行政院國家科學委員會專題研究計畫 成果報告
漢語親子對話中的第二人稱指涉詞
研究成果報告(精簡版)
計 畫 類 別 ： 個別型 計 畫 編 號 ： NSC 98-2410-H-004-099- 執 行 期 間 ： 98 年 08 月 01 日至 99 年 07 月 31 日 執 行 單 位 ： 國立政治大學語言學研究所 計 畫 主 持 人 ： 黃瓊之 計畫參與人員： 碩士班研究生-兼任助理人員：鍾易儒 報 告 附 件 ： 出席國際會議研究心得報告及發表論文 處 理 方 式 ： 本計畫可公開查詢中 華 民 國 99 年 10 月 31 日
1. Introduction
It is well-known that Mandarin permits omitted arguments. In Mandarin, overt reference forms can be omitted provided that the referent can be understood from the context (Huang, 1994, 2000; Li & Thompson, 1981, Wang et al., 1992). In other words, Mandarin speakers’ referential choices may be discourse-motivated. Previous studies have indicated that adult speakers show sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic factors presumed to underlie the differential use of referring expressions in discourse (Chafe, 1994; Du Bois, 1985, 1987; Givon, 1983; Gundel, Hedberg & Zacharski, 1993; Kumpf, 1992).
In language acquisition research, grammar and discourse are frequently treated as separate domains that do not interact in any significant way. Given the success of the discourse-pragmatic approach in explaining the distribution of referring
expressions in adult language, recently a few studies have investigated the child’s referential choice from this use-oriented perspective. It has been reported that the child’s referential choice can also be explained by pragmatic principles (Allen, 2000; Clancy, 1993; 1997; Guerriero, Oshima-Takane & Kuriyama, 2006; Narasimhan, Budwig & Murty, 2005; Serratrice, 2005).
If Mandarin permits omitted reference forms, an interesting question would be why Mandarin-speaking children sometimes do supply overt reference when the referent is understood. It is commonly argued that reference forms for referring to the speaker and the addressee are most readily omitted because they are easily retrievable from the physical interactional context (Oh, 2007). Given the availability of discourse context to disambiguate implicit reference to the addressee, the purpose of this study is to investigate what might provide the impetus for Mandarin-speaking children to attempt overt reference to the addressee.
2. Methods
2.1. Participants and Data
The participants of this study were two Mandarin-speaking two-year-old girls and their mothers, who lived in the northern part of Taiwan. One of the children had a younger sister and the other was the only child. Both children’s parents had received post-graduate education. The data used in this study consisted of eight hours of natural mother-child conversation video-taped at the children’s homes, with four hours of data with each child.
2.2. Coding Scheme
Every child utterance with other-reference was identified for analysis. All other-reference forms were coded for the reference forms and the pragmatic functions: 1. Reference forms
The various forms used by the children for other-reference were identified and coded.
(1) Null form
(2) Pronominal form: e.g., ni ‘you’
(3) Nominal form: e.g., proper names and kinship terms 2. Pragmatic functions
Following Imbens-Baily and Pan (1998), the classification of pragmatic functions was based on the Inventory of Communicative Acts—Abridged (INCA-A) (Ninio, et al., 1994).
(1) Directives and responses: e.g., request/propose/suggest action for hearer, or for hearer and speaker; agree/refuse to carry out act requested or proposed by other
(2) Speech elicitations and responses: e.g., elicit imitation of word or sentence by modeling or by explicit command; repeat/imitate other’s utterance
(3) Commitments and responses: e.g., state intent to carry out act; ask for permission to carry out act; permit hearer to perform act
(4) Declarations and responses: e.g., create a new state of affairs by declaration; agree to/disagree with a declaration
(5) Markings and responses: e.g., mark occurrence of event (i.e, thank, greet, apologize, congratulate, mark ending of an action, etc.); express positive emotion
(6) Statements and responses: e.g., state or make a declarative statement; agree with proposition expressed by previous speaker
(7) Questions and responses: e.g., ask a wh-question; answer a wh-question by a statement
(8) Performances: e.g., perform verbal move in game; read or recite written text aloud
(9) Evaluations: e.g., praise for nonverbal behavior; express enthusiasm for hearer’s performance; criticize or point out error in nonverbal act (10) Demands for clarification: e.g., request to repeat utterance
(11) Text editing: e.g., correct, provide correct verbal form in place of erroneous one
(12) Vocalizations: e.g., unintelligible vocalizations
3. Results and Discussion
The analysis of frequency showed that both children used other-references much less frequently than self-references. The finding was consistent with the results reported in previous studies which suggested that children mastered self-reference earlier than other-reference (Inbens-Bailey & Pan, 1998; Xu & Min, 1992).
significantly more frequently for self-reference than for other-reference. In contrast, overt forms were used significantly more frequently for other-reference than for self-reference. While it has been suggested that reference forms for referring to the speaker and the addressee are most readily omitted because they are easily retrievable from the physical interactional context, the results of this study indicated that the children appeared to resort to different referential strategies for self-reference and for other-reference.
