Aspect Encoding in L1 Chinese Children

• Main Authors: You-shan Chung, 鍾友珊
• Other Authors: Hintat Cheung
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/81742142713688515322

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 95 === Studies on the acquisition of the Chinese aspectual system tend to focus on children’s knowledge of the use of aspect markers. However, we found that the use of some other devices could be an important development in aspect encoding during the age of 1;6-3;3. We have three kinds of evidence that supports such a view. First, with age, the subject children became more competent in drawing out other devices that have aspectual meanings. These devices included aspectuals (a kind of temporal adverbials proposed by Erbaugh 1992), reduplication, and you/mei(you). Second, older children also used devices that do not directly carry aspectual meanings but have special co-occurring pattern/constraints with the markers. These devices included temporal adverbials that are not aspectuals, auxiliaries, the negation markers bu and mei(you), and ba. Third, some of the devices that had aspectual meanings in children’s data also occurred selectively with certain situation types, as have often been reported for aspect markers. These findings suggest that children’s development of aspect encoding involves the increasing awareness of resources other than aspect markers in conveying relevant meanings and the co-occurring potentials/restrictions between aspect markers and some grammatical constructions.