This study examines the emergence and development of the Cantonese serial verb
construction (SVC) in children from 1;03 to 4;06 by investigating the naturalistic data
from two longitudinal corpora. This study presents a descriptive account of the
emergence and development of SVCs in early child Cantonese, seeks to explain the
developmental facts from a constructionist usage-based perspective, and compares the
development of SVCs in Cantonese-English bilinguals with that in Cantonese
monolinguals.
It is found that children start to produce SVCs spontaneously at an early age of 1;10
and that the overall frequency of occurrence is low during the developmental period
studied. The early emergence of SVCs is attributed to children’s preference for iconic
structures.
Four surface forms are identified and shown to emerge with a consistent order:
two-verb contiguous (1;10-11) < two-verb non-contiguous (2;00-01) < multi-verb
contiguous (2;02) < multi-verb non-contiguous (2;03-06). Structural and conceptual
complexities are suggested to be the possible factors that influence the order. The
earlier emergence of contiguous forms than non-contiguous forms is explained by the
hypothesis that cross-linguistically unmarked structures tend to be acquired earlier
than the marked ones (O’Grady 2000). Such a generalization is compatible with
constructionist approaches in suggesting cross-linguistic cognitive functional
preferences for language processing.
Children tend to use certain component verbs that express eight main semantic
notions. The study interprets children’s SVCs as concrete instantiations of eight
sub-constructions, which are subsumed by a more abstract high level SVC schema. It
is observed that sub-constructions develop asynchronously, as the developmental
paths of the four more frequently used SVCs (directional, dative, purpose and
resultative SVCs) are more advanced than the four less often produced SVCs
(instrumental, benefactive, comitative and locative SVCs). Developmental paths of
the former are shown to be consistent with Tomasello’s (2003) usage-based account of
language development: from concrete expressions, to pivot schemas, then to
item-based constructions. However, this study does not have enough data to suggest
the emergence of an abstract schema for the high level SVC.
It is found that children imitate adults’ previous SVCs and repeat their own
spontaneous productions frequently. These highlight the roles of the ambient language
and linguistic use to children’s language development.
The overall error rates of SVCs are found to be low. The reasons proposed for error
production, that are, adult input, generalization from item-based constructions and
complexity of target constructions, are considered as evidence to support the
constructionist usage-based approach.
This study shows that Cantonese-dominant bilinguals resemble Cantonese
monolinguals in developing SVCs. Language dominance is invoked to account for the
developmental similarities observed. Only a few code-mixed instances are recorded,
suggesting limited English influence on Cantonese SVCs. It is argued that SVCs are
not a vulnerable domain as they emerge early, and are produced with low error rates,
and are not susceptible to English influence.
By delineating the patterns of emergence and development of SVCs in child
Cantonese and explaining the findings with the constructionist usage-based
framework, it is hoped that this study would contribute to our understanding of child
language development. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:HKU/oai:hub.hku.hk:10722/161557 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Fung, So-hing, Sandra., 馮素卿. |
| Contributors | Matthews, SJ |
| Publisher | The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) |
| Source Sets | Hong Kong University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PG_Thesis |
| Source | http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B47869975 |
| Rights | The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works., Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License |
| Relation | HKU Theses Online (HKUTO) |
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