Further analysis was conducted to focus on the reference forms used for other-reference in the children’s speech. The results showed that when the children explicitly referred to the addressee, the overt forms they used were mainly the pronominal ni ‘you’ and the nominal mama ‘mommy’. In addition, it was found that when null forms were used for other-reference, they were used predominantly in the subject position. In other words, reference form omissions for other-reference were observed mainly in the subject position. It appeared that the children were sensitive to the different informative states between the subject position and the object position. Since there is a tendency for new information to occur towards the end of an utterance and for given information to occur towards the beginning (Hickmann & Hendriks, 1999), the children may leave unexpressed other-references in the subject position when the referents were presupposed.
In addition, further analysis was conducted to examine whether the children’s overt reference to the addressee was related to particular communicative intents. That is, we attempted to investigate whether the expression of particular communicative intents elicited the overt reference to the addressee in the children’s speech. The analysis revealed that both children employed explicit other-reference primary in the context of directives: they tended to use overt forms when asking the mothers to carry out some actions. Thus, the communicative intent of directives appeared to be a
particularly fertile context for the children’s explicit representation of the addressee. In addition to directives, the children also used some overt forms in other contexts such as asking questions or answering questions.
The results of the present study suggested that the children’s other-reference was driven at least in part by pragmatic factors. Doing overt other-reference was thus a means by which the children can accomplish more than simple reference.
References
Allen, S. (2000). A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut. Linguistics, 38, 483-521.
Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Clancy, P. (1993). Preferred argument structure in Korean acquisition. In E. Clark (ed.), The proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Child Language Research Forum (pp. 307-314). Stanford, CA: CSLI.
Clancy, P. (1997). Discourse motivations for referential choice in Korean acquisition. In H. Sohn & J. Haig (eds). Japanese/Korean Linguistics, Vol 6 (pp. 639-657). Stanford, CA: CSLI.
Du Bois, J. W. (1985). Competing motivations. In J. Haiman (ed.), Iconicity in syntax (pp. 343-365). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Du Bois, J. W. (1987). The discourse basis of ergativity. Language, 63, 805-855. Givon, T. (1983). Topic continuity in discourse: an introduction. In J. H. Greenberg &
T. Givon (series eds) & T. Givon (vol. ed.), Typological studies in language: Vol. 3. Topic continuity in discourse: a quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Guerriero, A. M. S., Oshima-Takane, Y., Kuriyama, Y. (2006). The development of referential choice in English and Japanese: a discourse-pragmatic perspective. Journal of child language, 33, 823-857.
Gundel, J., Hedberg, N. & Zacharski, R. (1993).Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language, 69, 274-307.
Hickmann, Maya & Hendriks, Henriëtte 1999. Cohesion and anaphor in children’s narratives: a comparison of English, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 26, 419-452.
Huang, Y. (1994). The syntax and pragmatics of anaphora: A study with special reference to Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huang, Y. (2000). Anaphora; A crosslinguistic study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Imbens-Bailey, A. & Pan, A. (1998). The pragmatics of self- and other-reference in young children. Social Development, 7(2), 219-233.
Kumpf, L. E. (1992). Preferred argument structure in second language discourse: A preliminary study. Studies in Language, 16, 369-403.
Li, C. N. & Thompson, S. A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Narasimhan, B., Budwig, N. & Murty, L. (2005). Argument realization in Hindi caregiver-child discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 461-495.
Ninio, A., Snow, C. E., Pan, B. A., & Rollin, P. R. (1994). Classifying communicative acts in children’s interactions. Journal of Communications Disorders, 27, 157-188.
Oh, S.-Y. (2007). Overt reference to speaker and recipient in Korean. Discourse studies, 9(4), 462-492.
Serratrice, L. (2005). The role of discourse pragmatics in the acquisition of subjects in
Italian. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 437-462.
Wang, Q., Lillo-Martin, D., Best, C. T., Levitt, A. (1992). Null subject versus null object: Some evidence from the acquisition of Chinese and English. Language acquisition, 2(3), 221-254.
Xu, Z. & Min, R. (1992). A study on the acquisition of personal pronouns by Chinese-speaking children. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 24(4), 337-345.
