iReasearch学术科研网

摘要：尽管人类对空间的认知可能具有一定的普遍性;但人类对同一空间事件的表达却因为语言的差异而千差万别。本研究旨在探讨英汉儿童如何表达基于动画的自主性运动事件。我们发现英语及汉语在空间表达上的类型学差异制约着儿童在小句层面上惯于表达的信息成分的类型及数量。汉语儿童在空间表达上的语句比同龄英语儿童的语句具有更高的信息密度;并且差异显著。这主要是因为汉语中的动词复合形式极大地促进了多重语义成分在同一小句中的同时体现。另外;英语儿童在3至5岁之间经历了空间表达方式上的重要发展;而相比之下汉语儿童的空间表达从3岁起就展现出了一些与成人的空间表达极为相似的特征。本研究揭示了语言独特性因素在语言习得中所起的重要作用。

The domain of space presents some interesting properties.On the one hand,spatial understanding by human beings is said to be universal and to share the same biological heritage;on the other,the linguistic systems encoding spatial knowledge vary strikingly.This paradox raises fundamental questions,among other things,for the study of first language acquisition: when children acquire spatial expressions in their own language,are they constrained by a universal set of cognitive determinants or rather by the specific linguistic means available in their language from early on? Or do both cognitive and linguistic determinants influence the developmental path of these child L1 learners? The present study investigates the expression of voluntary motion events by Chinese and English children across ages in cartoon-based production tasks.Our results show first of all that typological properties influence the semantic density of children’s utterances.Regardless of age,children express denser semantic information in Chinese than in English because of the availability in Chinese of easily accessible resultative verb compounds which facilitate the simultaneous encoding of varied semantic components for motion.Second,a striking developmental progression occurs in English between the ages of three and five and adulthood,whereas in Chinese no such developmental progression can be observed.Generally,the present study highlights the implications of typological constraints for the debate concerning universal versus language-specific determinants in language acquisition.