The development of transitive predicates in Mandarin Chinese

中文及物謂語的發展

簡伶伃(Lin-Yu Chien)

指導教授 ： 林宗宏

國立清華大學/人文社會學院/語言學研究所/碩士(2009年)

摘要

摘要
本論文旨在探究習得中文的兒童在及物謂語方面的發展，因為習得其他語言如英語、日語等的兒童都有將不及物動詞當作使動動詞使用的傾向(the transitive-tocausative bias)，然而習得閩南語的兒童卻具有把結果補語當作使動動詞使用的傾向(the resultative-to-causative bias)，因此本論文想要探索習得中文的兒童是否具有把不及物動詞當作使動動詞使用的傾向，還是是與閩南語相同，具有把結果補語當作使動動詞使用的傾向。
本論文的研究材料為四位習得中文的兒童的錄音語料。本研究結果顯示，習得中文的兒童顯示出不及物動詞當作使動動詞使用的傾向，而非結果補語當作使動動詞使用的傾向。
另外本論文採納Larson (1988) VP-shell 的理論來分析習得中文的兒童在及物謂語方面的發展。結果顯示兒童習得及物謂語共可分為三個階段：第一個階段為空的輕動詞，第二個階段為「給」為輕動詞，第三個階段為習得詞彙句法層面的使役結構。

關鍵字

兒童

並列摘要

Abstract
Children overgeneralize intransitive verbs for causative verbs. This phenomenon is called the intransitive-to-causative bias. However, Lin & Tsay (2008) argue that the overgeneralization pattern in Taiwan Southern Min shows a resultative-to-causative bias, which is different from the bias mentioned above. On the other hand, Murasugi & Hashimoto (2004) follow the analysis of Larson’s VP shell hypothesis to account for certain phenomena in early Japanese, and argue that there exist four stages when Japanese-speaking children are acquiring verbs and morphological –(s)ase causative constructions.
Previous studies did not discuss the relevant phenomena in Mandarin Chinese. Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to figure out whether Mandarin Chinese has the intransitiveto-causative bias or the resultative-to-causative bias. This paper also uses VP shell hypothesis to explain the development of the causative constructions in Mandarin Chinese. We observe the usages of element gei in early Mandarin Chinese for this purpose.
After examing data of four children from Child Corpus developed by Hsu, we find that Mandarin-speaking children show the intransitive-to-causative bias, and that there exist three stages in the acquisition of Mandarin-speaking children. The first stage is when the small v is phonetically null. The second stage is is when the small v can be realized as gei. The last stage is the acquisition of morpho-syntactic causative constructions. The acquisition stages in Mandarin Chinese are different from those in Japanese. We argue that inflections cause the divergence. The evidence is the difference of tense morphology between Japanese and Mandarin Chinese.

參考文獻

Xu, D. (1994). The status of marker gei in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 22(2), 363-394.

Ting, J. & Chang, M. (2004). The category of gei in Mandarin Chinese and

張顯達，1998，兒童學習國語的困難在哪裡 ? 專題演講，發表於彰化基督教醫院醫學研究部兒童發展中心。

Newman, J. (1993). The semantics of giving in Mandarin. Conceptualizations and mental processing in language. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin & New York, 433–485.

Cheng, L. L.-S., James, H. C.-T., Li, Y. H. A. & Jane, T. C. C. (1996). Hoo, Hoo, Hoo:syntax of the causative, dative and passive construction in Taiwanese. Journal of Chinese Linguistic, 2.3: 279-324.