漢語兒童在對話與敘事中的動態事件表達 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國⽴立政治⼤大學語⾔言學研究所碩⼠士學位論⽂文 National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of Linguistics Master Thesis. 指導教授：⿈黃瓊之博⼠士 Advisor: Dr. Chiung-chih Huang. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 y. Nat. 漢語兒童在對話與敘事中的動態事件表達. sit. n. al. er. io. Mandarin-speaking Children’s Expressions of Motion Events in Conversation and Narration. Ch. engchi. i n U. 研究⽣生：鄭宇涵 Student: Yu-Han Cheng 中華民國104年7⽉月 Jul, 2015 . v.

(2) Mandarin-speaking Children’s Expressions of Motion Events in Conversation and Narration. BY Yu-Han Cheng. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. al. sit. y. Nat. A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Institute of Linguistics in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. Ch. engchi. January 2015 . i n U. v.

(3) The members ofthe Committee approve the thesis of Cheng, Yu-Han Defended on July 22, 2015. 「. 片//. Z @. ProfessgfChiung-chih Huang Advisor. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. Professor Kawai Chui Committee Member. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. i n U. i e n g c homfnittee Member 也夕. Approved. A. v. ^ista*^ Professor Yo wyuLin. 卜卜. Hsun-huei Chang. Director, Graduate Institute ofLinguistics. 。。"'".

(4) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. Copyright © 2015 Yu-Han Cheng All Rights Reserved !iii. v.

(5) Acknowledgements ⾸首先，我不能再感謝我的指導⽼老師⿈黃瓊之⽼老師更多。︒｡從碩⼀一開始就喜歡上⽼老師的課，喜歡課堂上同學的討論和⽼老師給的啟發。︒｡幸運地之後開始當⽼老師⼯工作室的助理和指導學⽣生，在這個環境愉快⼜又充實的成⾧長。︒｡這麼兩光的我碰上這麼細⼼心的⽼老師，真是讓他擔⼼心了，哈哈。︒｡感謝我的⼝口試委員，徐嘉慧⽼老師和林祐瑜⽼老師，以及proposal的⼝口試委員張麗⾹香⽼老師。︒｡⽼老師們都給了我論⽂文⾮非常寶貴的意⾒見，⽽而且態度都⾮非常親切，減緩了⼝口試時的緊張。︒｡⾮非常感謝校稿的朋友Jenny，沒有她⼝口試可能就會GG了，⾮非常感謝她在很趕的時間內還願意幫我看⽂文章。︒｡還有proposal也幫過我校稿的朋友Lance Jeffery Davis，同樣⾮非常認真，還為此看了我的literature中的⽂文章。︒｡感謝ptt網友余先⽣生以及他的朋友姚先⽣生，不計較酬勞，⾮非常盡責細⼼心地幫我的data做了統計，還跟我很有耐⼼心的解釋結果。︒｡還有⼀一位不知名的ptt網友，幫我從外縣市的圖書館，⼿手⼯工影印了⼀一本對我研究⾄至關重要的參考⽂文獻，還幫我寄到台北，本來居然還沒有要跟我收錢！感謝宇馨和亭伊，讓我去他們的幼稚園搜集語料，沒有他們的幫忙我的研究也不會存在。︒｡當然我也感謝每個讓我蒐集語料的⼩小朋友，我珍惜我們之間曾經有過⼀一段⼩小⼩小的⼤大冒險。︒｡感謝三年來政⼤大語⾔言所的⽼老師，蕭宇超⽼老師、︑､何萬順⽼老師、︑､莫建清⽼老師、︑､鐘曉芳⽼老師，除了帶給我知識以外，也啟發了我的思想。︒｡感謝徐嘉慧⽼老師，在當⽼老師研究助理的短短⼀一年間，學習到了做研究的態度和⽅方式，受益良多。︒｡感謝戴智偉⽼老師，在擔任⽼老師課堂助教期間，⾃自⼰己也上了⼀一堂內容紮實的語⾔言與世界⽂文明課程。︒｡感謝政⼤大語⾔言所的助教學姊，總是周到地把學⽣生照顧得好好的。︒｡感謝學姊侃彧，雖然在我的研究⽣生⽣生涯中不斷詆毀/抹⿊黑/打擊我，但即使餓肚⼦子到七點媽媽都打電話叫他回家吃飯，還是願意幫我看我的論⽂文，聽我報告，跟我在咖啡廳巧遇，超級可靠。︒｡也感謝研究室學妹曉婷和妍伶，在我需要幫忙時幫我看了論⽂文和聽我報告。︒｡感謝不菸不酒的菸酒⽣生同伴們，韶君、︑､冠霆、︑､彥棻、︑､⼦子貽、︑､雯婷、︑､翊倫。︒｡在這⼀一段時間⼀一起互相關⼼心、︑､互相打氣。︒｡其他同伴⾼高珍、︑､怡婷，感謝你們當我菸酒⽣生⽣生涯中調味劑，少了你們就菸酒⽣生⽣生涯就平淡無味。︒｡感謝好朋友祈晴、︑､Mila，不停逼迫與提醒我我的論⽂文，雖然很煩但是我愛他們。︒｡感謝媽媽，全世界最好說話的媽媽。︒｡為了我們犧牲奉獻這麼多，還開明的讓我可以放⼼心去做我喜歡的事情，我的所有都歸功於他。︒｡還有⼩小時候被欺壓的最慘的妹妹，⾧長⼤大後也沒有要報復我，好⼼心勸懶散的我找⼯工作。︒｡感謝阿泰，就算我弄論⽂文很煩，懶得理他、︑､對他不耐煩的時候，他也沒有停⽌止給我無⽌止盡的包容、︑､陪伴和愛。︒｡ Without you all, I won’t be who I am, won’t stand where I stand. So thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. . 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. !iv. i n U. v.

