ABSTRACT

The Mandarin resultative verb compound (RVC; e.g., tui dao “push fall” and pa shang “climb ascend”) encodes complex events composed of an initiating action and resulting activity or state. This study investigated when Mandarin-speaking children acquired this language-specific device. Specifically, we focused on children’s production of RVCs with two infixes, -bu- “not able” and -de- “be able.” Because the infixes intervene between the two verbs of RVC (e.g., tui -bu- dao “push -not able- fall” and tui -de- dao “push -be able- fall”), being able to produce RVC infixation indicates that children have a morphological separation between the action and the result verbs. Two studies were conducted. Study 1 is a corpus analysis. We examined the use of plain RVCs versus RVCs with infixes in parent input and children’s spontaneous speech using a cross-sectional corpus and a longitudinal corpus. RVCs with infixes were found to be very rare in both parent input and child production. Study 2 is an experimental elicitation task targeting RVC infixation. Children between 3;0 and 5;0 performed exceptionally well, producing target responses when primed with structurally related probes in discourse-appropriate contexts. There was no difference in children’s performance related to age or the type of infix (i.e., -bu- vs -de-). Children’s early competence with RVC infixation, which is infrequent in input, runs counter to the usage-based approach that emphasizes item-based learning. Rather, by age three, Mandarin-speaking children have developed a representation of the RVC as two distinct morphemes for encoding complex event structure. This representation facilitates acquisition of the infixes with very little input data.

摘要

普通话动结化合物（RVC;例如，TUI道“推落”和PA商“攀爬上升”）编码发起动作和得到的活性或状态的构成复杂的事件。这项研究调查了说普通话的儿童何时购买了这种特定语言的设备。具体而言，我们专注于孩子们的生产RVCS的两个缀， - BU- “不能”和-去“能” 因为后缀插入RVC的两个动词之间（例如，推布道“推不掉”和推德道）“ push -be can-fall”），能够产生RVC固定表示儿童在动作和结果动词之间存在形态上的分离。进行了两项研究。研究1是语料库分析。我们检查了普通RVC的使用，以及使用横断面语料库和纵向语料库在父母输入内容和儿童的自发性言语中带有前缀的RVC。发现带有前缀的RVC在父级输入和子级生成中都很罕见。研究2是针对RVC固定的实验性启发任务。3; 0到5; 0之间的儿童表现出色，当在适合语篇的情况下使用结构相关的探针引发目标反应时。儿童的表现与年龄或中缀类型无关（即-bu -vs-de-）。儿童在RVC固定中的早期能力很少输入，这与强调基于项目的学习的基于用法的方法背道而驰。相反，到三岁时，会说普通话的孩子就已经将RVC表示为两种不同的语素，用于编码复杂的事件结构。这种表示有助于以很少的输入数据来获取中缀。