<p dir="ltr">The present study examined the acquisition of Spanish grammatical gender in 22 bilingual children (aged 5;0 to 13;5 years; Med=9;4 years; STD=2.3) who were born and raised in the United States and acquired Spanish as heritage speakers—that is, they learned Spanish, the minority language, in a home setting (Valdes, 2001). Each of the child participants had at least one parent who was born and raised in a Spanish-speaking country before immigrating to the U.S. post-puberty. Eleven (11) of the adults/parents, (aged 18 to 60 years, Med=42; STD=8.5)—all native speakers of Spanish—participated with their children, providing a control group for comparison purposes. Specifically, the study examined whether child heritage speakers of Spanish have linguistic intuition that enables them to<i> </i>distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical constructs of gender expression in Spanish heard in ordinary speech (Chomsky, 1965). An Acceptability Judgment Task (AJT) presented each of the participants with both grammatical and ungrammatical versions of Spanish sentences in four grammatical conditions: (a) determiner-noun (DET-NOUN) assignment, (b) determiner-adjective (DET-ADJ) agreement, (c) noun-adjective (NOUN-ADJ) agreement, and (d) determiner phrase (DP) directionality (Cuza & Perez Tattam, 2016). Results showed that the participants—both children and adults—correctly found the grammatical examples to be acceptable. The adult participants consistently rejected the ungrammatical examples while many of the child participants had difficulties recognizing the ungrammatical examples as unacceptable. Statistical analysis found that the external factors of language dominance and language experience were significant in relation to the ability to distinguish the ungrammatical items, suggesting that the children who were dominant in Spanish and had more experience with the language were also more likely to recognize the ungrammatical constructs of the language. This result is in keeping with the Bilingual Alignments Approach, which focuses on the correlation of expected responses with the external factors of language dominance and language experience (Sánchez, 2019).</p>

本篇論文針對三位以臺灣華語為母語的音韻異常兒童，採長期觀察的方式，研究中文顎音[tɕ, tɕʰ, ɕ]的習得狀況與產製現象。習得狀況方面，詳細描述顎音的習得順序、常見的語音錯誤之音韻歷程、延遲的音韻歷程類型、錯誤取代模式隨著年紀增長而改變的情形。產製現象方面，本篇論文探討了顎音所在音節的音節複雜度(Syllable complexity)是否會對顎音的正確率以及錯誤取代狀況有所影響。 本研究共觀察三位年齡為三歲十個月至五歲三個月且正在接受語言治療的音韻異常兒童長達六個月，以每週一次的頻率前往醫院收集幼童與語言治療師之間的自然對話，並利用錄製回來的影音檔做譯寫和分析。 結果顯示，音韻異常兒童的顎音習得狀況有以下現象：(1)顎音發展較為停滯，幾乎沒有隨著年齡的增長而有進步的現象。(2)音韻異常兒童在發顎音時，會系統性的使用不該是他的年齡所應該出現的音韻歷程。(3)顎音的語音錯誤之音韻歷程種類不多，但使用的頻率卻非常頻繁。上述結果皆驗證了前人文獻的研究結果(Stoel-Gammon & Dunn, 1985; Jeng, 2011)。除此之外，本研究也發現音韻異常兒童具有以下特徵：(4)音韻異常兒童能夠察覺兩個音之間送氣特徵(aspiration feature)的不同，在選擇替代音時，也會選擇與目標音有相同送氣特徵的音來取代。(5)音韻異常兒童的語言能力和語言表現之間有落差，也就是說，他們知道能夠區辨出哪個是正確的音，但卻無法正確的使用該語音。(6)音節複雜度會對音韻異常兒童的顎音產製造成影響。因此，音韻異常兒童在顎音的習得狀況和產製表現上都和正常兒童不同。 音韻異常兒童使用的錯誤音的模式顯示塞擦音基底形式中的[stop]成分及[cont]成分並非均等(asymmetrical relationship)，且塞擦音是屬於以左邊的成分為主要核心的語音(left-headed)，並從第一語言習得的觀點為塞擦音的真實面貌提供了一項證據。 / The purpose of this study is to discuss the issue concerning the acquisition and production of Mandarin palatals [tɕ, tɕʰ, ɕ] in Taiwan Mandarin-speaking disordered children. Four aspects regarding the acquisition of Mandarin palatals are included in this study: the order of acquisition, the phonological processes involved, the delayed phonological processes, and the path of error patterns. In addition, the effect of syllable complexity on disordered children’s palatal production is also examined. Three disordered children (aged 3;10 to 5;3) who were identified as having delayed phonological development are investigated in this study. A six-to-seven month of longitudinal observation is conducted by recording the spontaneous speech between the therapists and the children during the process of speech therapy. The results showed that phonologically disordered children have the following characteristics on palatal acquisition and production: (1) static phonemic system that stops at an early level of development, (2) persistent uses of delayed processes, and (3) frequent uses of phonological processes. These characteristics were asserted in the literature (Stoel-Gammon & Dunn, 1985; Jeng, 2011) and have been proved in this study. In addition, we found that disordered children are unconsciously able to notice the aspiration feature of two sounds, and will use an error sound that has an identical aspiration feature with the target. Moreover, the disparity between the linguistic competence and the linguistic performance in the disordered children was also found. Last, syllable complexity has found to affect disordered children’s palatal production. The substitution errors used by the disordered children support Schafer’s (1995) study, in which he claimed that the underlying representation of affricates is left-headed. To sum up, this study has provided a piece of evidence for the unsolved issue of the nature of affricates from the field of first language acquisition, and might serve as a reference for parents and speech therapists for understanding palatal acquisition and production in disordered children.

