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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。
Although human perception of space may have some universality, human expression of the same spatial event varies widely depending on the language. The purpose of this study is to explore how English-Chinese children can express autonomous, motor-based events. We find that the typological differences in the spatial expressions of English and Chinese restrict the types and quantities of information components that children are accustomed to expressing at the clause level. Chinese children’s sentences in spatial expression have higher information density than those of English children of the same age, and the difference is significant. This is mainly because the complex forms of verbs in Chinese greatly promote the simultaneous expression of multiple semantic components in the same clause. In addition, English children underwent an important development in spatial representation between the ages of 3 and 5 years, compared with the three-year-old children’s spatial representation of Chinese children showing similar characteristics to those of adults. This study reveals the important role of language uniqueness in language acquisition.