124, 126 Jakobson, R. 12n1 James, C. 47 Johnson, K. 212

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Kayne, R. S. 212 Keenan, E. L. 240 Kent, R. 14 Kong, L. 8, 105, 132 Labelle, M. 241, 252 Larson, R. K. 212 Lee, J. N. 191 Lee, Thomas H.-T. 1, 8, 242 Le 了 (acquisition): acquisition order of the various “了” 124; corpus description 121; format characteristics and age of first emergence of “了” 121 – 122; frequency of structure distribution by age 122 – 124; markedness relations of temporal meanings 125 – 127; the prototype category of “了” 127 – 128; research background and research subject 120 – 121; young children’s levels of cognition regarding time 128 – 129 Li, J. 105 Li, M. 134 Li, P. 8, 121 Li, R. 230 Li, S. 14 Li, W. 14, 51, 60 Li, Y. 8, 132, 180 Li, Y. H. A. 14, 212 Li, Z. 192 Liang, Y. 210 Lieven, E. V. 228 Lin, O. H. J. 121 Lin, X. 182 Liu, D. 241, 255, 256 Liu, L. 241 Liu, Y. 105, 110, 119n1, 192 locative category (acquisition and development): acquisition order of different semantic types 110 – 111; analysis and discussion 112 – 117; children’s learning mechanism for directional verbs 117 – 119; frequency principle of pragmatics 118 – 119; investigation on the verbs that precede directional complements 111 – 112; output frequency counts of directional

verbs related to “上 、下 (up, down)” 108 – 109; research background and research subject 105 – 107; semantic characteristics of directional verbs related to “上 、下 (up, down)” 109 – 110 Lu, B. 240, 256 Lu, J. 105 Lü, S. 105 Lyons, J. 132 MacNeilage, P. F. 14 Mandarin Children’s Dynamic Development Corpus (MCLDDC) 9 Maratsos, M. 253 markedness theory 125, 126, 127 Matthews, S. 242 maturation theory 3, 6, 206 McDaniel, D. 241, 252 McKee, C. 241, 252 Meng, Z. 45n8 Minimalist Program 6, 230, 231 Miolo, G. 14 Miyagawa, S. 212 modal adverbs complementary to modality 181 – 182 modality (degrees of): acquisition epistemic modality of modal adverbs 172 – 175; acquisition of epistemic modality of modal particles 170 – 172; acquisition of meanings regarding polysemous modal verbs 166 – 170; acquisition of typical words of 164 – 166; degrees of quantification research background 161 – 163; modal adverbs to commuicate 163; order of acquisition 175 – 181; refinement and supplemental function of modal adverbs 181 – 188; research background 161; subject of investigation 163 – 164 modal particles 163, 170, 172, 177, 187 Naigles, L. R. 191 nativist theory 1 – 2, 4, 5 Ning, C. 60 O’Neill, D. K. 162 Ouyang, J. 132 Ozeki, H. 256 Ozturk, O. 162 Papafragou, A. 162 Peng, L. 133

284 Index Perkins, M. R. 162 Pesetsky, D. 212, 230 Pinker, S. 118 postposing 51, 54, 60, 61 – 62 preposing 51, 54, 60, 61 – 62 primary vowels 13 – 44; age and group assignment 14 – 15; basic acoustic data on the acquisition and development of 16 – 17; developmental characteristics of [a]’s formants 28 – 32; developmental characteristics of [i]’s formants 32 – 36; developmental characteristics of [u]’s formants 36 – 40; development of acoustic space 42 – 44; development of F1, F2, F3, F4 40 – 42; development of fundamental frequency F0 18 – 26 prototype category theory 127 Pylkkänen, L. 212 Qi, C. 172 quantal theory of speech 28, 35, 38 qu tone see tones

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rear-posing 60; see also postposing research age and group assignment 14 – 15 research equipment, software and data processing 15 – 16 Rizzi, L. 241, 252 – 253 Roberts, J. E. 60 rule-based theory 191, 203 semivowelization 51, 54 shang tone see tones Shankweiler, D. 252 Shatz, M. 162 Sheldon, A. 252, 253 Shen, J. 125, 141, 160n7 Shi, F. 14 Shi, J. 149, 172 Shi, X. 14 Shirai, Y. 242, 256 Si, Y. 14 simplex relative clauses (aquisition): cognitive explanation for the NPAH and predictions 256 – 260; data from spontaneous speech 245 – 249; data obtainment 243 – 244; existing research 241 – 243; experimental data 249 – 251; explanations of Chinese children’s acquisition characteristics 253 – 257; prediction of young children’s acquisition 258 – 260; refinement of the NPAH 257 – 259; syntactic processing or

