Topic Incorporation/Collaboration

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立 政 治 大 學

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l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

4.2.2 Topic Incorporation/Collaboration

Table 6 Results of two children’s topic incorporation/collaboration in topic-maintaining utterance

LIN LJW

Topic Incorporation 251(54.6%) 506(50.6%)

Topic Collaboration 209(45.4%) 493(49.4%)

Total 460(100%) 999(100%)

Concerning the information provided by the two children, results of two children’s topic incorporation/collaboration in topic-maintaining utterance are presented in table 6.

In half of the time, both LIN (54.6%) and LJW (50.6%) incorporated new information when maintaining topics at about age 3, suggesting that by means of the mother’s

elicitation they were already capable of taking propositions in the previous utterances as foundations and adding new materials to them. At this point, quantitative analysis of two the children’s topic incorporation/collaboration in topic-maintaining utterance suggested that LIN and LJW displayed nearly equal sophistication in providing new materials when maintaining discourse topics. Since understanding of children’s topic-maintaining

capacity cannot be done without exploring how new materials are added in continuing of discourse topics, qualitative analysis of LIN and LJW’s topic maintenance was conducted with respect to topic incorporation/collaboration.

At most of the times, maintaining of discourse topics was eased by their mother’s successive elicitations, such as questions in similar structure and content that were sometimes partially repetitive:

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(5) MOT and LIN are talking about voting for popular cartoon characters.

1 *MOT: 你早上不是說要投給 -: 皮什麼 +…

‘Didn’t you say in the morning that you would vote for someone named /pi/…?’

2 *LIN: ++ <皮卡丘> [= cartoon character].

‘Pokemon.’

3 *MOT: 啊妹妹投給誰?

‘Who did Sister vote for?’

4 *LIN: <kitty> [= cartoon character] .

‘Who did Mother vote for?’

10 *LIN: 也投給哈姆太郎.

‘Hamtaro, too.’

11 *MOT: 我也投給哈姆太郎.

‘I voted for Hamtaro, too.’

In example (5), LIN and her mother were talking about which cartoon character to vote for. By continuing asking which character did a specific person vote for, structure and content of the questions were partially repeated in line 3, 6 and 9 as ‘who did X vote for’.

Within the clear context where the discussion of which character to vote for was attended

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by the dyad, the verb ‘vote for’ could even be omitted by the mother in line 6 without causing any problem in LIN’s understanding. Given elicitations in repetition, the child could thus produce relatively more substantial contributions and maintain topics for more turns (Huang, 2004).

Generally, due to the unsophisticated conversational skills, maintaining of discourse topics for children relies heavily on mothers’ elicitations. As a result, the parents tend to become the dominant speakers in the parent-child conversation interaction. Intending to engage their children in the conversation, the parents would be likely to elicit their children with successive questions like what was illustrated above (Huang, 2004). Or, if their intentions are not to elicit their children’s verbal participation but to control their children’s physical behaviors, they may adopted a lot of directives or devote themselves to long monologue (McDonald & Pien, 1982). In one way or the other, the parents are usually the dominant speakers who control the development of topics. Nevertheless, in our data, situations where the child took good control of the developed topics were observed:

(6) LIN claims that she want to raise pigs at home.

1 *MOT: 一綾啊 # 那個你如果看到有那個小豬在跑 # 那是電視裡面的.

‘LIN, if you saw pigs running, that happened only in TV.’

2 *MOT: 那個不能養你知道嗎?

‘Do you know that you can not actually raise them?’

3 *MOT: 我們家哪有地方可以養.

‘There is no space for it in our place.’

4 *MOT: 養你們兩隻就受不了了.

‘Raising you two is enduring enough.’

5 *LIN: 養在下面好了.

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‘Just raise it down there.’

6 *MOT: 哪個下面啊?

‘Down where?’

7 *LIN: 不知道 # 養在門口好了.

‘I don’t know, then raise it at the entrance.’

8 *MOT: 養在門口啊?

‘Raise it at the entrance?’

9 *LIN: 嗯.

‘Yes.’

10 *MOT: 養在門口你不怕他跑走嗎?

‘Won’t you be afraid that it runs away?’

11 *MOT: 就不見啦.

