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Comparative Analysis Of The Two Raw Materials Of Input In Early Child Language Acquisition

Posted on:2011-12-23Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Q SunFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155330332470928Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The study of child language acquisition is an important aspect of language acquisition. Most studies on child language acquisition are mainly focused on the speech output. Relatively fewer studies are put forward to probe the language input. Researches and common sense show that child has to be exposed to language input to acquire language. This thesis mainly deals with the language input of Mandarin Chinese and English in early child language acquisition. Comparative analysis of the two kinds of raw materials is carried out.Theories such as Critical Period Hypothesis and Non-macro Language Acquisition serve as theoretical framework for the paper. Related literature concerning Universal Grammar (UG) proposed by Chomsky, Child-directed Speech, and Bilingual Acquisition are reviewed. The one person-one language (1P-1L) and one person-two languages (1P-2L) input situations are discussed.This paper mainly talks about three issues. First, it tries to find out the word types ratio and the proportion of common nouns and activity verbs in the child-directed speech as well as uttered by infants. Second, it tries to illustrate the one person-one language (1P-1L) and one person-two languages (1P-2L) input argument. Third, this paper tries to discuss the relation between input, uptake and intake. Quantitative method is used to make analysis of the corpus from the CHILDES database. The software CLAN (Computerized Language Analysis) is adopted for the analysis of frequencies of word types and amount. Meanwhile the transcription of the Mandarin Chinese-English bilinguals is analyzed and discussed. Case study is used to illustrate the 1P-1L vs. 1P-2L situation and the discussion of the relation between input, uptake and intake.Examinations are made of the type-token ratios with total word types and total word numbers uttered by infants and mothers in child-directed speech. It is found that the ratio of infants is higher than that of mothers in the CDS. The proportions of the common nouns are commonly lower than that of activity verbs in the CDS. There is different performance between the children in the acquisition of common nouns and activity verbs. Those who intake common nouns earlier acquire activity verbs later than others. There is little difference between the average proportions of common nouns and activity verbs used in CDS. Case study shows that the intake is not always being contained in the input. Then a revision of the model which put forward by Richards and Gallaway for the relationship between input, uptake and intake is proposed. Besides, evidence from the subject baby supports the one person-one language (1P-1L) input situation.However, the revision of the model between input, intake and uptake should be further elaborated. And transcription of the Mandarin-English bilinguals should be regularized by the CHILDES in order to make the research on this area more reliable and universal.
Keywords/Search Tags:child language acquisition, Child-directed Speech, type-token ratio, common nouns, activity verbs
PDF Full Text Request
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