Chapter 2. Literature Review
2.4 The acquisition of the modal hui
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classified Chinese modality into three kinds: dynamic, deontic, and epistemic modalities. First, the dynamic modal hui refers to the physical or mental ability of the subject. This physical or mental ability is innate to or acquired by animate creatures (Chang, 2001; Huang, 1999). Second, the deontic modal hui can denote a commissive, in which the speaker is committing him/herself to ensuring that an event will take place (Searle, 1983). The modal hui in its deontic sense denotes two uses: promise and threat (Hsieh, 2005, 2006; Huang, 1999). When what the speaker undertakes to do is welcome to the addressee, it is viewed as a promise. When it is not welcome to the addressee, it is viewed as a threat. Third, the epistemic modal hui shows the speaker’s judgment of possibility or probability of the propositional content. Thus, the modal sense of epistemic hui is judgmental, in which the speaker has either a stronger or weaker degree of certainty to the proposition (Chang, 2001).
2.4 The acquisition of the modal hui
After a brief introduction of the modal hui, the following section presents studies on the acquisition of the modal hui. In terms of the acquisition of the modal hui, few studies (e.g. Guo, 1994) have been investigated. Guo (1994) examined Mandarin-speaking children’s use of the modal hui during peer plays at the age of three, five, and seven in Beijing. As mentioned in Section 2.2, he suggested that the
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semantic development of the modal verb started from the three year olds’ abilitative meaning, continued through to the five year olds’ deontic meaning, then to the seven year olds’ epistemic meaning. His analysis showed that the modal hui was primarily a dynamic modal; that is, the basic meaning of the modal hui expressed the notion of ability. It was found that children used the dynamic modal hui utterances for an interpersonal function. For example, the children used the modal hui utterances when they tried to show off their abilities to their peers. He suggested children are sensitive to the discourse functional aspects of modals.
In Guo’s (1994) study, he proposed the functions of the three types of the modal hui utterances. First, the functions of the dynamic modal hui utterances included:
requesting goods and services, complaint, refusal of request, rejection of prohibition, reporting events or actions, and value judgment. The most frequent function was value judgment, which was used to affect the hearers’ beliefs and attitudes. In Guo’s data, as for the functions of the deontic modal hui utterances, request and complaint were found. Only a small amount of the deontic modal hui was used in Mandarin, thus there were too few tokens for even tentative conclusions. Finally, the functions of the epistemic modal hui utterances included: argument, puzzlement, speculation, conclusion, and complaint. Guo’s classification of some functions of the epistemic modal hui utterances involved only few examples. For instance, there was only one
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utterance with the modal hui for speculation, conclusion, and complaint. It was found that the epistemic modal hui utterance was highly correlated with argumentative or disputative contexts.
Guo also proposed that the order of acquisition of the modal hui was similar to other Chinese modals, which seems to match the cognitive development of children;
that is, interpersonal-oriented functions were acquired earlier than informational-oriented functions. He pointed out that children used the modal hui first for interpersonal-oriented functions. If the developmental sequence indicated the relative difficulty involved in learning modals, then it showed that the use of the modals in interpersonal-oriented functions may be easier than in informational-oriented functions for children. Because modals used in informational-oriented functions were more opaque and less natural, they presented a greater cognitive task. However, modals used in interpersonal-oriented functions were more straightforward and natural; therefore, they presented less of a cognitive challenge. Hence, the results suggested that children acquired interpersonal-oriented functions earlier than informational-oriented functions as demonstrated by their use of the modal hui utterances.
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Chapter 3 Methodology
3.1 Participants and data
The data examined in this study were adopted from the database of the Language Acquisition Lab1 at National Chengchi University. The participants in this study were 8 Mandarin-speaking children (5 boys and 3 girls) and their mothers, who all lived in Taipei. The data of natural mother-child conversation were video-recorded at the child’s home. The total length of recordings was sixteen hours, with two hours of data with each child. According to previous literature, modal expressions appear in children’s conversation as early as 2;6 (Kuczaj, 1977; Kuczaj & Maratsos, 1975).
Thus, children aged from 2;7 to 5;4 years old were chosen. It was further divided into two age groups. Group I consisted of four children ranging in age from 2;7 to 3;2 (mean age = 2;11; two boys and two girls) as a younger group. Group II had four children from 4;0 to 5;4 (mean age = 4;10; three boys and one girl) as an older group.