(6) Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….iv Abstract……………………………………………………………………………….. vii Chapter 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………… 1. 1.1 Background………………………………………………………………………. 1 1.2 Purpose……………………………………………………………………………5 1.3 Organization……………………………………………………………………… 6 Chapter 2. Literature review………………………………………………………… 7. 2.1 Motion events encoding………………………………………………………….. 7 2.1.1 Motion event typology……………………………………………………….7. 治政 2.2 Motion events encoding of Mandarin Chinese………………………………….14 大 2.2.1 Motion encoding立 typology of Mandarin……………………………………14 2.1.2 The acquisition of motion events encoding……………………………….. 11. ‧ 國. 學. 2.2.2 The acquisition of Mandarin speaking children’s motion encoding………. 18 2.3 Children’s language performance in conversation and narration………………..22 Method………………………………………………………………….. 28. ‧. Chapter 3. 3.1 Subjects…………………………………………………………………………. 28. Nat. sit. y. 3.2 Data collection………………………………………………………………….. 29. er. io. 3.2.1 Motion expressions in natural conversation……………………………….. 29 3.2.2 Motion expressions in elicited narration……………………………………30. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. 3.3 Coding………………………………………………………………………….. 30. engchi. 3.3.1 Motion verbs………………………………………………………………..32 3.3.2 Motion constructions………………………………………………………. 34 Chapter 4. Results……………………………………………………………………37. 4.1 Children’s motion event expressions in conversation………………………….. 37 4.1.1 General results…………………………………………………………….. 38 4.1.2 Motion verbs………………………………………………………………. 41 4.1.3 Motion constructions………………………………………………………. 44 4.2 Children’s motion event expressions in narration……………………………….50 4.2.1 General results…………………………………………………………….. 50 4.2.2 Motion verbs………………………………………………………………. 53 4.2.3 Motion constructions………………………………………………………. 56 !v.

(7) 4.3 The comparison of children’s motion event expressions in conversation and narration……………………………………………………………………. 64 4.3.1 Motion verbs in conversation and narration………………………………..65 4.3.2 Motion constructions in conversation and narration………………………. 67 Chapter 5. Discussion………………………………………………………………. 69. 5.1 Children’s motion expressions in conversation………………………………… 69 5.2 Children’s motion event expressions in narration……………………………….72 5.3 The comparison of children’s motion event expressions in conversation and narration……………………………………………………………………. 74 Chapter 6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………… 79. 治政 Appendix II…………………………………………………………………………….85 大立 References…………………………………………………………………………….. 86 . Appendix I…………………………………………………………………………….. 83. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. !vi. i n U. v.

(8) Abstract Motion is experienced by humans around the world, but this experience can be expressed in diverse ways in different typological languages, namely verb-framed languages, satellite-framed languages, and equipollently-framed languages (Talmy 1985; Slobin 1996). The typologically different languages encode motions differently in terms of the use of verb types (i.e. Manner (M), Path (P), Deixis (D)), verb tokens, and verb constructions, which shape language-specific characteristics. It has been suggested that Mandarin, an equipollently-framed language, is characterized by the following patterns: the types of Manner are more than those of Path; the tokens of Manner are more than those of Path, and M+P+D is the most common construction (Chen, 2005). Children, when describing motions, must learn the language-specific patterns along the course of language acquisition. Previous studies have demonstrated that language-specific patterns could be found in young children (e.g. Choi & Bowerman, 1991). However, studies seem to present conflicting results regarding Mandarin-speaking children’s motion expressions in different discourse genres. These studies showed that children narratives, but not their conversations, demonstrated equipollently-framed-language patterns (Guo & Chen, 2009; Huang, 2012). While previous studies have implied that children’s language expressions could be different in narration and conversation, few studies have examined how genre differences may affect children’s motion encoding. Therefore, the study aims to investigate how Mandarin-speaking children aged 3, 4 and 5 encode motion events in conversation and narration, and whether their use of the expressions differs in the two genres. Conversation and narration data were collected from children of three age groups (3 to 5). In the mother-child conversation data, 401 motion clauses were collected from 8 children with a total data length of 4 hours. In the narration data, 402 motion clauses were collected from 22 children with a total data length of 1.5 hour. Three categories of motion verbs (i.e. M, P and D) and 9 categories of motion constructions (e.g. P, M+P, P+D, M+P+D) were coded. The data were analyzed in terms of the use of verb types, verb tokens, and motion constructions. The results show that, in both genres, children in all age groups used more types of M than P, and that they preferred M+P+D constructions more than any other types of constructions, indicating that children’s motion expressions in both genres present the characteristics of equipollantly-framed language. Although the patterns of the two genres showed some variations (such as the use of more diverse types of M and simpler motion constructions in conversation than in narration), the children’s motion encodings were consisted with Mandarin’s language-specific characteristics. That language-specific patterns were observed in both genres supports Slobin’s (1996) “Thinking for Speaking” theory. In addition, the variations found in the comparison suggest that the different communicative goals of different genres could affect children’s motion expressions to some extent. This study has provided a more comprehensive understanding of how language-specific characteristics are manifested in children’s motion expressions, and how genres are related to the patterns of children’s motion expressions. . 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. !vii. i n U. v.

