THE FIRST-LANGUAGE ACQUISITION OF PRENOMINAL MODIFICATION WITH DE IN MANDARIN

儿童对‘的’字结构的习得

裴吉瑞(Jerome L. Packard)

《Journal of Chinese Linguistics》 16卷1期 (1988/01) Pp. 31-54

摘要

This paper details a study of the use of the marker de by two groups of two-year-old children acquiring Mandarin as their first language. The study focuses on whether these children acquire the lexically headless or headed form first, and whether the acquisition of a lexical head is related to the form of the modifying complement. The matrix embedding of de structures is also examined. The study found that children learning Mandarin acquire the lexically headless form first, and that the acquisition of the headed form is related to the complexity of the modifying complement. Pragmatic factors, as well as constraints on length and specificity, are evaluated as an explanation for the prior appearance of headless forms. It is suggested that children produce the headless forms first because of incomplete control of dominance relations that obtain between a head and its modifier.

並列摘要

本文是探讨以普通话为母语的儿童在学习‘的’字结构中的语言习得问题。主要研究项目是试图探明儿童是先学无中心成分的‘的’字结构还是先学有中心成分的‘的’字结构，并探究习得该结构的中心成分是否与其修饰成分的形式有关。本项研究还进而探讨了儿童语言习得中‘的’字结构的主句嵌入的问题。经过两组二岁和二岁半儿童自然语言的分析后，我们发现：儿童最初学用无中心成份的‘的’字结构，而后学用有中心成分的‘的’字结构。并发现有中心成分的‘的’字结构的习得是与该结构修饰成分的复杂性有关的。为说明我们的发现，本项研究从语言实用，句子的长短以及句子的特指性等方面进行了实验和测定。最后本文的结论是：儿童所以先习得无中心成分的‘的’字结构，其原因是在习得这种结构的最初阶段中，还没有完全掌握其中修饰成分与被修饰成分之间的支配与被支配的关系。