Table 1 presents the subject information in the two age groups.
1 The lab is directed by Professor Chiung-chih Huang. I am deeply grateful to Professor Huang for her generosity in sharing the data.
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Subject Information in the Two Age Groups Group I Group II
The eight children’s data included various activities, such as toy play, book reading, role play, drawing, etc. The recordings were transcribed in CHAT format using the CLAN program (MacWhinney, 2000). Utterances with the modal hui not for investigation were listed below: repetition2 (19 tokens), imitation (4 tokens), ungrammatical (2 tokens), and unintelligible (22 tokens) utterances. After excluding these utterances (47 tokens), a total number of 311 modal hui were observed in the two age groups. There were 129 modal hui in Group I (younger) and 182 modal hui in Group II (older), respectively.
2 Repetition with the modal hui which occurs within an utterance was counted once. For example, in the following, the modal hui was only counted once because ta hui “it can” was repeated in the utterance.
*BUO: <它 會> [/] 它 會 # 飛 起來 [% shooting the toy plane to the sofa]!
< ta hui > [/] ta hui # fei qilai [% shooting the toy plane to the sofa]!
it can it can fly up
“It can fly.”
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The data were analyzed to investigate the types, person subjects, and pragmatic functions of the modal hui in the children’s speech.3 The modal hui can be divided into three types of meaning: dynamic, deontic, and epistemic (Hsieh, 2005, 2006; Wu, 2009).
The dynamic modal hui is concerned with the ability of the subject (Chang, 2001;
Hsieh, 2005, 2006; Huang, 1999; Wu, 2009). For instance, the modal hui in Example 1 was identified as the dynamic use. SEN and his mother were playing baby yoga cards. SEN tried to do the yoga action shown on the card, and he successfully turned a somersault. Then, his mother praised SEN for his extraordinary ability. SEN was proud of being able to turn a somersault and used hui utterance to show his ability.
Example 1 (SEN, 2;7)
%act: SEN is turning a somersault
*MOT: /hong -: honghonghonghong/ 對 -: 好 厲害!
“I could turn a somersault just now.”
3 In some cases, the token of the modal hui may seem to carry more than one type. However, in the study, only the primary type was coded. Thus, each token was coded as only one type. So is the case in the coding of pragmatic functions.
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According to Searle’s (1983) classification of speech acts, a commissive demonstrates that the speaker is committing him/herself to ensuring that an event will take place. As mentioned earlier, when what the speaker undertakes to do is welcome to the addressee, it is viewed as a promise (Hsieh, 2006; Huang, 1999). In Example 2, the deontic modal hui expresses commissive. XUN and his mother were playing with toy cars and XUN promised that he would definitely save his toy cars while they dropped into the river.
Example 2 (XUN, 4;0)
*MOT: 你 不 救 它們 的話.
ni bu jiu tamen dehua.
you NEG save them if
“If you didn’t save them,”
*MOT: 你 的 車車 是不是 要 說.
“You didn’t save me. You didn’t save me.”
*XUN: 我 一定 會 <救 它> [>]! wo yiding hui <jiu ta> [>]!
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“I will definitely save it.”
*MOT: <那 你 不 是> [<] 好 主人.
<na ni bu shi> [<] hao zhuren.
DM you NEG COP good owner
“You are not a good owner.”
The epistemic modal hui shows the speaker’s judgment of the possibility of the propositional content (Chang, 2001; Hsieh, 2005, 2006; Wu, 2009), as illustrated in Example 3. XUN was putting a remote control into the drawer. He replied to his mother that it was possible that his younger brother would play with the remote control in secret.
“Ah, you shouldn’t tell your younger brother the remote control is here.”
*MOT: 知道 嗎?
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because he will stealthily play remote control
“Because he will play with the remote control in secret.”
To ensure the reliability for the coding of the types of the modal hui, one fourth of the data were randomly selected and were coded by another coder. Cohen’s Kappa was used to determine the inter-rater reliability, and the reliability for categorizing the types of the modal hui was 0.93.
In addition, analyses were conducted to examine the distribution of person subjects with the dynamic, deontic, and epistemic modal hui in the children’s speech.
