A Case Study On Chinese Children's Early Language Development

Noam Chomsky's Mentalism Innate Theory is based on the poverty of stimulus argument. The poverty of stimulus means that the language input and the language competence are unequal. If the poverty of stimulus argument is untenable, it will fundamentally shake the foundation of Mentalism Innate Theory and thus shake the foundation of Generative Grammar. But is the language input scarce actually? Does it include the necessary information for language acquisition? Can children acquire the language competence because of the language input? In order to probe these issues the dissertation takes the language development of early childhood (younger than the age of two and a half years ago) as the object of its research. On the one hand, this dissertation describes the language input and the child understanding and expression; on the other hand, the dissertation compares the understanding with expression, compares the language output with input. The ultimate aim is to reveal the impact of postnatal language input on language acquisition.This research is one kind of the case follow-up study. At the same time it adopts corpus linguistics method and experiment method. These three methods are all based on the language facts. The conclusions complement and confirm mutually. The corpus which is based on the recordings includes 360,000 characters.This dissertation includes the following main elements:Chapter one: preface. Firstly, we illustrate the origin and terminology, and then overview the history and current situation of the study on child language in China and abroad and Chinese language study on early childhood. Secondly, we point out the inadequate parts and the problems in child language research. Finally, we introduce the main theories and methods and difficulties in this research. The corpus linguistics method and the statistical analysis method are based on the accurate, objective data analysis, so they are scientific and innovative.Chapter two: corpus construction. This chapter focuses on the language data collection, recording to writing, text processing, segmentation proofreading. The establishment of the corpus provides a real foundation for word frequency and sentence-frequency statistics as well as the comparison between the adult language and child language. Corpus construction process and the means to deal with some special problems can provide a reference for the construction of child spoken language.In chapter three, we describe the adult language in Pre-language stage thoroughly. We find that the adult language includes a variety of linguistic knowledge by means of the analysis of words, phrases and syntax. The child has already accepted these stimuli of language knowledge.In chapter four, we compute and analyze the adult and child language in the corpus. Firstly, we calculate the quantity of the adult's utterances, MLU(the Mean Length of Utterances) of the adult and the child and types of the child utterances. The result shows that the early childhood language input are enormous. It is not poverty actually. The MLU of CDS (Child Directed Speech) is closely related to child language level. The Child's spontaneous utterance is an important indicator of language proficiency. Imitation happens more often at single-word and double-words stage. Secondly, we compare the adult's vocabulary with the child's vocabulary, compare the adult's high-frequency words with the child's high-frequency words, compare the adult's high-frequency sentence patterns with the child's high-frequency sentence patterns, compare the first time to hear with the first time to utter. The results show that the number of input vocabulary is much more than the output. The more high-frequency of the adult's words and the child's, the coincidence degree becomes greater. The vocabularies of high frequency appear in the child's usage as well as the adult's usage. Also, the vocabularies of low frequency appear in the child's usage as well as the adult's usage. Single-word sentence is the sentence of the highest frequency sentence of input and output. The coincidence degree of the preceding ten sentence patterns is quite great. According to these results we draw a conclusion that the adult language input has an obvious effect on child language output, and there is a positive correlation between the input frequency and child language acquisition. In chapter five, we describe the understanding of early childhood, including the understanding of speech act and non-speech act. First of all, from the perspective of the transmission of information we redefine body language, and point out that body language can promote child's understanding of the adult's utterances. Secondly, we put forwards our views about the characteristics and the judgment of child's understanding and point out the dynamic feature of child's understanding, and point out the criteria, methods, means, and principles of child's understanding. Thus we can describe the situation of child's understanding operatively. Thirdly, we describe the language understanding units. One category is noun unit, verb unit, adjective unit, pronoun unit and numeral unit which are selected by reference to words. The second category is superior-subordinate structure, "Ba" construction, interrogative sentence, and imperative sentence by reference to sentence pattern and sentence mood. The third category is word order and tones which reflect the uniqueness of Chinese.In chapter six, we describe the expression of the child. Firstly, we describe the non-speech act using simple gesture and voice, and then analyze the first 50 "words" after strictly defining acquisition as the act of speaking spontaneously. We find that nouns and verbs are dominating vocabularies in early childhood, and whether nouns are more than verbs or not influenced by the factors such as language type, preceding discourse, and activity scene and so on. Finally, we describe the expression of superior-subordinate structure, "Ba" construction, and interrogative sentence and compare these with the understanding. We find that the structures and semantic types output are in the scope of language input and even the vast majority of output is included by understanding range.The conclusion part clarifies the views of this research, and gives a summary of innovations and significance of the research, and points out the deficiency of this dissertation and the project of further research.This study takes the language understanding of the child into child language research scope, extending the reach of child language study, and broadening the vision of child language research. This study compares child understanding with child expression, compares language input with output, and this makes the conclusions more convincing. The conclusions are based on large-scale language materials by the way of corpus linguistics method and statistical analysis method.This study can provide the facts and basis for revealing the effect of postnatal language environment on child language development, and then revealing the language acquisition. It provides supplementary cases for the study on language acquisition of Chinese children. It provides reference for teaching Chinese as a second language.