(9) 國⽴立政治⼤大學研究所碩⼠士論⽂文題要研究所別: 語⾔言學研究所論⽂文名稱: 漢語兒童在對話與敘事中的動態事件表達指導教授: ⿈黃瓊之博⼠士研究⽣生: 鄭宇涵論⽂文提要內容: 世界各地的⼈人們在⽣生活中皆能觀察到各種動態事件 (Motion events)，然⽽而，不同類型的語⾔言卻使⽤用不同的表達⽅方式來描述這種經歷。︒｡這些不同的語⾔言可以分成動詞框架（Verb-framed）語⾔言、︑､衛星框架（satellite-framed）語⾔言，以及均衡框架（equipollently-framed）語⾔言（Talmy 1985; Slobin 1996）。︒｡不同類型的語⾔言習慣使⽤用不同的動詞種類（例如：⽅方式動詞（Manner verb, M）、︑､路徑動詞（Path verb, P）、︑､指⽰示動詞（Deixis verb, D））、︑､動詞數量、︑､動詞組合等⽅方式表達動態事件，⽽而這些⾯面向的不同造就了每種類型語⾔言特殊的特徵。︒｡被歸類為均衡框架語⾔言的漢語，具有以下特徵：以動詞種類（type）來說，⽅方式動詞種類多於路徑動詞種類；以動詞數量（token）來說，⽅方式動詞數量⼤大於路徑動詞數量；以動詞結構（construction）來說，M+P+D是最常⾒見的結構（Chen, 2005）。︒｡當兒童在語⾔言習得的過程中，必須學會以該類型語⾔言獨特的⽅方式描述動態事件。︒｡前⼈人研究中指出，在相當年幼的兒童語⾔言中就可以發現語⾔言特殊的特徵（e.g. Choi & Bowerman, 1991）。︒｡然⽽而，對於漢語兒童動態事件表達的研究似乎仍然存有衝突。︒｡敘事性語料中能觀察出均衡框架語⾔言的特徵（Guo & Chen, 2009），但在這種特徵在對話性語料中並不明顯（Huang, 2012）。︒｡雖然某些前⼈人研究暗⽰示兒童的語⾔言表達在敘事和對話中的確會呈現不同的特徵，但是很少研究關注語體（genre）如何影響兒童的動態事件編碼。︒｡因此，本研究⽬目的是探討三、︑､四和五歲漢語兒童在對話與敘事中如何表達動態事件，並研究漢語兒童在兩種語體中，動態事件的表達有何異同。︒｡本研究從三⾄至五歲兒童中蒐集兩組語料。︒｡第⼀一種語料從8位兒童與母親⽇日常對話中蒐集401句動態⼦子句，語料時數達4⼩小時。︒｡第⼆二種語料從22位兒童之敘事語料中蒐集402句動態⼦子句，語料時數達1.5⼩小時。︒｡語料編碼⽅方⾯面，動態動詞分為三種（Ｍ，Ｐ與Ｄ）；動態結構分為九種（例如：P, M+P, P+D, M+P+D等等）。︒｡語料以動詞種類、︑､動詞數量、︑､動態結構等三⽅方⾯面進⾏行分析。︒｡本研究結果發現，在兩種語體中，所有年齡層的兒童都使⽤用較多種類的M，較少種類的P，⽽而他們也偏好使⽤用M+P+D動態結構。︒｡這種特性顯⽰示出兒童在兩種語體的動態事件表達皆保有均衡框架語⾔言的特徵。︒｡雖然本研究也發現，兩種語境中的動態事件表達存在某程度的差異性（例如：在對話中找到⽐比敘事中更多種類的M，且動態結構在對話中⽐比在敘事更簡易），但是漢語兒童的動態事件編碼仍然與均衡框架語⾔言的特徵⼀一致。︒｡⽽而語⾔言特殊特徵無論在何種語體中都保有⼀一致性的觀察，⽀支持了Slobin（1996）的 “Thinking for Speaking” 學說。︒｡同時，本研究觀察到的差異性也暗⽰示，不同語體裡不同的溝通⽬目的，在某種程度上能夠影響兒童的動態表達。︒｡本研究對於語⾔言特殊特徵在兒童動態事件描述的展現有更深⼊入的了解，並且對於探討語體如何影響兒童動態事件表達的議題具有價值性。︒｡ . 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. !viii. i n U. v.

(10) Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Background Motion is a universal phenomenon that humans around the world speaking all kinds of languages experience every day. However, the ways in which this experience is encoded in different languages can vary in typologically different patterns (Talmy 1975, 1985; Aske 1989; Slobin 1996). A motion event is “a situation. 治政 containing movement or the maintenance of a stationary 大 location” (Talmy, 1957). In 立. a motion event, six motion semantic components are involved: “Motion”, “Path”,. ‧ 國. 學. “Figure”, “Ground”, “Manner”, and “Cause”. Languages encode motion semantic. ‧. components into different surface elements which include “verbs”, “adpositions",. sit. y. Nat. and “subordinate clauses”. Some languages tend to encode Path into verbs, such as. n. al. er. io. Spanish (e.g. El chico entró el cuarto “The boy entered the room”). Other languages. i n U. v. tend to express Path with adpositions, such as English (e.g. The boy walked into the. Ch. engchi. room). Talmy (1985) classified these languages into two different categories : Verbframed languages (V-framed languages), which tend to encode Path with the verbs. Such languages include Spanish, French, Arabic, and Japanese; and Satellite-framed languages (S-framed languages), which tend to encode Path with a satellite component adhering to the main verb. Such languages include English, German, and Mandarin. Because Verb-framed languages and Satellite-framed languages are typologically different, speakers of these languages focus on different semantic components to encode motion. !1.

(11) In addition to the typological differences found in encoding motion events, many studies have also been conducted on children’s motion expressions across different languages (Choi & Bowerman 1991; Özyurek & Özçaliskan 2000; Parafragou et al. 2002; Hickmann & Hendriks, 2010). Each language trains its young learners to attend to a particular dimension in the course of language acquisition (Slobin, 1996). Thus, when learning their native language, children must determine which aspects of their mental representations they should focus on, and which aspects can be realized through the grammar of their native language. Two questions. 政治大 continue to intrigue researchers: “When do children learn to think and speak in a 立. ‧ 國. 學. language-specific way when they talk about motion?” and “how do children acquire adult-like and language-specific rhetorical style in motion encoding?” Many. ‧. researchers have reported that the motion expressions of children learning different. sit. y. Nat. languages begin to show some language-specific fashion early on (Choi &. n. al. er. io. Bowerman 1991; Özyurek & Özçaliskan 2000; Parafragou et al. 2002). Children start. i n U. v. to encode the semantic elements of motion lexically and syntactically in accordance. Ch. engchi. to their native languages allow them to. As children grow older, their motion expressions continue to be affected by the language-specific rhetorical style and become more adult-like. The typology of Mandarin in motion events has been investigated by many researchers. Talmy (1991) suggested that Mandarin is an S-framed language. Tai (2003) suggested that Mandarin more closely resembles a V-framed language. Other researchers have argued that Mandarin falls within neither of these frameworks and should be classified as an equipollently-framed language, a third type of motion !2.

