In order to evaluate L1 learners’ competence of and performance on the target language, qualitative and quantitative methods can be used. With regard to qualitative methods, researchers often spend a long period of time observing subjects’ language growth. On the
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contrary, the data can be collected within a short period of time by adopting quantitative methods to examine subjects’ language development (Miller, 1981). In the present study, the data were collected by adopting a quantitative experimental approach. Among different eliciting tasks used in quantitative methods to examine L1 acquisition, picture-cued tasks have been commonly used (Beyer & Hudson Kam, 2008; Salehuddin & Winskel, 2009) since pictures can motivate subjects and get them involved in the context. With the aid of pictures, the task will become stimulating and the subjects will be more willing to participate in the experiment.
With regard to the acquisition of referring expressions, some of the researchers (cf. Wei, 2001) used only comprehension tasks, and some of the researchers employed only production tasks (cf. Millogo, 2005; Schneider & Dubé, 1997). However, with only one type of task, it would be hard to compare the subjects’ competence and performance during the process of their language development. Therefore, to get a better picture of children’s acquisition of the Chinese pronominal renjia in the present study, both comprehension and production tasks were employed. An imitation task (IM task) was designed as a production task to examine our subjects’ use of the pronominal renjia. According to Lust et al. (1999), children will not passively copy what they hear in the IM task; instead, they will analyze the stimuli and reconstruct them after consulting their own grammar. In other words, in order for children to imitate a linguistic form, the form must be part of their grammatical knowledge. Therefore, with a imitation task, we can examine children’s representation of adult sentences and reflect children’s language development on certain aspects of grammar. A picture selection task (PS task) was used as a comprehension task since it has been widely used to assess children’s linguistic comprehension ability (cf. Gardner, 1985; Gelman & Taylor, 1984; Kay & Anglin, 1982). As noted in Lust et al. (1999), the advantage of using a PS task is that it enables researchers to test children’s sensitivity to particular targeted aspects of grammar which they do not produce. Many experiments in numerous languages have found that children’s
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omission of a particular linguistic element does not imply the absence of it in their grammar.
Furthermore, it is a general assumption that comprehension is easier than production (cf.
Bates et al., 1988; Benedict, 1979; Gerken & Shady, 1996; Oviatt, 1980). In the present study, by adopting an IM task and a PS task, it is expected that our subjects’ comprehension is indeed prior to their production in the course of language development.
With respect to the materials used in the present experiment, the IM task and the PS task were built on one story created by the researcher. The storyline consisted of a series of scenarios which depicted the life of three main characters, Little Rabbit, Little Bear and Little Monkey. Little Chicken and Little Sheep were their friends. And Mr. Owl was the homeroom teacher of all the characters previously mentioned. The test sentences were presented in different scenarios such as the school and the homes of Little Rabbit and Little Bear. Pictures below are the main characters in the story (for all the scenarios, please see Appendix A).
Little Rabbit Little Bear Little Monkey
Little Chicken Little Sheep Teacher Figure 3-1 Main Characters Used in the Story
As in Section 2.2, two types of referential interpretations (single and multiple) of the pronominal renjia are specified and classified into eight subtypes based on the referential
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directions and the referent types. To avoid the experimental bias, each subtype consisted of two test items; four fillers were also included. Each test item included two questions: a comprehension question (the PS task) and a production question (the IM task). In the IM task, the subjects had to repeat the target sentence said by one of the main characters in the story.
In the PS task, the subjects had to choose which character the pronominal renjia in the target sentence refers to. Table 3-2 summarizes the task design:
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Table 3-2 Distributions of the Test Items Used in Both Tasks
Type No. of interpretation of the pronominal renjia according to different contexts. Therefore, it is necessary to see if renjia with a single interpretation in sentences is easier for children to acquire than that with multiple interpretations. It is also important to see whether the
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referential direction is a factor influencing children’s acquisition of the pronominal renjia.
What’s more, it is essential to see whether the intended referent’s specificity may have an effect on Chinese children’s interpretations of renjia. Table 3-3 presents the example sentences with a single interpretation.
Table 3-3 Example Sentences with a Single Interpretation Directions Referent
‘Some of my classmates hate me very much, so they definitely do not want to elect me class leader.’
Backward
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The example sentences with a multiple interpretation are illustrated in Table 3-4.
Table 3-4 Example Sentences with a Multiple Interpretation Directions Referent Types Examples
‘Little Bear and I have already come and help clean, but you still kept scolding (me/ Little Bear).’
RENJIA
‘Some peoplei are reading books and Little Rabbitj is sleeping. I am not like themi/j.’
In the PS task, each subject saw some pictures on slides made with PowerPoint 2007 and simultaneously heard the recorded story which consisted of the test items. Before each test item, the storyteller provided the subjects with abundant verbal information to manipulate topic continuity and discourse focus in the story. In this way, the subjects had a better understanding of the storyline, which helped them make a correct judgment of the pronominal interpretation of renjia. An example of the PS task is shown in Table 3-5.
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Table 3-5 A Test Scenario Used in the PS Task
Scene 1: The subject will hear:
Diyijieke, laoshi yao tongxuemen xuan xinde banzhang,
‘In the first class, the homeroom teacher asks the classmates to choose a new class leader.’
Scene 2: Xiaohou henxiang dang banzhang.
‘Little Monkey wants to be the class leader.’
Scene 3: Ta dui Xiaotu shuo, “Renjia yinggai characters. The process of the whole experiment was audio-recorded for data analysis.
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3.2.2 The IM Task
In the IM task, each subject also saw some pictures on slides made by PowerPoint 2007 and simultaneously heard the recorded story. Table 3-6 shows one example of the scenario.
Table 3-6 A Test Scenario Used in the IM Task
Scene 1 The subject will hear:
Fangxuehou, Xiaotu, Xiaoxiong, he Xiaohou yiqi huijia,
‘After school, Little Rabbit, Little Bear, and Little Monkey go home together.’
Scene 2 Xiaotu dui Xiaohou shuo, “Mingtian shi renjia de shengri, nimen bu yao wang-le song wo caomeidangao o !”
‘Little Rabbit talks to Little Monkey,
“Tomorrow will be my birthday; don’t forget to give me a strawberry cake.”’
Scene 3: Xiaopengyou, qing ni ba Xiaotu ganggang shuo de hua zai shuo yi bian?
‘My Little friend, please repeat the sentence which Xiaotu just said?’
All the responses of the subjects were audio-recorded. The coding procedures are introduced in Section 3.3.3.
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