computation 254 – 255; universality of 240 – 241 Snyder, W. 210 Song, W. 134 spirantization 51 Stephany, U. 162 Stevens, K. N. 45n13 stopping 51, 54, 60, 194 Stromswold, K. 210 Su, Y. C. 242 substitution: as absolute error 84; as acoustical error 79, 83; crossing as type of substitution 63; as initial deviation 60; Tianjin Wangkou dialect 60; tone type as error 85, 91 – 93; types 51 Sun, T. 212 syntax 105; acquisition of degrees of modality and 179, 180; development of subjectivization and 152 – 153; distransitive constuctions and 209; research content 10 – 11; see also distransitive construction syntax (development): and cognitive development 105, 119; and data 191; production of syntactic rules 206 – 207; rule-based early syntactic theory 206; usage-based early sytactic development theory 205 Tang, Z. 241, 255 toddlers: data description 14; developmental characteristics 16; development of acoustic space of primary vowels 42 – 44; development of primary vowels 19; early acquisition of the simplex relative clause 243; gender and fundamental frequency 21 – 22 Tomasello, M. 124, 228, 239 tones (acquisition and development of): children’s process of acquisition 81 – 87; comparison between children’s and adults’ tones 87 – 91; definition of tone acquisition 80; inaccurate pitch value 100; inaccurate pitch value of qu tone 100; inaccurate pitch value of shang tone 96, 100; inaccurate pitch value of yangping tone 98 – 100; inaccurate pitch value of yinping tone 96 – 98; inaccurate pitch values and their acoustic analyses 93; qu tone 87, 88, 91 – 92, 96, 100, 103; research background and goals 79 – 80; shang tone 87, 88, 91 – 93, 95, 96, 103; tentative explanations for children’s tone errors 103; tone type substitution and its

Index  285 acoustic analyses 91 – 93; yangping tone 82, 83, 87, 88, 91 – 96, 98 – 100, 103; yinping tone 87, 88, 91 – 92, 95 – 98, 103; see also fundamental frequency Traugott, E. C. 109 Tsai, W.-T. 212 Tsay, J. S. 8 Tsujioka, T. 212 usage-based early syntactic development theory 205 usage-based theory 118, 191, 203, 228 vocal chords 18 – 19, 26, 27, 79, 96, 103 voicing 51, 54, 63 vowels see primary vowels Wang, A. 225 Wang, B. 132, 134, 210 Wang, S. 225 Wang, X. 132 Wang, Y. 235 Wang, Y. T. 162 Wanner E. 253 Wen, B. 14 Wexler, K. 6 Wilcox, S. 162 Wu, G. 141 Wu, T. 14

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Xiao, D. 132, 191 Xiao, L. 191 Xu, J. 14, 214 Xu, J. N. 172 Xu, Y. 241 Xu, Z. 14, 105 Yang, B. 162 Yang, C. 242 Yang, W. 191 Yang, X. 8, 132, 191 yangping tone see tones Yao, W. 132 yinping tone see tones Yip, Virginia 8, 242 young child group: analysis deviation 52 – 55; data description 14 – 15;

developmental characteristics 16; development of acoustic space of primary vowels 42 – 44; development of primary vowels 19; deviation between [n] and [l] 61; deviation of initial acquisition 47 – 48, 63; four Mandarin tones and 95; gender and fundamental frequency 21 – 22; Le1 or Le2 as first acquisition 121; retroflex sounds 62; tone acquisition 79, 81 – 87; tone errors 103; yangping tone 98 – 100; yinping tone and 96 – 98, 103 Yuan, Y. 53 Zai 在 construction (acquisition) 191 – 208; acquisition data regarding comprehension 201 – 203; acquisition data regarding gradual change 200 – 201; acquisition data regarding production 195 – 201; characteristics of word usage 198 – 200; gradual and abrupt changes in early syntactic development 205 – 206; imitation data 197 – 198; mechanism and process in early syntactic development 206 – 207; origin of data 194 – 195; research background 191 – 192; the role of input on early syntactic development 203 – 205; syntactic and semantic features of the “zai” construction and the object of study 192 – 194; what are “acquisition” and “input” 207 – 208 Zhang, B. 105, 141 Zhang, N. N. 153, 212 Zhang, W. 211, 212 Zhang, Y. 126, 172, 182 Zhang, Z. 160n9 Zhao, X. 126 Zhou, G. 8, 132, 210 Zhou, J. 153 Zhou, T. 241 Zhu, D. 105, 133 Zhu, G. 133 Zhu, H. 14, 51, 60 Zou, L. 210 Zukowski, A. 242

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