ERIC Number: EJ1196306
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Dec
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0090-6905
EISSN: N/A
Grammatical Aspect in Early Child Mandarin: Evidence from a Preferential Looking Experiment
Yang, Xiaolu; Shi, Rushen; Xu, Kailin
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, v47 n6 p1301-1320 Dec 2018
The study assessed 30-month-old Mandarin-speaking children's awareness of aspectual distinctions involving the perfective marker "le" and the imperfective marker "zhe" in a preferential looking experiment. In the experiment, we presented our child subjects with a choice between two video clips (one depicting a closed event and the other depicting an on-going event), in the presence of an auditory stimulus (either the "le" sentence, the "zhe" sentence or the control sentence without any aspect marker). Children's looking behavior in the task was recorded and analyzed. The results revealed 30-month-old children's emerging sensitivity to the aspectual contrast between "le" and "zhe." This was manifest by an increase in looking to the closed event when hearing the "le" sentence and an increase in looking to the on-going event when hearing the "zhe" sentence. The absence of "le" or "zhe" in the control sentence did not result in any increase or decrease in looking to either event. We also found that the effect of "le" on children's looking behavior was immediate whereas the effect of "zhe" was late. We attributed this difference to the facilitative role of "le" in children's sentence processing as well as their preference for the event boundary. The results lend support to the continuity view that functional morphemes like aspect markers are available to children early in language development.
Descriptors: Grammar, Mandarin Chinese, Toddlers, Auditory Stimuli, Video Technology, Child Behavior, Verbs, Task Analysis, Preferences, Language Processing, Morphemes, Language Acquisition, Psycholinguistics, Role, Sentences
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A