According to previous studies, there is a specific relationship between specific type of modality and its subjecthood (Bassano, 1996; O’Neill & Atance, 2000; Pea & Mawby, 1981). Thus, the utterances with the modal hui were coded for the first, second, and third person subjects. An independent coder coded one fourth of the data which were randomly selected in order to determine the reliability for the coding of the person subjects with the modal hui. Cohen’s Kappa was used to determine the inter-rater reliability, and the reliability was high (k= 1).
Finally, the pragmatic functions of the different types of the modal hui utterances in the children’s speech were provided through data-driven analysis. The children’s
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uses of the three types of the modal hui were examined within the contexts. In order to understand the function of the modal hui utterances, it is necessary to investigate the modal hui through the context or discourse where it appears. In addition, the frequencies of occurrences for the different functions of the modal hui utterances by the two age groups were also examined.
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Chapter 4 Results
This chapter presents results of the three analyses. The first one was conducted to examine the different types of the modal hui. The second one investigated the person subjects of the different types of the modal hui. The third one examined how the utterances of the three types of the modal hui express their functions.
4.1 The distribution of the different types of the modal hui
Table 2 shows the frequency of total utterances and the frequency of the modal hui utterances in the children’s speech. As shown in Table 2, there were 4869
utterances in the younger group (Group I) and 5105 utterances in the older group (Group II), respectively. The utterances with the modal hui in Group I and Group II were 129 and 182, respectively. The frequency of the modal hui utterances per minute and the proportions of the modal hui utterances in Group I was 1.08 and 2.65%, and 1.52 and 3.57% in Group II. It appears that the use of the modal hui increased in frequency with age.
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Frequencies of Total Utterances and Utterances With hui Group I Group II
Total utterances 4869 5105
Utterances with hui 129 182
Utterances with hui per minute 1.08 1.52
% of utterances with hui 2.65 3.57
Further analysis was conducted to examine the different meanings of the modal hui in the children’s speech. Since the modal hui is used with more than one meaning
(Chang, 2001; Hsieh, 2005, 2006; Huang, 1999; Wu, 2009), the different meanings of the modal hui exhibit the different degree of challenge for the children. Children may acquire meanings of the modal hui from the concrete one to the abstract one. Table 3 shows the frequencies and proportions of the three types of the modal hui in the children’s speech.
Table 3
Frequencies of the Three Types of the Modal hui
Modal Group I Group II Note. DYN- dynamic; DEO- deontic; EPI- epistemic
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As seen in Table 3, only 15 tokens (4 tokens in Group I; 11 tokens in Group II ) of the deontic modal hui were found. There were few tokens in the deontic modal hui in this study. The finding is consistent with previous studies, which indicated the deontic use of the modal hui is an extremely marginal use in Mandarin (Guo, 1994;
Wu, 2009). As for the dynamic modal hui, it decreased with age (from 59.69% in Group I to 30.22% in Group II), while the epistemic modal hui increased with age (from 37.21% in Group I to 63.74% in Group II). The younger age group children used the dynamic modal more because this concept reflects nonepistemic meaning.
The epistemic meaning of possibility which related to the abstract concept was more frequently used by the older age group children. It indicated that the younger age group children relatively rarely used the epistemic modal; that is, they used nonepistemic more. The findings may support previous studies which suggested that the epistemic meanings are developed relatively late due to the cognitive complexity (e.g. Fletcher, 1975; Guo, 1995; Shatz & Wilcox, 1991; Stephany, 1986; Wells, 1979, 1985).
4.2 The distribution of the person subjects in the three types of the modal hui The distribution of the person subjects in the different types of the modal hui was also analyzed. Several studies have found that there is a relation between specific type
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of modality and subjecthood (O’Neill & Atance, 2000; Pea & Mawby, 1981). It is assumed that children may acquire certain types of modal with specific person pronoun subjects. Table 4 shows the frequencies and proportions of the different person subjects of the dynamic, deontic, and epistemic modal hui by the two age groups.
Table 4
Distribution of the Person Subjects in the Three Types of the Modal hui
Person Group I Group II
DYN DEO EPI DYN DEO EPI
N % N % N % N % N % N % 1st 54 70.13 4 100 13 27.08 47 85.45 11 100 21 18.10
2nd 2 2.60 0 0 4 8.33 1 1.82 0 0 6 5.17
3rd 21 27.27 0 0 31 64.58 7 12.73 0 0 89 76.72 Total 77 100 4 100 48 100 55 100 11 100 116 100
As shown in Table 4, the children tended to use the dynamic (70.13% in Group I;
85.45% in Group II) and the deontic modal hui (100% in both groups) with the first person subject. However, the subject of the epistemic modal hui was usually with the third person (64.58% in Group I; 76.72% in Group II). This finding is consistent with Pea and Mawby’s (1981) study that children produce agent-oriented modal verbs with the first person subject. In contrast, children use epistemic terms mainly with the third person subject to express events and states of third-party entities (Bassano, 1996;
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O’Neill & Atance, 2000).