(12) encoding category (Slobin, 2004; Chen, 2005; Chen & Guo, 2009). The way Mandarin-speaking children express motion has attracted the interest of many scholars (Chen, 2005; Guo & Chen, 2009; Lin, 2006; Huang, 2012). Research on Mandarin speaking children’s motion expressions has focused almost exclusively on children’s motion expressions when narrating stories (Chen 2005, Guo and Chen 2009, Lin 2006). Chen (2005) and Guo and Chen (2009) studied Beijing Mandarin speaking children’s narration of the Frog Story, and found that children’s linguistic constructions of motion tended to become more equipollently-framed as the language. 政治大 learner grows older and contends that both Manner and Path are salient in children’s 立. ‧ 國. 學. encoding. In another study, Lin (2006) used animated motion pictures to elicit Taiwanese Mandarin children’s motion narration, and found that Manner played an. ‧. important role in motion event expressions. Among all these studies, only Huang. sit. y. Nat. (2012) conducted research on the way Mandarin speaking children encode motion in. n. al. er. io. daily conversation rather than in narration. In her study, she investigated children’s. i n U. v. language in daily conversation, and found that Path was the most productive verb.. Ch. engchi. The results of these studies above on Mandarin children’s motion acquisition are somewhat inconsistent because their findings were different in the aspect of the use of motion verbs and the constructions in children’s motion encoding. First, Manner verbs were more frequently used by children in the studies with narrative data, while Path verbs were more frequently used in the study with conversational data. Second, the preferable motion construction was three-verb construction (Manner + Path + Deictic) in the studies with narrative data, but one-verb construction in the study with conversational data. Previous studies seem to present !3.

(13) conflicting results on how Mandarin speaking children learn to express motion events in different discourse genres. In fact, some previous studies have implied that children’s language expressions could be different in narration and conversation (MacLachlan & Chapman, 1988; Dollaghan et al., 1990; Wagner et al., 2000), such as fluency, syntactic complexity and mean length of utterance (MLU). This begs the question of whether children’s expressions of motion event also show different characteristics in certain aspects. While most researchers have collected data of children’s motion. 政治大 expressions from elicited narratives (Slobin 1996; Özyurek & Özçaliskan 2000; 立. ‧ 國. 學. Chen 2005; Parafragou et al. 2006), only a small number of them have collected data from natural conversations (Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Zheng & Golding-Meadow,. ‧. 2002; Hohenstein, 2013), and even fewer have studied the ways in which genre. sit. y. Nat. differences may affect children’s expressions of motion events. In one study, Selimis. n. al. er. io. and Katis (2010) examined the role of context in acquisition of motion encoding, and. i n U. v. found that both English-speaking and Greek-speaking children used more types of. Ch. engchi. manner verbs in conversation than in narration when encoding motion events. Selimis and Katis have proposed that Manner might be more prominent in conversation. However, more studies are needed to support this claim. In conclusion, previous research have studied the emergence and the development of children’s language-specific patterns of encoding motion. However, few studies have examined how genre difference affects the development of children’s motion encoding, as implied by the inconsistency in the studies of Mandarin-speaking children. Previous studies on how Mandarin-speaking children !4.

(14) encode motion have not included both narration and daily conversation in their data sets, and the coding and the organization of the data is not consistent. This has yielded conflicting conclusions, and whether children express motion differently in different genres still remains unclear. The aim of this study is to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of how Mandarin-speaking children encode motion by re-examining and comparing children's motion expressions in conversation and narration. This study is also valuable in examining how strong language-specific patterns in children’s motion expressions reveal in different discourse genres.. 政治大. 立. ‧ 國. 學. 1.2 Purpose. The purpose of the present study is to examine Mandarin speaking children’s. ‧. motion expressions by investigating children’s speech in both conversation and in. Nat. sit. y. narration. Since a speaker’s language choices can vary widely within different. n. al. er. io. discourses, it is necessary to examine utterances not only from elicited narration but. i n U. v. also from spontaneous speech in conversation. The research questions of the present study are:. Ch. engchi. 1) How do Mandarin-speaking children ages 3, 4 and 5 encode motion events in natural conversation? 2) How do Mandarin-speaking children ages 3, 4 and 5 encode motion events in elicited narration? 3) How do the motion encoding of Mandarin-speaking children ages 3, 4 and 5 differ in conversation and in narration? !5.

(15) To answer the first question, children’s motion expressions in natural conversation with their caregiver will be collected and analyzed. The second question will be answered by eliciting children’s narrative expressions of motion events using Frog Story, a wordless picture book. The third question will be answered by comparing the findings from the first two research questions.. 1.3 Organization. 政治大 The current study is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 provides background 立. ‧ 國. 學. information on motion encoding of language in children and explains the purpose of this current research. Chapter 2 is a literature review of relevant studies on the. ‧. discussion of the typology of motion events, the acquisition of motion events, and the. Nat. sit. y. difference between children’s expressions in narration and conversation. Chapter 3. n. al. er. io. elaborates the research methods used in this study. Chapter 4 presents the findings of. i n U. v. the study, including the analysis on motion verbs and motion constructions. Chapter. Ch. engchi. 5 is the discussion on the findings. Finally, a conclusion is presented in Chapter 6.. !6.

(16) Chapter 2 Literature review 2.1 Motion events encoding. 2.1.1 Motion event typology The expressions of motions in various languages have drawn the attention of many researchers for the past few decades (Talmy, 1975, 1985, 1991, 2000; Berman. 政治大. & Slobin, 1996, 2004). Talmy (1975) was the first to address the issue of the relation. 立. between the semantic structures and the lexical patterns in motion events. A motion. ‧ 國. 學. event is defined as “a situation containing movement or the maintenance of a. ‧. stationary location alike” (Talmy 1985, p.60). He categorized the semantic elements. sit. y. Nat. into several categories, including “Motion”, “Figure”, “Ground”, “Path”, “Manner”,. io. er. and “Cause”. The lexical elements, or surface elements, include “verb”, “adposition”,. al. and “subordinate clause”. “Motion” refers to its presence per se in motion events. A. n. v i n C motion clause consists of at leasthone e nlinguistic g c h iunitUdescribing the Figure changing its location in the time period under consideration, including the Figure moving between two macro-locations, changing posture, disappearing or appearing with respect to the ground, and engaging or disengaging to or from the ground (Talmy, 2000; Guo & Chen, 2009). “Figure” refers to the entity that moves or is located. Figure can move autonomously or be caused to moved. “Ground” is the referent. object or referent point with respect to the Figure’s movement. “Path” is the course that Figure follows when moving or that Figure occupies with respect to the Ground. !7.

