An Empirical Study On English-speaking Children's Acquisition Of WH-questions-a Usage-based Theory Of Language Acquisition

Language is an essential part in people's daily life and is quite familiar to us.However,language acquisition is much more complicated than what we have thought.Children's language acquisition is a complex process.The language itself and the development of brain make children's language acquisition even more mysterious.In recent years,the study on children's language acquisition has greatly developed and become an interdisciplinary research field,including linguistics,psychology and pedagogy,etc.Researchers at home and abroad have put forward many hypotheses about how children acquire the language.Wh-questions occupy a large portion in any language,which makes it a valuable research subject.Adopting CHILDES database,the present study conducts two main analyses on English children's acquisition of wh-questions in the light of usage-based approach.The first analysis explores the distribution pattern of wh-questions in child-directed speech and the distribution development of different wh-questions.The second analysis investigates the distribution pattern of wh-questions in child speech and attempts to figure out the acquisition sequence of different wh-questions by children and examine the possible factors within the framework of usage-based approach.The results are as follows.(1)Wh-questions account for a large proportion of all questions in child-directed speech.As for the distribution development of different wh-questions,what-questions take up the largest percentage of all wh-questions,stabilizing at 53 percent.Although why-questions,how-questions and when-questions possess a low percentage at first,they experience an increase with age.In contrast,the distribution patterns of where-questions and who-questions show the opposite.They possess a high percentage in the first place,but decline gradually with age.The findings imply that child-directed speech is customized for children,because it conforms to the children's conceptual development.(2)The second analysis shows that although question asking is not easy for children at first,they use more and more questions to seek information and fill in theinformation gap as they grow old.In child speech,children acquire what-questions first,followed by where-,who-,why-,how-to when-questions.The acquisition sequence discovered in the study is mainly affected by children's input and frequency,the different level of conceptual notion and its actual usage.If these factors can be fully understood and taken advantage of,it will greatly promote the children's language acquisition.