Chapter 5 Discussion
5.1 Children’s motion expressions in conversation
Children’s motion expressions in conversation were expected to show some language-specific characteristics since age three. Our results showed that children’s motion expressions in conversation showed language-specific characteristics in some aspects, while in other aspects it didn’t. The language-specific patterns were revealed in number of verb types and motion constructions. In terms of number of verb types, children in all age groups used more types of Manner verbs than Path verbs, similar to what the previous study by Chen (2005) suggested. The pattern was also found in Huang’s (2012) results on children’s motion expressions in conversation. Both Huang’s study and the current study show that children were prone to use more types of Manner than Path in conversation. Furthermore, the number of each type of verb continued growing larger between age three to five, especially for Manner types.
This suggested that the usage of verb type became more adult-like with age.
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Children’s usage of motion constructions also revealed to have language-specific patterns. Among the nine types of motion constructions found in our data (D, M, P, MD, MP, PD, PP, MPD and PPD), children from age three to five all preferred MPD construction the most in conversation. The frequent usage of MPD construction was particular in Mandarin, and it was also commonly found in adults’
motion expressions (Chen, 2005; Lin, 2006; Guo & Chen, 2009). The results of the current study did not conform to Huang’s (2012) study on children’s motion expressions in conversation. In Huang’s study, MPD was not the most common motion construction in children’s motion encoding in conversation. It was suspected that Huang’s combining of D and P when analyzing verb constructions might lead to the conflicting result.
On the other hand, some aspects of children’s motion expressions did not present language-specific patterns, namely the usage of verb tokens and the number of verbs in motion construction. The result showed that the frequency of Manner, Path and Deixis were roughly the same in all age groups. According to previous studies, Mandarin has been said to be a Manner prominent language with higher frequency of Manner verbs (Slobin, 2004; Chen, 2005, Lin, 2009). However, in the current study, Manner only took up one-third of the total verbs, while Path and Deixis occupied two-third of the tokens. The results of verb token in conversation in the present study were similar to Huang’s (2012) results. Both of the studies with conversational data showed that the frequency of Manner was not higher than Path in children’s motion expressions in conversation.
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Compared to the results of previous studies, another difference lies in the patterns of the number of verbs in motion constructions. The results of the current study implied that children’s optimal construction of encoding motion events in conversation was one-verb constructions, including the simple M, P, D constructions.
Although the three-verb construction MPD was the most frequent one when analyzed individually, it did not outnumber one-verb constructions when M, P and D constructions were categorized together. This result was found in both Huang’s (2012) study on children’s speech in conversation and this present study. The frequency usage of one-verb constructions seemed to be specific in children’s motion expressions in conversation.
There were two speculations on the discrepancy between children’s patterns and the language-specific patterns. One possible reason is that some aspects of children’s motion encoding have not yet developed. Guo and Chen (2009) mentioned that children’s motion expressions might not follow exactly the typical patterns of their native language. Children did not fully develop the typological patterns in their motion event description until the age of nine (Chen, 2005). The other possibility to account for the differences is that the language-specific characteristics found in narration data were not the best criteria to predict the patterns of children’s motion expressions in conversation. Children’s speech in conversation was compared to adult’s speech in narration in the current study, but it is still unknown if adults’
motion event encoding in conversation will show different patterns from those in narration. The expressions of motion events have been widely studied, but the evidence mostly comes from narrative data. Whether adults use more Path tokens or
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more one-verb constructions in conversation has yet to be examined. The results raised a question on whether the language-specific patterns found in narrative data could actually apply to conversational data.
5.2 Children’s motion event expressions in narration
In the narrative data, children’s motion expressions were expected to show some similarities toward the language-specific patterns found in adults’ usage. The results showed that children’s motion encoding did present language-specific patterns in some aspects, but not in all aspects. The language-specific patterns were found in the usage of verb types and verb constructions. In terms of motion verb types, it was found that children used more types of Manner verbs than Path verbs since and after the age of three. The results were similar to the previous studies on children's motion encoding in narrative data (Chen, 2005; Guo & Chen, 2009; Lin, 2006), and also comply with adults’ patterns (Chen, 2005; Guo & Chen, 2009). Furthermore, Manner types increased a lot more than Path types or Deixis types. It’s worth mentioning that Manner types increased a lot more than Path types, and even more than Deixis types.
This may be due to the different lexicon sizes of M, P and D in Mandarin Chinese.
Mandarin has a larger Manner lexicon than Path lexicon. It seems that the larger the lexicon size is, the more verbs children need to learn.
Another language-specific pattern was found in children’s verb construction usage. Among the nine types of motion constructions (D, M, P, MD, MP, PD, PP, MPD and PPD), the usage of MPD and MP constructions were two of the most frequent constructions in the motion expressions of three- to five-year-old children’s
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narration. These constructions of using both Manner and Path in verbs have shown the language-specific characteristic of equipollent-framed languages. Children’s preference of MPD and MP construction conformed to what previous studies found in children’s motion encoding in narration (Guo & Chen, 2009; Lin, 2006).
Moreover, this construction was also widely found in adults’ motion expressions in previous studies (Guo & Chen, 2009; Lin, 2006).
However, the aspect of verb token usage did not show language-specific characteristics. The current study shows that children’s Manner frequency was similar to Path frequency, and Deixis frequency was the lowest. The results were contrary to what Chen (2005) found in adults’ language. Chen reported that adults used Manner more frequently than Path. The reason why Manner frequency was not high in children’s speech might be due to its being more cognitively complex than Path (e. g. Cifuentes-Férez & Gentner 2006; Pourcel, 2004). Also, it was more difficult for children to process and detect Manner than Path (Pruden et al., 2004).
Therefore, Manner frequency was found to be lower in children’s speech. It seemed that in terms of motion verb tokens, children have not adopted the language-specific patterns yet.
No developmental difference was found in the current study. Verb token did not show significant changes among all age groups, neither did number of verbs in construction. The speculation is that children’s speech has not yet resembled adults’
pattern in verb token usage. They probably will adopt adults’ motion verb token patterns after age five, and further developmental changes could be found when children are older.
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