(17) Path is the core element in a motion event, since there must be a course when the Figure moves in every motion event. The example (1) presents an example with these four basic elements encoded in an English sentence:. (1) The man [Figure]. came. into. the house.. [Motion]. [Path] [Ground]. The last two semantic elements “Manner” and “Cause” are considered to be the. 政治大 external semantic elements, since they may not be mentioned in a motion event. 立. ‧ 國. 學. “Manner” is the way in which the figure moves. It’s the co-events of motion. Slobin. (2004) mentioned that Manner indicates “motor pattern, rate, rhythm, posture, affect,. ‧. and evaluative factors” that modulate Motion. Pourcel (2003) mentioned that. sit. y. Nat. Manner also includes force dynamics, attitude, and encoding instrument that. n. al. er. io. concerns Motion. “Cause” is the external force that moves the Figure. The example is shown in (2) (Talmy, 1985):. (2) The pencil. Ch. rolled. engchi. i n U. v. off the table.. [Manner] The pencil. blew. off the table.. [Cause]. Talmy compared the lexicalization structures across different languages, and found that Motion, as a universal phenomenon, could be expressed in different ways !8.

(18) in typologically different languages. The typological characteristics occurred frequently and pervasively in colloquial style. Different language families tended to conflate Motion with different semantic elements and different surface element as well. The most distinct character was that “Path”, the core semantic element, was encoded in syntactically different fashions (Talmy, 1985, 1991). In some languages, Path was encoded in the main verb, occupying the main position of a sentence. Such languages included Spanish, Turkish, and Hebrew. These languages were categorized as verb-framed languages (V-languages). In other languages, Path was expressed by. 政治大 a subordinate component as a satellite element associated with the verb (e.g. 立. ‧ 國. 學. prepositions or particles). These kinds of languages included English, Russian, and German. They were called satellite-framed languages (S-languages).. ‧. For example, when describing the motion event of a balloon (Figure) moving. sit. y. Nat. upward (Path) through the chimney (Ground) by floating (Manner), a Spanish (V-. n. al. er. io. language) speaker normally makes a sentence as (3) (Talmy, 1985):. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. (3) El globo subió por la chimenea (flotando).. the balloon rose through the chimney (floating). In Spanish, Path (moving upward) is encoded in the main verb subir (rise). The verb subir clearly indicates the meaning of moving upward. Manner, on the other hand, is expressed by a dispensable particle flotando (floating). As for English, an Slanguage, the same motion event is often encoded as:. !9.

(19) (4) The balloon floated up through the chimney.. Different from Spanish, Path in English is encoded in the particle “up”, and the main verb “float” bears the meaning of Manner. The typological tendencies of motion expressions have aroused the interests of many other researchers. Slobin (1996, 2000, 2004) believed that motion event typology influenced the habitual language use of speakers of different languages. He emphasized the importance of “the typologies of language use” (Slobin, 2004). That. 政治大 is, linguistic patterns occurred in dynamic and interactive situations when language 立. ‧ 國. 學. was used. Therefore, it was necessary to study actual language use in a diversity of. languages and with different types of data. Slobin (2004) examined children and. ‧. adults’ narratives elicited from the wordless picture book Frog, where are you?. sit. y. Nat. (Mayer, 1969) in different languages, and found several differences in their rhetorical. n. al. er. io. style. First, the usage of Manner was different in type and frequency. S-language. i n U. v. speakers tended to use more diverse lexicon of Manner than V-language speakers. S-. Ch. engchi. language speakers also mentioned Manner more frequently than V-language speakers. For example, in Frog story, there was a scene where an owl emerges from the tree. English (S-language) speakers used Manner verb to describe the scene, such as: An owl popped out (Slobin 2004, p.224). Spanish speakers use Path verb describing the same scene, such as: Sale un buho “Exits an owl”. Second, different languages differed in the packaging of Path components. S-language speakers seemed to encode more Path segments per sentence by using multiple Path satellites prepositions, e.g. The frog crawled out of the jar and through the window into the !10.

(20) woods. (Slobin, 2004). On the other hand, V-language speakers encoded Path by using one bare verb per clause, such sentences translated in English would be like: The frog exiled the jar, passed through the window, and entered the woods (Slobin, 2004). Third, the description of Ground was different. S-language speakers provided more elaborated Ground information, and provided such information more frequently than V-language speakers. Finally, Slobin (2004) suggested that the motion expressions could be affected by other factors beyond the typological one. Those possible factors included patterns of motion expression which arise in language use,. 政治大 in the culture, and in the communicative aims of the speakers. Slobin believed these 立. ‧ 國. 學. factors above all contributed in shaping the motion encoding among different. languages but he had not mentioned further evidence supporting how communicative. er. io. sit. y. Nat 2.1.2 The acquisition of a motion events encoding. iv l C n h eof nmotion i Utypology, discussion g c hevent. n. Along with the. ‧. aims could affect motion event expressions.. the interest in how. children come to learn the expressions of motion event appeared. Researchers have investigated the development of children’s motion expressions in various languages. The issues frequently addressed in previous studies were whether children’s motion expressions had language-specific patterns from the beginning of children’s language acquisition, and how the language-specific patterns affect children’s motion expressions as they grow older. The different language-specific patterns of motion encoding found in previous studies include the typological differences suggested by !11.