本研究探討兒童在給予非優先應答時所採取的語用策略，以及母親在接續的對話中所給予的回應。研究的語料來自於一名以漢語為母語的四歲兒童與她的母親之間的日常對話。在分析的資料中，我們將非優先應答區分成拒絕和異議兩類，分析之後，結果發現受試兒童採取六種不同的語用策略來表達非優先應答，分別為(1)直接否定(simple negation)、(2)理由(account)、(3)挑戰(challenge)、(4)修正(correction)、(5)部分認同(partial agreement)、(6)反請求(counter-request)，而受試者的非優先應答往往結構簡單，內容直接而缺少修飾，雖然她在否定或提出異議時，能給予進一步的解釋，但是她所提出的多為以自我為中心的理由。另外，母親在面對受試者直接的拒絕或異議時，多半會以下列三種方式回應：一、再次陳述自己的要求或想法，二、提供更多的解釋來說服對方，三、提出問題要求對方進一步說明拒絕或不同意的原因，以上的三種回應策略都使母親有再一次的機會來說服受試兒童接受她的要求，或者同意她的想法。 / This study investigates children’s pragmatic strategies of delivering dispreferred responses and also how the mothers reacted in the subsequent turns. The data analyzed are a Mandarin-speaking four-year-old child’s natural conversation with her mother. In the observed verbal exchanges, the subject child’s dispreferred seconds are categorized into refusals and disagreements. After careful examination, six pragmatic strategies are identified in the dispreferred turns, namely, simple negation, account, challenge, correction, partial agreement, and counter-request. The results indicate the child’s dispreferreds are generally simple in structure, direct and unmitigated in force. Though she was capable of providing accounts for her refusals or disagreements, the reasons she gave are mostly self-oriented and serve to express her non-compliance and disapproval. As for the mother’s subsequent responses, it is found that facing the child’s direct and socially disruptive seconds, the mother generally targeted at her previous turn and attempted to carry on the prior illocutionary force. When her directive or statement was refused or denied, she tended to responded with reformulations, persuading remarks or queries, which elicited more information about the dispreferred acts. All of these three strategies provided another chance for the achievement of compliance or agreement.

This study falls under the broad area of child language acquisition with specific focus on Shona morphosyntax. The understanding that knowledge of the nature of child language contributes to the sustainability of language acquisition matters forms the basis of the investigation. A qualitative approach is followed in the study, specifically focusing on the constraints on the development of inflectional morphemes (IMs) in the acquisition of nouns and verbs in child Shona. The study investigates the development of child Shona inflectional morphology and how morphology interacts with syntax. The constraints that operate in the acquisition of Shona are identified. The study refers to linguistic theories for an account of the development of child Shona morphosyntax. The study is based on the understanding that knowledge of the nature of child language contributes to the sustainability of language acquisition matters. The data used in this study is collected from four Shona speaking children. The ages of the children range from two years (2; 0) to three years and two months (3; 2). Two female and two male children participated in this study. The primary method of data collection used in this study is the naturalistic method, while elicitation is used to elicit plural formation. The results indicate that child Shona morphosyntax is characterized by omission of the various inflectional morphemes on nouns and verbs, while the lexical morphemes are retained. The child Shona IM is phonologically different from the adult Shona IM. This is because the children are constrained and hence use simplification strategies in order to try to be faithful to the input grammar. The noun and verb IMs are produced in the form of a reduced syllable, because the children dropped the consonant in the IM syllable and retained the vowel. The study reveals that the development of child Shona morphosyntax is based on pivotal constituencies of the sentence. These pivots are the nouns and verbs that are used by the children. The study identifies constraints that operate on the process of child Shona development as phonological, morphological, semantic, visibility and frequency constraints. The finding that is arrived at through this study is that syntax is in place before morphology. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)

