The Development Of The Spatial Location Sentence In Children's Language

Based on the previous research achievements and the corpus of 1-5 years old children who speak Chinese, the thesis studies the development of the spatial location sentence in children's language. Based on the semantics as the key link and applied related theories of linguistics and psychology, the thesis studies the related factors influencing the spatial location expression and tries to make some new explanations about the language acquisition mechanism of the spatial location sentence in children's language.The thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the classification and form of the static location sentence in children's language, discusses the diction which could influence the static location expression, and analyses the immanent connection of directional and locative system, shape system and the existence reference framework. In this part, we draw the following conclusions: First of all, the selection of words is closely related to the existence of an object on the spatial location and the meaning of words. Secondly, the choice of the existence reference framework plays a critical role to determine the expression of the static location. The third, the spatial scope of the reference object should bring into correspondence with the spatial scope of the aim object. Chapter 2 tries to classify the dynamic displacement sentence in children's language, discusses the related factors-the selection of words and the choice of reference location, which influence the expression of the dynamic displacement sentence. During the investigation, we find when children express a dynamic location relation of an aim object, they can choose some displacement property words, such as directional verbs, prepositions, verbs, and so on. And some directional verbs which can express the displacement direction of an aim object alone are their first choice. Besides, children's main selection of reference location is"speaker location"and"speaker location + things location". And the selection of things location is determined by language environment in that place and time. Chapter 3 discusses the effects of Back-Front Schema, Container Schema, and Source-Path-Destination Schema on the expression of the spatial location sentence in children's language.