(21) Talmy’s, the differences of the rhetorical style suggested by Slobin (1996), or other more specific usages of motion verbs and prepositions different from language from language. Such studies often compare two or more typologically different languages. Choi and Bowerman (1991) studied how Korean and English children lexicalized motion events with the aim of examining the language-specific factor played an important role in children’s language expressions from early on. They discovered that children are sensitive to the language-specific patterns since the age of two. For example, English children could master the particle use of Path such as up and down. 政治大 in both spontaneous and cause motion, and Korean children are able to distinguish 立. ‧ 國. 學. verbs used for spontaneous and cause motion. Özçaliskan and Slobin (1999) studied. English, Spanish and Turkish children’s motion verbal expressions. They found that. ‧. from the age of three, children talked about motions in distinct ways that are specific. sit. y. Nat. to their native language. English (S-language) children preferred to use more Path. n. al. er. io. verbs, while Spanish and Turkish (V-language) children had the preferences of using. i n U. v. more Manner verbs. Allen et al. (2003) examined English and Turkish children’s. Ch. engchi. motion expressions, and discovered that children from the age of three encoded motion with language-specific patterns. English-speaking children did not use two separate verbs to encode Manner and Path, while Turkish children did. Hickmann and Hendriks (2010) compared English and French children’s motion expressions. It was found that the English children utterances showed higher semantic density than French children. Also, French-speaking children express both Manner and Path with verbs, while English-speaking children usually express only Path with verbs. As. !12.

(22) these previous studies suggest, children learning different languages encoded motion events in a language-specific way from early on, around the age of two to three. The studies of children’s motion expressions also concern the issue of Slobin’s (1991, 1996b) “thinking for speaking” hypothesis. Slobin proposed a dynamic approach to deal with the relation between thought and language. “Thinking for speaking” was a special form of thought. It was an on-line mental activity, which took place while one formulated utterances. When we spoke, the grammar of the language guided us the speaker to take a language-specific perspective of what we. 政治大 experienced. The grammatical structure of language provided “a set of options for 立. ‧ 國. 學. schematizing experience for the purpose of verbal expression” (Slobin,1996b). In. other words, the patterns of our utterances were the realization of the thinking. ‧. process. It was the communication purpose that characterizes the nature of thinking. n. al. er. io. accessed and mobilized for language use.. sit. y. Nat. for speaking. Because of the need to communicate, the special form of thought was. i n U. v. The evidence of thinking for speaking is found in several areas, such as the. Ch. engchi. language use of different genres, the use of gestures when speaking, and language acquisition (Slobin, 2000; Kita and Özyürek, 2003; Stam, 2006). Slobin (1996b) pointed out the issue of learning to think for speaking. Since thinking for speaking required the speakers to pick “those characteristics of objects and events that (a) fit some conceptualization of the event, and (b) are readily encodable in the language” (1996b, p.76), he hypothesized that children needed to learn to think in accordance with how their native language allowed them to speak. Children were guided by the semantic distinctions and preferred constructions of their native language to attend to !13.

(23) the specific features of events when they spoke. If true, the typological differences of motion encoding could affect children’s “thinking for speaking” as well. Slobin (1991, 1996) examined thinking for speaking theory through the study of the motion expressions of children learning typologically different languages. He found systematic contrasts between English and Spanish children’s utterance. The contrasts reflected that children had different thinking for speaking patterns in respect to their mother tongue. Children attended to the particular aspect they needed to focus on in order to encode their experience of the world into language.. 政治大 Furthermore, thinking for speaking functioned in various genres. Slobin (2000) 立. ‧ 國. 學. tested the theory in pervasive genres. In his study, the expressions of motion events were examined in narrative, fiction, and conversation. The result showed that the. ‧. motion encoding of different languages remained their own typological patterns. sit. y. Nat. regardless of the contexts. For example, S-language speakers always used more. n. al. er. io. Manner token than Path token while V-language speakers always used more Path. i n U. v. token than Manner token in all genres. In this present study, accordingly, it is. Ch. engchi. assumed that children’s motion expressions should present the same typological character in different genres. . 2.2 Motion events encoding of Mandarin Chinese. 2.2.1 Motion encoding typology of Mandarin The typology classification of Mandarin has been a dispute over the years. Talmy (1991) classified Mandarin as an S-language. S-languages is said to encode !14.

(24) Path in a satellite position in a sentence. He argued that Path verbs did not usually function as full verbs and that Path verb type was rather limited. Therefore, he believed that, in Mandatrin, the second verb (usually a Path component) of the motion serial verb was generally viewed as the satellite part of the serial verb, so Manner was the more significant component. Such argument was supported by scholars such as Chao (1968) and Li and Thompson (1989), who also regarded the second verb “Path” as a complement to the first verb “Manner”. However, later Tai (2003) proposed that the second verb (Path) was the center of predication, or the. 政治大 head of the serial verb construction. He argued that because the second verb referred 立. ‧ 國. 學. to the foreground information, it should be considered more important than the first verb (Manner) of the serial verb. This means that Mandarin should be considered a. ‧. V-language, since V-languages encode Motion mainly in Path verbs. The argument of. sit. y. Nat. which segment takes the primary position has long been discussed until Slobin. n. al. er. io. (2004) proposed an alternate view on Mandarin’s categorization. He believed that. i n U. v. Mandarin belonged to the third type — equipollently-framed languages. He believed. Ch. engchi. that V1 (Manner) and V2 (Path) were equally important in its morphosyntactic status, because it was very natural for the Mandarin speakers to express Motion with either Path or Manner verbs, and they appeared “to be equal in force or significance” (Slobin, 2004). Chen (2005) and Guo and Chen (2009) supported this view by examining Mandarin speakers’ use of motion verb type and the encoding of Ground information. They found that the rhetorical style behaved not so much like Vlanguages nor S-languages. Therefore, they believed that Mandarin indeed belonged to another type — the equipollently-framed language. !15.

(25) In Mandarin, Path, Manner and Deixis are all allowed to be coded individually or jointly in a serial verb (such as: ⾶飛上 fei shan, “fly up”; 跑出來 pau guo lai, “run out over”). Path verb is coded simultaneous with the semantic element of Motion and Path. Furthermore, Path can appear alone (e.g. 進 jing “enter”), or be combined with other Path, Manner or Deictic verbs. When it appears in a serial verb, it may occupy the first slot of the verb (e.g. 進來 jing lai “come in”). But most of the time, it occupies the second slot of the serial verb (e.g. 跑進 pao jing “run in”). Manner verb,. 政治大. naturally, is encoded with the semantic element of Manner and Motion. Manner verb. 立. is one of the principle linguistic devices for expressing Manner of motion events in. ‧ 國. 學. Mandarin (Chen, 2005). Like Path verbs, Manner verbs can be used individually (e.g.. ‧. 跑 pao “run”). When it is used jointly with Path or/and Deixis, it always stays in the. sit. y. Nat. first slot of the verb (e.g. 跑掉 pao diao “run away”; 跑出來 pao chu lai “run out”).. n. al. er. io. Deixis verbs indicate whether the Figure moves away or toward the speaker. There. i n U. v. are two kinds of Deixis in Mandarin: 來 lai “come” and 去 qu “go”. Deixis can either. Ch. engchi. be used alone, or combined with Path or Manner in the final slot of the serial verb (e.g. 跑來 pao lai “run near”; 跑出來 pao chu lai “run out toward”). One of the language-specific characteristics of Mandarin was that Manner, Path and Deixis verbs could occur simultaneously in a serial order to form serial verb (Chen, 2005). Naturally, the three categories of the motion verbs can generate several combinations of different constructions. However, among all the constructions, Manner + Path. !16.

