A Comparative Study Of English And Chinese-speaking Children’s Acquisition Of Locality Words

Everything in the world is in a certain space. To distinguish spatial relations between objects is an extremely significant aspect of recognizing the objective world. The development of space cognitive ability is a prerequisite for children to adapt to the environment. Almost all activities in daily life are related to sptial position. Therefore, cultivating children’s space cognitive ability from childhood can help children well adapt to the surrounding environment and improve their abilities all around. Children’s language acquisition has been concerned by scholars for a long time. Children’s acquisition for sptial relation words as a branch of children’s language acquisition research, has been paid increasingly attention by scholars abroad as well as in China in recent years.Regarding two Chinese and two English-speaking children as the research subjects, the thesis adopts Zhu Dexi(2004)’s classification criteria of locality words and divides locality words into the type of shang4, xia4, li3, wai4, qian2, hou4, zhong1, pang2, zuo3and you4. Also investigation method, longitudinal method and statistical method are employed to observe and analyze the four children ZHZ, MHR (01;08-04;11) and ADA, SAR(02;04-04;10)’s early acquisition of locality words At last, the thesis will, through comparative study, reveal the similarities and differences of English and Chinese-speaking children’s locality words acquisition as well as discuss the reasons.By making a long-term tracking investigation on two Chinese-speaking children ZHZ and MHR’s acquisition of locality words, each locality word’s emerging time and using frequency are obtained in the present study. The research finds that two children’s acquisition of locality words follows an order, namely, shang4and//3were acquired earliest and both using frequencies are the most; zuo3and you4haven’t been grasped by two children till over four years old. Through analyzing two English-speaking children ADA and SAR’s data from Brown corpus, the result shows that two children acquired on/up/over, in/inside, under/down and out/outside quite early, and orand in appeared most in both children’s language; both children haven’t grasped locality words left and right. To analyze early children’s developing process of locality words by image-schema, the research obtains that image-schema is closely related to spatial relations and it can be used to explain children’s acquisition order of locality words.The comparative study of two Chinese andtwo English-speaking children’s development of locality words shows:(1)It’s a long time for children to grasp all kinds of locality words. According to our corpus, four children acquired locality words shang4/up, on, over and xia4/down, under li3/in, inside andwai4/out, o utside at three years old; three of them basically grasped locality words qian2/front and hou4/back, behind at four years old. Until four years ten months, four children didn’t distinguish zuo3/left from you4/right.(2)Children’s acquisition of locality weds exists critical period.3-year-old to4-year-old is the critical period of children’s acquisition of locality words. The frequency of shang4/up, on, over and xia4/down, under, li3/in, inside andwai4/out, outside, qian2/front and hou4/back, behind is the most in this period.(3)On the aspect of the order and frequency of children’s acquisition of locality words, shang4and li3were the first words acquired by Chinese-speaking children and also the frequency of two words was the highest. For English-spoking children, on/up/over, in/inside, under/down and out/outside were acquired quite early by them and also on and in appeared most in both children’s language. On the acquisition of zuo3/left and you4/right, both English and Chinese-speaking were the latest For Chinese speaking children, both ZHZ and MHR just distinguished their left hand from right hand, but not completely understood the spatial meaning of zuo3and you3until four years old ten months, while both English and Chinese-speaking children did’n t acquire left and right at all. The research also shows children’s cognitive development, caregivers’ input and linguistic complexity may affect children’s acquiring order and using frequency.