Study On Chinese Lexicon Acquisition Of Children From Perspective Of Prototype Theory

Lexicon plays an important role in the development of children language. Because tomost people, when talking about language, the first impression is that it consists of wordswhich is the basic complement. Words to languages are just like bricks to buildings. Thepresent studies mainly focus on every element affecting children language development,including phonetics, lexical, syntax and so forth. There are also studies on lexicon fromdifferent perspectives such as historical-philological semantics, functionalist semantics andgenerative semantics, and each school summarizes their own theories on lexicon. While thethesis focuses on the TV program Daddy where are we going based on the Prototype Theory.The prototype theory is different from the classic theory. They are different in how todefine category, the inner structure of category, the concept of prototype and the statue ofcategory and so on. There are some features of the prototype theory such as theprototypicality in category members, the vagueness and openness of category edge and thecentrality of category structure. As for a given category, the nuclear of which is considered asthe prototype, and the family resemblance of which is taken as the bond to extend. Based onthese five videos downloaded from the Hunan Satellite official website, the author collectsmore than one hundred evidences from each child, including lexicons and conversationsamong Chinese children. The present thesis adopts both the qualitative and quantitativeapproaches to analyze these possessed lexicons and conversations and find out that the term“prototype” plays an important role in the process of acquiring lexicons.The author mainly sums up three points after doing these analyses mentioned above.Firstly, during the different development stage of children lexicon acquisition, the importantlandmark is the development of children lexicons which are mainly embodied in three aspects. They are lexicon number, the lexicons comprehension and the flexibility degree of usage. Theformer aspect belongs to dominant target, while the latter two aspects are parts of invisibletargets. The lexicon number of children increases at a very high speed, and their ability tomaster the meaning of lexicon tend to deepen to a large degree. Meanwhile, children grasp thesense of lexicon developing from obscure to accuracy step by step. The flexibility of lexiconusage indicates agile usage of lexicon and the creation of new lexicon of children. Secondly,with the help of this thesis, the readers would gain a general impression of the new branch, i.e.cognitive lexicology and know its powerful vitality in interpreting lexical phenomena. Theycould also derive inspiration from the enlightenment for remembering words themselves.Thirdly, the application of this theory mainly functions in the memory of lexicons, which canhelp children to build up a huge related semantic network. The network considers theprototype or basic level category vocabulary as the center to expand outward continuously.Once a word is activated, it is easy to make children associated with the prototype of thiscategory or basic category vocabulary, and then stimulating the semantic web and contactother words of a network in memories. This method not only can enhance children’svocabulary retention and enlarge their vocabulary, but also can help to reduce their burden ofmemory and improve their interest in learning new and complex lexicons.