This section is aimed to answer our fourth research questions, attempting to investigate what are the general patterns of our subjects’ production regarding zenme
questions. In the QA Task, there were 11 types of patterns found other than our target questions hui zenme and zenme hui. As shown in Table 4-11, Type A, B and C are non-interrogatives, while the rest are interrogatives. Type A refers to no elicitation, Type B refers to the repetition of the whole or part of the leading sentences, and Type C is the responses the subjects provided as answers to the questions. Types D, E, F, and G are related to causal questions, and Types H, I, and J are about manner questions. The last one is Type K, which contains wrong responses for the designed scenarios.
Table 4-11. Other Patterns Found in the QA Task
Type Example
A No elicitation
--B Repetition Tuzi xiang zhidao naochung chaoxingren de fangfa ->Naochung hui chaoxing ren(G1S11)
C Key words Nouns: Shitou zai he li zenme hui piao->shui(G1S13) Verbs: Laohu hui zenme da Xiaoxiong->yong jiaoG1S10) D Weisheme + modal+ verb weisheme yao qu : Xiaoxiong ni weisheme yaoqu kan
Laohu(G2S2)
E Weisheme + verb Laohu weisheme da Xiongxiong(G2S9)
F Shi sheme yuanyin Laohu ban yizi shi yinwei sheme yuanyin ne (G2S15)
G Zenme + V Meigui ni zenme ci ren (G2S3)
H Zenme+ V Naozhong zenme chaoxing ren (G1S11)
I V+ zenme Shi zenme: Meiguihua ni shi zenme cishang bie de dongwu de(G3S15)
yao zenme: Xiaoxiong ni yao zenme xihuan Laohu (G4S4)
J modal + verb + sheme + noun yong sheme fongfa/ dongxi
Laohu ni hui yong sheme fangfa da Xiaoxiong (G3G15) 1. Zenme modal for manner
Xiaoxiong hui zenme ban shitou
-> Xiaoxiong zenme hui ban shitou (G2S10) 2. Weisheme for manner
Meigui hua hui zenme cishang ren -> Meiguihua ni weisheme cishang ren (G2S9)
3. Yes-no question : Xiaoxiong ni xihuan laohu ma? (G1S8) K Wrong responses
4. Other wh-questions
Laohu zenme hui ban zhuozi->Laohu ni yao qu nali(G1S15)
Overall speaking, there were 685 responses produced excluding our target patterns found in the experimental group and 226 responses found in the control group. The frequency and rate of each type are presented in Table 4-12:
Table 4-12. Frequency and Rate of Other Patterns Produced in the QA Task
Type Experimental Group Control Group
A No elicitation 114 (15.34%) 0
B Repetition 90 (12.11%) 0
C Key words 96 (12.92%) 0
D Weisheme + modal+ verb 113 (15.20%) 83 (36.73%)
E Weisheme + verb 53 (7.13%) 27 (11.95%)
F Shi sheme yuanyin 10 (1.35%) 0 (0%)
G Zenme + V 16 (2.15%) 2 (0.89%)
H Zenme+ V 9 (1.21%) 10 (4.42%)
I V+ zenme 12 (1.62%) 92 (40.71%)
J Modal + verb + sheme + noun 32 (4.31%) 12 (5.31%)
K Wrong responses 198 (26.65%) 0
Total 743 226
As shown in Table 4-12, Type K (26.65%) was the most frequently produced, and Type A (15.34%) was the second, followed by Type D (15.20%), Type C (12.92%), Type B (12.11%), Type E (7.13%), Type J (4.31%), Type G (2.15%), Type I (1.62%) and Type H (1.21%). With regard to the meaning of the questions, it was found that causal questions (25.83%) (i.e., Types D, E, F, G) were more frequently produced than manner questions (7.14%) (i.e., Type H, I, J). Among the four types for casual questions, the rate of Type D (15.20%) was twice higher than that of Type E (7.13%). This was the same in the control group. The native controls adapted Type D most frequently (36.73%) to form causal questions, which was three times higher than their second favorite type, Type C (11.95%). As for the three types for manner questions, Type J (4.31%) accounted for the most percentage and was almost three times as high as three the second favorite, Type I (1.62%). However, in the control group, Type I (40.70%) was the most adapted patterns for manner questions instead of Type J (5%).
If we take a closer look at the responses given by each group, we can see that
Type K was still one of the patterns most frequently produced (16.67% in G1, 30.54%
in G2, and 32.94% in Group 3), generally followed by Types A , B, C and D. However, in Group 3, Type D was the second favorite pattern while Types A, B, and C decreased tremendously, as shown in Table 4-13:
Table 4-13. Frequency and Rate of Other Patterns Produced in the QA Task of Each Age group
Type G1 G2 G3
A No elicitation 87 (34.52%) 24 (10.04%) 3 (1.19%)
B Repetition 43 (17.06%) 29 (12.13%) 18 (7.14%)
C Key words 41 (16.27%) 46 (19.25%) 9 (3.57%)
D weisheme + modal+ verb 20 (7.94%) 25 (10.46%) 68 (26.98%)
E weisheme + verb 9 (3.57%) 13 (5.44%) 31 (12.30%)
F Shi sheme yuanyin 0 (0%) 2 (0.84%) 8 (3.17%)
G Zenme + V 2 (0.79%) 11 (4.60%) 3 (1.19%)
H zenme+ V 5 (1.98%) 2 (0.84%) 2 (0.79%)
I V+ zenme 1 (0.40%) 4 (1.67%) 7 (2.78%)
J modal + verb + sheme + noun 2 (0.79%) 10 (4.18%) 20 (7.93%)
K Wrong responses 42 (16.67%) 73 (30.54%) 83 (32.94%)
Total 252 239 252
Now let us examine the subjects’ responses to manner and causal scenarios separately within each group. Generally speaking, Types A, B and C occurred in the manner scenarios as much as they did in the causal scenarios, and they appeared less as the age increased; however, it was found that Type K occurred most frequently in manner scenarios (G1: 24.6% > 8.73%, G2: 53.97% > 4.42%, G3: 64.80% > 1.57%), as shown in Table 4-14:
Table 4-14. Subjects’ Responses to Manner and Causal Scenarios in the QA Task manner scenarios, and that weisheme was the most frequently used (133 tokens out of 180). In addition, overall speaking, patterns for casual questions were more frequently produced than those for manner questions. Among the types for causal questions, Type D (weisheme + modal+ verb) was more frequently adapted by the experimental group. As for the manner questions, the experimental group produced more Type J questions, but the controls used more Type I questions.
