A Case Study Of Mandarin-speaking Children’s Acquisition Of Time Words

The use of time words is a phenomenon that exists widely in Mandarin-speaking children’s language acquisition process.Piaget(1954)said that the earliest time experience from human may come from a vague sense of infancy,and then they gradually find that things occur in order.Children sort events according to the time of the event,and distinguish the sequence of events,so as to understand the present,the past and the future.Figure-ground is a theory based on the principle of prominence.Children first acquire the prominent part of the words in their acquisition of language,and then regard it as a reference and gradually acquire the abstract words.Case study method,literature method,and mathematical statistics method are employed to study two Marin-speaking children MHR(aged from 02;05;10 to 04;11;25)and ZHZ(aged from 02;05;25 to 04;11;26)by selecting 31 sessions respectively.Time words are classified into temporal words and time nouns in this study.The author analyzes the types,use frequency and functions of all kinds of time words and explores the factors affecting children’s acquisition of time words.It is found that during the study on the phenomenon of children’s early acquisition of time words,children acquire xianl-ran2hou4 earlier.And they have a very good grasp of these structures.Then they acquire zuo2tianl,jinltianl,ming2tianl,shang4wu3,xia4wu3,wan3shang4,later they get yi3qian2~yi3hou4.From above we know that children acquire time words from the concrete to the abstract,and children’s concept of time originates from the understanding of the order of time,and then gradually turn into abstraction,so that children can understand the most basic time categories.The major results are as follows;(1)in the process of acquisition,children first acquire the xianl-ran2hou4,then yi3qian2-yi3hou4;(2)In the two groups of zuo2tianl-jinltianl-ming2tianl&shang4wu3-xia4wu3-wan3shang4 children first acquire jinltianl;(3)In an adult’s perspective,the word xiao3shi2hou4 is incorrect.The reason for this phenomenon is the overgeneralization of xiao3shi2hou4.The reasons for these phenomenon are mainly due to the abstraction of time words,in the two groups of xianl-ran2hou4&yi3qian2-yi3hou4,children first acquire xianl-ran2hou4 which are used to describe an event occurred in order.Then they acquire yi3qian2-yi3hou4 which described things in an uncertain time.While in the two groups of zuo2tian1-jinltian1-ming2tianl&shang4wu3-xia4wu3-wan3shang4,children first acquire zuo2tianl-jinltianl-ming2tianl then gradually develop to the small unit shang4wu3-xia4wu3-wan3shang4.The acquisition of time words is an important part in children’s language development,and children’s acquisition of time words promotes the development of language.