In the following section, the children’s use of the different person subjects in the different types of the modal hui were further examined. Section 4.2.1 presents the analysis of the first person subjects in the three types of the modal hui. And the analysis of the second person subjects in the three types of the modal hui is presented in Section 4.2.2. In Section 4.2.3, the analysis of the third person subjects in the three types of the modal hui is presented.
4.2.1 First person subjects in the three types of the modal hui
The following table, excerpted from Table 4 to clearly present and further explain the data, shows the frequencies and proportions of the first person subjects in the three types of the modal hui. As seen in Table 5, the subject of the dynamic modal hui was usually first person in the two groups (70.13% in Group I; 85.45% in Group
II).
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Table 5 (Excerpt from Table 4)
Distribution of the First Person Subjects in the Three Types of the Modal hui Modal N %
The dynamic modal hui with the first person pronoun subject wo “I” is presented in Example 4. TIN and her mother were putting together jigsaw puzzles, and TIN said she did not know how to place jigsaw puzzles. The use of the first person subject indicates that the children are most interested in their own abilities when using the dynamic modal hui.
“How about using this one?”
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Children also tended to use the deontic modal hui with the first person pronoun wo “I”. As seen in Example 5, YOU was going to give his father a call, and he
promised his mother that he would not give a wrong call by using the first person subject to give his mother his promise.
Example 5 (YOU, 5;4)
“You shouldn’t press (it) at will.”
*YOU: /hang/ 我 不 會 亂 按!
“I have tried (it) before.”
However, there were low percentages of the epistemic modal hui with the first person subjects (27.08% in Group I; 18.1% in Group II). First person subjects were
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expected to be animate beings. However, most of the subjects of the epistemic hui utterances were inanimate entities, such as an object that does not have any expected animate functions, an abstract concept, or a place (Guo, 1994). Thus, it would probably result in low percentages of the epistemic modal hui with the first person subjects. Nevertheless, there were still some examples of the epistemic modal hui utterances with the first person subjects. As seen in Example 6, LEE and her mother were playing cards. LEE’s mother asked her why they had to play again, and LEE replied that “I have many good cards, so I will win.” The person subject of this utterance of the epistemic modal hui was the first person wo “I” to express LEE’s judgment of the possibility of the propositional content.
Example 6 (LEE, 5;1)
*MOT: 然後 又 再 比 喔?
ranhou you zai bi o?
then again again compete Q
“And then (are we going to) play again?”
*LEE: 對 啊.
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why need “Why?”
*LEE: 有 很 多 喔 [% looking at the cards she is holding]!
you hen duo o [% looking at the cards she is holding]!
have very many PRT
“(I) have many (good cards).”
*LEE: 我 會 贏 的 喔!
wo hui ying de o!
I will win NOM PRT
“I will win.”
4.2.2 Second person subjects in the three types of the modal hui
The usage of the second person subjects in the three types of the modal hui is presented in Table 6, excerpted from Table 4 to clearly present and further explain the data. As shown in the table, there were only a few tokens in the dynamic modal hui (2.6% in Group I; 1.82% in Group II). The reason there were so few tokens of the dynamic modal hui with the second person subjects may be that children are most interested in their own abilities (Pea & Mawby, 1981); that is, they usually refer to themselves, using first person subjects. Thus, children seldom use the dynamic modal hui with the second person subjects.
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Table 6 (Excerpt from Table 4)
Distribution of the Second Person Subjects in the Three Types of the Modal hui
Modal N %
However, some tokens were still found, as seen in Example 7. In Example 7, SEN and his mother were playing baby yoga cards. The mother wanted to do some yoga action shown on the card, but SEN refused to do it by saying that he could not.
Then the mother said he could do it with her help. However, SEN still thought his mother was unable to do it. The mother asked SEN the reasons, and SEN answered, ni
Then the mother said he could do it with her help. However, SEN still thought his mother was unable to do it. The mother asked SEN the reasons, and SEN answered, ni