(26) (+Deixis) was the most common construction found in Mandarin speakers’ motion encoding (Chen, 2005; Guo & Chen, 2009). Apart from encoding simultaneously Manner and Path (including Deixis) into a construction of serial verb, there are some other language-specific features of Mandarin in coding motion events mentioned by scholars such as Chen (2005). Chen discussed adults’ motion encoding in the aspects of motion verb token, motion verb type, Ground description, motion segment across sentences, and static settings versus dynamic movement. According to his study, in verb type usage, Mandarin speakers. 政治大 used a lot more types of Manner verbs (including transitive and intransitive ones) 立. ‧ 國. 學. than Path verbs (45 vs. 16). As for verb token usage, Manner frequency is a lot higher than that of only Path (65% vs. 26%). As for Ground information, 52% of. ‧. their motion expressions were found with at least one type of ground information.. sit. y. Nat. Furthermore, the Mandarin speaking adults used 3.5 event segments on average in. al. n. dynamic movement.. er. io. the deer scene. Last, the speakers tended to describe more physical settings than. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In sum, there are several features in Mandarin’s motion encoding: 1) Construction: Manner+Path (+Deixis) can all be coded into a serial verb, and are the most common motion construction. 2) Verb type: Manner lexicon was larger than Path lexicon. 3) Verb token: Manner usage was more frequent than Path. 4) Ground: Ground information occurs in high frequency, about half of the time. 5) Multipleaction clauses are used in a complex event. 6) Descriptions of physical settings are frequent. These characteristics above are not entirely applicable to either S-language or V-language, thus Mandarin appears to be a unique language type in motion events !17.

(27) encoding, and remains to be studied more. This present study focused on the analysis of the verbs, thus 1), 2) and 3) were used altogether as the criteria to examine the language-specific patterns of the motion verbs.. 2.2.2 The acquisition of Mandarin speaking children’s motion encoding Several scholars have carried out much research on Mandarin children’s development of motion expressions (Chen, 2005; Guo & Chen, 2009; Lin, 2006; Huang, 2012). These researchers examined many aspects of the motion expressions. 政治大. of children, including verb type, verb frequency, verb construction, and syntactic. 立. construction. However, the results of different genres of data seem to contradict one. ‧ 國. 學. another. Most of the studies investigated narrative data (Chen, 2005; Guo & Chen,. ‧. 2009; Lin, 2006). Chen (2005) elicited children’s narration by using the picture book. sit. y. Nat. Frog, where are you (Mayer, 1969), and found that children used more types of. io. al. er. Manner verbs than Path verbs starting from the age of three, and that the frequency. v. n. of Manner was higher than that of Path in all age groups. The frequency of Ground. Ch. engchi. i n U. information was lower than that of the adults, but would increase with age. Guo and Chen (2009) used the same method to collect their data, and found similar results, which is that Manner prevailed Path with respect to verb type. They have also investigated children’s motion constructions, and found the frequency order resembled to that of adults, and that M+P(+D) was the most productive construction from the age of three. Lin (2006) used animated films to collect Taiwanese children’s narrative data. The results of verb type and token concurred with that of Chen (2005) and Guo and Chen (2009). Motion construction is similar to the results of Guo and !18.

(28) Chen, presenting M+P+D to be the most productive construction. These three studies above suggested that children tended to use Manner more frequently and more diversely than Path, and the frequency and diversity of Manner increased with age. Also, the construction of M+P+D occurred with high frequency in children’s speech. This construction is a typical characteristic of the equipollentlly-framed language, since Manner, Path and Deixis are all used in this construction. However, the study with conversational data provided results with different patterns. There has been few studies that focus on conversational data concerning. 政治大 Mandarin-speaking children’s motion expressions. So far, there has been one study 立. ‧ 國. 學. of Huang’s (2012) which investigated the motion expressions in daily conversation. of Taiwanese children. In terms of motion verbs, she found that Manner occurred. ‧. more frequently at the very beginning with the one-year-old children. Nonetheless, at. sit. y. Nat. the age of two, the frequency of Manner dropped, and that of Path and Deixis raised.. n. al. er. io. After the age of two, Path began to prevail Manner in frequency, and thus Huang. i n U. v. proposed that Path was the most productive motion verb. On the other hand, with. Ch. engchi. regard to motion construction, the results showed that children began to use M+P+D more and more often starting from the age of two. However, children of all ages seemed to prefer the single M or P construction, followed by two-verb construction P+P or M+P, and M+P+D construction came the last. Huang hence suggested that children were prone to use one-verb constructions in conversation when encoding motion events. The frequent usage of Path led Huang to propose that Mandarin children’s motion encoding was inclined to the typology of V-languages. Her results showed that, in conversation, the language-specific patterns related to typology were !19.