行政院國家科學委員會
出席國際會議報告書
黃瓊之
國立政治大學
本人於 99 年 3 月 6 日至 9 日參加由美國應用語言學會(the American Association for Applied Linguistics)所主辦的國際研討會 The AAAL 2010 Annual Conference。此研討會集合了來自世界各地研究應用語言學的重要學者，從應用 語言學的各個面向，作研究的分享與交流。四天的研討會，讓參與研討會的成員 享受了一次豐富的學術饗宴。
本次會議除了 papers 和 posters 之外，還包括了 6 場 plenary talks 及 6 場 invited colloquium。Plenary talks 邀請在此領域中 6 位重量級的學者演講，包括 M.A.K. Halliday，Diane Larsen-Freeman，Richard Young，Lourdes Ortega，Mary
McGroarty，及 Michael Tomasello，精彩的內容讓與會者收穫豐富。
Michael Halliday 教授是發展重要語言學學派 Systemic Functional Linguistics 的語言學大師，而本會議的首場 plenary talk 就是邀請 Michael Halliday 主講，講 題為’Putting Linguistic theory to Work’。很可惜的是 Michael Halliday 因身體健康 因素無法與會，由另一學者代為宣讀其講稿。雖然與會學者錯失了與大師互動的 機會，但其演講內容所傳達的智慧與精華仍帶來可貴的啟發。演講中提到此演講 的題目或許就可為應用語言學下定義，也進一步的提到語言在不同領域中的應 用。同時 Halliday 也對其所發展的系統功能語言學提出了所謂的’appliable’ (非’applicable’)的觀念，而中和了一直以來理論語言學與應用語言學的區別。
另一位重要學者 Diane Larsen-Freeman 教授的 plenary talk 講題為’Complex, Dynamic Systems: A New Transdisciplinary Theme for Applied Linguistics?’ 在演講 中提到應用語言學常被指為是 inter-disciplinary 或 multi-disciplinary。雖然這樣的 形容可能適度的反應了目前應用語言學的現狀，但這樣的看法卻沒有把領域界線 打破。因此 Larsen-Freeman 教授提出了一個比較好的觀點和努力的目標，就是 所謂的 transdisciplinary。這樣的觀念是打破且架在 disciplines 之上，開創一個新 的模式，以議題而非領域為導向。
而另一位知名的學者是 Michael Tomasello 教授。他的 plenary talk 十分精彩 也充滿啟發性。由於講題與兒童語言習得有關，正是我的研究興趣，因此更是受 益匪淺。Tomasello 教授的講題是’Constructing A Language’。在演講中指出大多 數的兒童語言習得理論以成人句法的類型為其分析的工具，並未真正考慮這些類 型對幼童來說是否是 psychologically real。因此 Tomasello 教授提出了 usage-based model 來解釋兒童語言習得，強調兒童在與他人會話互動中得到語言經驗，再以 其所已有的社會技能及認知技能來處理所經驗的這些語言。這樣的 U-B 理論與
3
Chomsky 所提的 UG 理論成了鮮明的對比。
其他的 plenary talks 還包括了 Richard Young 教授的’Discursive Practice in Language Learning and Teaching’ ，Lourdes Ortega 教授的’The bilingual Turn in SLA’ ，及 Mary McGroarty 教授的’Orientations and Ideologies in language Policies’。
本人的論文題目是「Informativeness and Argument Representation in Mandarin Child Language」。本研究的目的是從 Informativeness 的觀點探討說漢語的幼童在 自然對話中論元形式的選擇與使用。研究結果顯示，幼童語言中論元形式的選擇 受到 Informativeness 的影響。本人的論文獲得了不少與會學者正面的回應，同時 一些意見及問題也對我繼續發展本篇論文有很大的幫助。
此次參加 The AAAL 2010 Annual Conference 不僅有機會發表本人的研究成 果之外，也有機會與不同領域、不同國家的學者做學術討論與交流，是次很有意 義、很豐富的學術經驗。
98 年度專題研究計畫研究成果彙整表
計畫主持人：黃瓊之 計畫編號：98-2410-H-004-099- 計畫名稱：漢語親子對話中的第二人稱指涉詞 量化 成果項目 實際已達成 數（被接受 或已發表） 預期總達成 數(含實際已 達成數) 本計畫實 際貢獻百 分比 單位 備 註 （ 質 化 說 明：如 數 個 計 畫 共 同 成 果、成 果 列 為 該 期 刊 之 封 面 故 事 ... 等） 期刊論文 0 0 100% 研究報告/技術報告 1 1 100% 研討會論文 0 0 100% 篇 論文著作 專書 0 0 100% 申請中件數 0 0 100% 專利 已獲得件數 0 0 100% 件 件數 0 0 100% 件 技術移轉 權利金 0 0 100% 千元 碩士生 2 2 100% 博士生 1 1 100% 博士後研究員 0 0 100% 國內 參與計畫人力 （本國籍） 專任助理 0 0 100% 人次 期刊論文 1 1 100% 研究報告/技術報告 0 0 100% 研討會論文 1 1 100% 篇 論文著作 專書 0 0 100% 章/本 申請中件數 0 0 100% 專利 已獲得件數 0 0 100% 件 件數 0 0 100% 件 技術移轉 權利金 0 0 100% 千元 碩士生 0 0 100% 博士生 0 0 100% 博士後研究員 0 0 100% 國外 參與計畫人力 （外國籍） 專任助理 0 0 100% 人次其他成果