本研究的目的為探究中文母子對話中，母親的互動風格與話題延續的關係。 研究問題為: (a)本研究中兩位母親的互動風格為何? (b)兩位孩童的話題延續表現有何不同? (c)母親的互動風格與話題延續有怎樣的互動關係? 研究語料為兩組親子互動的自然語料，各取三個小時，孩童的年紀約為三歲。研究結果顯示兩位母親的互動風格有所不同，分別屬於命令型和引誘型。 而小孩的在話題延續上表現則是相近，大多用回應母親問題的方式來延續話題並且能在不同的情境中提供新資訊。對兩組親子互動的探究顯示命令型的母親比較不會延續對話而經常改變話題，造成較短的話題片斷。引誘型的母親則較注重對話的延續且較少改變話題，造成較長的話題片斷。 / The purpose of the study is to investigate the interaction of the maternal interactional styles and topic maintenance in Mandarin mother-child conversational interaction. There are three research questions: (a) What are the mothers’ interactional styles in the current case? (b) What are the differences among children’s competences of topic maintenance? (c) How do the maternal interaction styles interact with topic maintenance in the conversational interactions? Naturally occurring conversations of two dyads' conversational interactions were adopted as the data and analyzed. Results suggested that while the two mothers differed in terms of their interactional styles, the two children showed nearly equal sophistication in terms of their topic-maintaining competences. Examinations of the two dyads' interactions also revealed that the directive mother was less interested in maintaining the conversations, changed topics more frequently, and maintained discourse topics for less turns. The conversation-eliciting mother paid more attention on maintaining of the conversations, change topics less frequently, and maintained discourse topics for much more turns.

Prepositions are acquired at earliest during the second year of life. This thesis investigates 16 children acquiring Swedish spatial prepositions, i.e. på ‘on/at’, i ‘in/at’, under ‘under’, bredvid ‘beside/next to’, bakom ‘behind/back’ and framför ‘in front’. This thesis aimed toinvestigate how preposition acquisition relates to language acquisition. The thesis used three different methods: eight sessions of free parent-child interaction, one structured experiment at 2;9 years and parental reports on child passive/active vocabulary from when the children were 0;9 years until they were 3;0 years old. The data gathered was correlated to scores in the parental reports at 4;0 years, which was used as a measure of communicative level, and used as a base when dividing the children into three groups: lower, average and higher score. The results showed that both parental and child preposition production, comprehension at 2;9 years, and comprehension and production predicted communicative level at 4;0 years. The results of the thesis varied depending on the method used. This highlights the importance if using several methods when investigating child language acquisition. / Prepositioner tillägnas som tidigast under barnets andra levnadsår. I denna masteruppsats undersöks utvecklingen av spatiala prepositioner hos 16 barn under deras 4 första levnadsår. På, i, under, bredvid, bakom och framför var prepositionerna som undersöktes. Ett av uppsatsens mål var att undersöka om och/eller hur prepositionsutveckling är kopplat till språkutveckling. För att nå målet användes tre olika metoder: åtta sessioner av förälder-barn interaktion, ett semi-strukturerat test då barnen var 2;9 år gamla och aktivt/passivt ordförråd från när barnen var 0;9 år till att de var 3;0 år gamla. Detta korrelerades sedan till barnens poäng från en föräldraenkät om barnets språkförmåga vid 4;0 års ålder. Poängen vid 4-års ålder låg till grund för uppdelning av barnen i tre grupper: lägre, medel och högre språklig nivå. Resultaten från uppsatsen var bland annat att såväl föräldrars som barns produktion av prepositioner, barnens förståelse av prepositionerna vid 2;9 år, och förståelse såväl som produktion av prepositioner förutsäger barnens kommunikationsnivå vid 4;0-års ålder.  Resultaten skiljer sig beroende på vilken metod som använts, vilket understryker vikten av att använda flera metoder när barns språkutveckling undersöks. / MINT - moduling infant language acquisition from parent-child interaction

<p>This study examines the distribution of adverbs among child heritage speakers of Spanish. As demonstrated by previous research, the grammar of Spanish heritage speakers can be compared to that of monolingual speakers, but with slight differences in their use and interpretation that can occur given their language dominance, usage, and exposition to the heritage language (Camacho & Kirova, 2018). In adverb placement, a relevant difference comes with verb-raising, a syntactic feature that allows the verb (V) to move in the sentence, and that is common in romance languages, but uncommon in morphologically poor languages such as English (Camacho & Sanchez, 2017; Guijarro-Fuentes & Larrañaga, 2011). Other differences in adverb distribution also stem directly from their semantic use and interpretation (Zagona, 2002), differences that may create instances of cross-linguistic influence or transfer between English and Spanish grammars. Hence, this study intends to study the extent to which these phenomena are produced in adverb placement, considering the patterns of language dominance, use, and exposure of the participants and current bilingual research discussing language transfer in bilingual grammars. Hence, an elicited production task was administered to 14 child heritage speakers of Spanish from the U.S. Midwest and to a comparison group, 25 child monolingual Spanish speakers from Mexico. Results suggest that child heritage speakers behave differently in their production of adverb placement compared to monolingual speakers, showing lower accuracy and little use of verb-raising structures that allow them to produce the post-verbal adverb position Sub-Verb-Adv-Obj. These findings suggest a different developmental path in the acquisition of adverb placement for heritage children in comparison to that of monolingual children.</p>