According to the results presented above, we can see that forming manner and causal questions with hui zenme and zenme hui is actually quite challenging for our children. Hence, they adapted different kinds of strategies to respond to the task. They provided no responses, repeated the sentences, or even gave answers to the questions they were expected to form. These responses accounted for about 40 % of the total responses we got. In addition, more than one-fourth of wrong responses to the
scenarios were found. About 33 % of the total responses were manner and causal and manner questions formed with other wh-words instead of zenme. As their age increased, the rate of non-question types (i.e., no elicitation, repetition and key words) decreased, while the questions type increased. This result may be attributed to the development of children’s linguistic capacity (Wootten et al. 1979). When children grow older, they have better ability to form questions concerning ‘how,’ ‘why’ and
‘when,’ and thus the rate of the non-interrogatives decreases.
If we look at manner and causal questions produced in the present study, we can see that casual questions (25.83%) were more easily produced than manner questions (7.14%). Furthermore, more wrong responses were produced to manner scenarios than to causal scenarios. The result that causal questions were more easily made was also obtained in Erreich (1984). Even though her focus was on the subject-auxiliary inversion, her results showed that casual questions are easier to produce than manner questions. She designed a task to elicit different wh-questions in English from 18 children (aged from 2;5 to 3;0) to see if there was any subject-auxiliary inversion. The results showed that her subjects could produce 66 tokens of why questions out of 563 wh-questions and only 18 tokens of how questions. Therefore, casual questions occupied 11% and manner questions 3 %. Even though Erreich did not discuss the order of wh-questions, her results lent its support for the claim that causal questions are easier than manner questions, which is in line with our findings here.
If we further examine causal and manner questions our children produced, we can see that they preferred to use other wh-words rather than hui zenme and zenme hui when producing casual and manner questions. 116 tokens of causal questions with weisheme were produced, but only 18 zenme hui were found in the experimental group’s responses. As for the manner questions, yong sheme noun was in favor, and it occurred 52 times, while hui zenme only occurred 7 times. The control group’s
preference of using other wh-words was also found. For causal questions, weisheme questions were produced 110 times by them while zenme hui 16 times; for the manner questions, the pattern Verb + zenme was used 92 times while hui zenme 14 times. In other words, the alternatives adapted by our subjects were actually much more frequent than our target structures hui zenme and zenme hui. For casual questions, weisheme questions were frequently used by the experimental group and by the control group. In addition, weisheme questions always occupied a large proportion among the three age groups, indicating that weisheme questions appeared earlier than the other two types: (Shi sheme yuanyin and zenme + verb). These results show that weisheme may be the unmarked form for causal questions compared with zenme hui since form acquired earlier is usually unmarked (Jakobson 1968). As for manner questions, we found two different dominant patterns: yong sheme noun in the experimental group and verb + zenme in the control group. Our children seemed to consider the sheme + noun (tool) easier because the meaning of this pattern would be more transparent than that of the wh-word zenme. As they got elder, they turned to the use of verb+ zenme.
Let us turn to the most frequently produced pattern, Type K: Wrong Responses.
If we examine the subjects’ responses to the manner and causal scenarios separately, we can see that Type K occupied a large proportion of the responses across the three age groups in manner scenarios (G1: 24.60%, G2:53.97%, G3: 64.80%), and the most frequently produced type was casual questions formed with weisheme in the subjects’
responses. For examples, in a scenario that was designed to elicit a manner question meiguahua hui zenme ci-shang ren, our subjects might produce a casual question like meiguahua weishme hui ci-shang ren instead of a manner question. In the literature, it has been found that children interpreted ‘how’ questions as ‘why’ questions and give reasons to manner questions (Cairns and Hsu 1978, Ervin-Tripp 1970). As mentioned
by Miao (1985), when children are faced with more difficult wh-questions, they tend to treat them as other easier wh-questions and give the correspondent answers to them.
In the present study, we were not able to tell from our comprehension task if our subjects did interpret manner questions hui zenme as causal questions due to the task that our design was a picture selection task rather than a task asking children to answer the questions. If we turn to the proper response to manner scenarios, it can be found that our subjects adapted other patterns rather than hui zenme. For example, they replaced hui zenme with yong sheme fongfa/dongxi, and used the wh-word sheme. Hence, it is plausible for us to generalize that children interpret how questions as other easier wh-questions, as shown in the previous studies, and that they also produced the wh-question that are easier in order to replace the more difficult ones, that is hui zenme and zenme hui in the present study.