【作者】 陈敏；

【导师】 李行德；

【作者基本信息】 湖南大学 ， 外国语言学及应用语言学， 2005， 硕士

【摘要】 本研究的主要目的是看作为儿童语言主要输入者(一般为母亲)是否随儿童年龄的增长而逐步调整了语言的复杂程度以适应儿童语言的发展。本文从以下五个部分对儿向语的是否精调性以及它与儿童早期语言发展的关系做研究。 第一章是本论文的引言,简要介绍儿童语言习得的两大主要理论—Chomsky等提出的语言天赋论和Snow等提出的以语言输入为基础的语言习得论,以及这两大理论存在的分歧。 第二章从语音、词汇和句法角度对儿向语在语言复杂程度上的调整状况做了详细的文献综述,探讨了儿童语言主要输入者与儿童早期语言发展的相关性,指出前人研究中存在的不足,从而介绍本研究的创新之处及重要性:即从词汇和句法角度设计了13组语言变量来看儿童语言主要输入者每月的语言变化以及儿童在18个月至27个月的语言产出。 第三章是本论文的核心章节,主要研究了一位说普通话的母亲与其儿子LSY (9个月至27个月)的对话,三对成人之间的对话,其目的有二:一是研究儿向语是否呈现精调性;二是比较儿向语与成人之间语言的差别。本章从词汇和句法角度设计了13个语言变量,对LSY母亲每月一次每次一小时对LSY的4981句话、成人的628句话以及LSY早期产出的2116句话都进行了量化统计分析。 第四章对一名英语儿童与其母亲的对话做跨语言分析。英语数据来源于布朗语料库的录音文字材料,主要采用了一名叫EVE的女孩与她的母亲之间的会话录音。共采用了每月一次共10个录音段(Brown,1973),EVE的年龄跨度从01;06;00至02;03;12,每次录音时间约一小时。英语母亲的4478句话,以及英语儿童EVE的3105句话都进行了13个语言变量的量化统计分析。 本论文的研究结论为:1)从词汇和句法角度确认了汉语儿向语的存在,证据来源于所设计的13个语言变量中有10个语言变量显示了母亲对儿童所说的话不同于成人与成人之间的谈话.2)不论是说汉语的母亲还是说英语的母亲都没有随儿童年龄逐月的增长精细调整语言的复杂性以去适应儿童语言的发展。 3)对两名儿童LSY和EVE的早期语言产出进行了相应的13个语言变量的分析,发现两名儿童的语言发展非常快,几乎每过一个月都有较大的变化。这与两位母亲在13个语言变量上的极少变化形成了较大的反差。这在一定程度上表明儿童主要依靠自身的语言能力来获得母语,而并非借助于母亲的语言输入来习得母语。4)中英文两种不同语言文化背景下母亲语言输入以及儿童语言输出之间既存在共性又存在差异性。 本研究证明儿童并非暴露在精细调整的理想语言环境中,即儿童的主要语言输入者并非有意识地简化语言去适应儿童语言的发展。儿童语言习得的关键在于儿童本身,更多还原

【Abstract】 The purpose of the present study is to find out whether the children’s main language input (usually the mothers) modifies the linguistic complexity when talking to the children over time in adapting to the children’s early language development.This paper is composed of five chapters, focusing on the issue of fine-tuning in CDS (Child Directed Speech) and its correlation with the children’s early language development.Chapter 1 is the introduction, which introduces two significant theories in the field of language acquisition and the divergence between them. One is the nativist account of language acquisition put forward by Chomsky; the other is the input-based account of language acquisition put forward by Snow & Ferguson, etc.Chapter 2 presents a detailed review of the previous studies on the adjustment of CDS and its correlation with children’s early language development, in the order of phonetic studies, lexical studies and syntactic studies. In the present study, we employ 13 linguistic variables to examine the issue of fine-tuning, analyzing the longitudinal development of a Changsha infant and the maternal speech directed to him. In a parallel comparative study, we apply the same linguistic variables to the child directed speech of an English-speaking mother and to the child’s early language development.Chapter 3 is the core part of the thesis, which studies a Mandarin-speaking mother’s monthly conversations with her child LSY (male), with age ranging from 00; 09; 16 to 02; 03; 06. Besides, three conversations between adults (Adult Directed Speech; ADS) are also analyzed for the purpose of comparing the difference of CDS and ADS. Altogether, 4981 utterances from the mother’s monthly input to LSY, 628 utterances from the ADS and 2116 utterances from LSY’s early language production are included for the quantitative analysis.Chapter 4 contains the comparative study of the CDS and its correlation with child’s early language development. The English mother-child conversations consist of 10 transcripts from Brown Corpus. The child is EVE (female), age ranging from 01; 06; 00 to 02; 03; 12. Altogether 4478 utterances from the English-speaking mother’s monthly input to EVE and 3105 utterances from EVE’s early language production are included for the quantitative analysis.The conclusions of the present study are manifested in the following four results. Firstly, CDS in the Mandarin-speaking mother differs from ADS since 10 out of the 13 linguistic variables show obvious difference between them. Secondly, neither the Mandarin-speaking mother nor the English-speaking mother fine-tunes their linguistic complexity with children’sage. Thirdly, the language of both children indicate radical change monthly whereas the language of both mothers only show slight variation, which suggests that the children themselves make great contribution to the language acquisition. Finally, there are similarities and differences between the two mother-child dyads situated in different linguistic and cultural environments.The above results demonstrate that children are not exposed to a finely-tuned language environment and they themselves play the most important role in the language acquisition. However, language input plays some role in the lexical acquisition of young children, namely in the acquisition of personal pronouns and verbs.更多还原