In the above example, LIN expressed her great interest in raising a small pig at home. In the beginning, the mother discouraged LIN by appealing to several reasons and even mentioned that she already got LIN and her sister to raise. In spite of being strongly discouraged by her mother, LIN still continued to argue for raising the pig by providing several solutions that she thought would be workable. During the discussion, LIN kept contributing to the topic of raising the pig and gradually took control of the topic of raising the pig. A similar case was observed in another conversation of a pretend play where LIN and the mother were playing soldiers:

(7) LIN and the mother are playing soldiers.

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‘I still want to play the soldier.’

3 *MOT: 士兵 # 好.

‘Soldier, fine.’

4 *MOT: 請問士兵是…

‘And what does the soldier…’

5 *LIN: 士兵要拿著 <這個> [= toy sword] 啊 # 士兵.

‘The soldier has to take this.’

6 *LIN: 然後 # 然後你要拿 <這個> [= another toy sword].

‘And you take this one.’

7 *LIN: 你要拿這個啊.

‘You have to take this one.’

8 *LIN: 你剛是拿 <這個> [= toy sword No.8] 對不對?

‘You took this one, right?’

9 *MOT: 我不是拿這個 # 對不起 # 是拿六.

‘I did not take this one, excuse me, I took No.6.’

10 *LIN: 六 # 你拿 # 你拿出來.

‘No.6, you take it out.’

In the above pretend play, the mother did not control the conversation but asked for directions from LIN. LIN produced successive utterances, consisting of 3 directives in one turn from line 5 to 8, making more contribution than her mother and dominating the conversation. In sum, in the conversational interaction, elicitations of the mothers play significant roles in the young children’s maintaining of discourse topics. By means of such kind of maternal scaffolding, maintaining topics thus becomes less demanding for children. However, as children’s communicative competence develops, they take

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increasing control of the conversation and require less help from their mother in the conversational interaction (Foster, 1982; Huang, 2004).

Besides the mother’s dominant role in the child’s topic maintenance, the types of discourse topic to which the dyad attended were investigated as well. Children at this age usually maintain here-and-now topics, which regards objects that are easy for children to assess at hands or going-on events they are dealing with. In parent-child conversational interaction, maintenance of now-and-here topics often occurs in routines such as meal time, toy-playing, and book-reading. Take example (8) for example, in book-reading LJW was presented with a book from which her mother could easily request for information:

(8) MOT is pointing to a zebra in the book.

‘Where are the ears?’

8 *LJW: 耳朵在這兩邊.

‘Ears are in the two sides.’

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By referring to the book, not only could the mother rapidly decide types of information to request for and questions to ask but also could LJW sometimes provide answers or new materials by simply pointing to something in the book. For example, the topic was maintained by LJW’S referring to the ears of the zebra in line 4. Instead of naming the zebra’s body part ‘ears’, LJW merely pointed to it with the referential expression ‘this’.

Similarly, in line 7, LJW replied to her mother’s question simply by directly pointing to the position of the ears rather than by providing answer such as ‘on the head’. Further survey of the data also revealed that LJW at times brought in information in such way, suggesting that she is more or less a referential child. In some cases, LJW brought in materials by using referential expressions even when these materials were not presented in front of her or being at joint attention. As illustrated in the above example, in

maintaining topics, LJW’s referential nature in referring to things thus often led to her mother’s subsequent questions meant for clarifying the exact referents or ensuring LJW’s knowledge of naming the things.

Besides here-and-now topics, by means of the mother’s elicitation, children at this age already have the ability of talking about displacement topics considering past events³

3Talking of a past event could be also seen in example (3), p.35.

or non-present objects:

(8) MOT and LJW are talking about the story of a lion and a mouse.

1 *MOT: 獅子跟老鼠為什麼變成好朋友?

‘Why did the lion and the mouse become good friends?’

2 *LJW: <因為> [/] 因為他們相處在一起.

‘Because they get along with each other.’

3 *MOT: 為什麼他們相處在一起?

‘Why did they get along with each other?’

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‘I already told you.’

This example was remarkable since it indicated that LJW remembered the event of having been asked the same question and answered it, which was in fact more than 20 turns away from her present utterances in line 4. This suggested that being engaged in the conversation, LJW was capable of taking the whole structured framework, e.g., the stretch of talking about the reasons for the friendship between the lion and the mouse, as the proposition with which she develop a new proposition.