(29) not obvious. This contradicted to the previous studies which suggested that languagespecific patterns were frequently found in children’s speech. It seems that previous studies have shown that Mandarin-speaking children’s motion expressions collected from different genres would present different patterns. The first difference can be found in verb token. In the previous studies of narrative data, it was suggested that Manner was more salient in children’s motion expressions. However, the study with data on natural conversation suggested that children did not prefer Manner but Path in terms of verb token. The second. 政治大 difference can be found in verb construction. In narration, M+P+D construction was 立. ‧ 國. 學. the preferred construction, similar to the tendency of adults. Nevertheless, children preferred one-verb construction in conversation. Huang (2012) herself made some. ‧. speculations to account for the different results she found between the conversational. sit. y. Nat. data and narrative data. First, she suggested that in natural conversation, there were. n. al. er. io. less actual activities displayed in front of the speakers, while in book-reading. i n U. v. sessions, the context of the motion was more exact with pictures provided. As a. Ch. engchi. result, the difference of the visibility of motion led to the focus on different semantical components. Second, the reason that the one-verb construction was frequently found in conversation was due to economic cost in language processing. That is to say, children might choose to produce simpler constructions to reduce the processing time in order to interact more smoothly with their interlocutors. However, although Huang (2012) has made some comparison between the results obtained from her study using conversational data and those obtained from other studies using narrative data (Guo & Chen, 2009; Lin, 2006), it seems that her !20.

(30) comparison still remains somewhat inaccurate. The first reason is that motion verb classification in her analysis and the other studies with narrative data are not consistent. In the narrative studies, Chen (2005) classified motion verbs into three categories: path verbs (including deictic path verbs and non-deictic path verbs), manner-of-motion verbs, and non-motion neutral verbs. Guo and Chen (2009) classified motion verbs into four categories: Manner verbs (including the co-event of motion: cause), Path verbs, Deictic verbs, and Neutral verbs (the verbs that “do not express any translational motion in the normal context” but “acquire the function and. 政治大 meaning of Manner verbs”(p. 198) ). Lin (2006) coded motion element, instead of 立. ‧ 國. 學. motion verbs, into five categories: manner, path, deixis, source, and goal. On the other hand, in the conversational study, Huang (2012) classified the verbs into three. ‧. verbal elements: manner verb, path verb, and deictic verb. However, in her study,. sit. y. Nat. Huang also combined path and deictic path together in part of her analysis for the. n. al. er. io. purpose of cross-linguistic comparison. It shows that the motion verb classification. i n U. v. in previous studies is quite inconsistent, which makes it harder to compare.. Ch. engchi. Another reason for the inaccurate comparison of Huang’s results to the results of previous studies with narrative data is that each of the studies concerned different aspects of motion expressions, resulting in the comparison to be somewhat incomplete. Some aspects, such as the analysis of verb token and verb type, were mentioned by all of the studies. However, some aspects were discussed either in the studies with conversational or narrative data, but not in both data. For instance, the analysis of the number of verb in motion constructions was discussed in Huang’s (2012) study of conversational data but was not mentioned in most of the studies !21.

(31) with narrative data. Thus, a more systematic and careful comparison taking genre difference into account has not yet been done. In order to clarify how language-specific properties affect the course of learning to describe motions in conversation and narration, the current study reexamined 3- to 5-year-old children’s motion encoding in these two genres respectively to answer the first two research question: “How do Mandarin-speaking children ages 3, 4 and 5 encode motion events in natural conversation?” and “How do Mandarin-speaking children ages 3, 4 and 5 encode motion events in elicited. 政治大 narration?” To summarize, the language-specific patterns of Mandarin include: 1) 立. ‧ 國. 學. Verb type: the types of Manner verbs is more versatile than those of Path verbs; 2) Verb token: Manner tokens is more frequent than Path tokens; and 3) Construction:. ‧. MPD is the most common construction. Since previous studies with narrative data. sit. y. Nat. suggest that children’s motion expressions started to show some language-specific. n. al. er. io. patterns similar to that of adults (Slobin, 1991; Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Özçaliskan. i n U. v. & Slobin, 1999; Allen et al., 2003; Lin, 2006; Guo & Chen, 2009; Hickmann &. Ch. engchi. Hendriks, 2010), it is expected that in Mandarin-speaking children’s motion encoding these above patterns will start to appear even in the youngest group of children in the genre of narrative.. 2.3 Children’s language performance in conversation and narration Previous studies on children’s motion encoding have employed conversational and narrative data respectively to analyze children’s language patterns with different purposes. Narrative data is the most extensively used data in studying motion !22.

(32) encoding. The researchers used either wordless picture books or motion pictures to elicit children’s motion expressions (Slobin 1996, 2004; Özyurek & Özçaliskan 2000; Chen 2005; Pourcel 2005; Parafragou et al. 2006; Lin 2006; Guo & Chen 2009; Hickmann 2006). These studies usually concerned different language-specific speech patterns — including the typological issue — and “thinking for speaking” issue. On the other hand, conversational data can also be found in several studies over the years (Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Slobin, 2003; Zheng & Golding-Meadow, 2002; Hohenstein, 2013). The researchers analyzed children’s spontaneous use of. 政治大 language in daily conversations. One of the advantages of using conversational data 立. ‧ 國. 學. is that it is a more effective way to collect the speech of those children younger than three years old (Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Slobin, 2003; Hickmann & Hendriks,. ‧. 2010). Conversational data can also be used to collect motion expressions from deaf. sit. y. Nat. children (Zheng & Golding-Meadow, 2002) or the motion expressions in child-. n. al. er. io. directed speech (Hohenstein, 2013). It seems that narrative and conversational data. i n U. v. both have their advantages with respect to studying different aspects of children’s. Ch. engchi. motion encoding. The disadvantage, however, is that it is unclear if the language patterns found in one genre can also be observed in another. The factor of genre remains to be a potential variable that might affect the results of the studies. There are few studies that focus on the factor of genre in children's motion encoding. Slobin (2000) examined adult’s motion expressions in conversation and narration in order to elaborate the theory of “thinking for speaking”. It was found that adults of different languages encoded motion event construction in an identical way in narration and conversation in terms of verb type usage. He found consistent results !23.

(33) for the S-language adult speakers (in the study, English speakers) who used more types of Manner verbs than Path verbs in both narration as well as conversation. Similarly, how children talked about motion has also been studied by Slobin. Two of Slobin's study (1996b; 2000) collected children’s narrative data and conversational data respectively. The first study of Slobin’s (1996b) applied narrative data, and it was found that children’s motion verb type was consistent in conversation and narration. V-language children used fewer types of Manner verbs, while S-language children use more. These results with narrative data are comparable to Slobin’s. 政治大 second study (2000) with conversational data, in which he compared the Manner 立. ‧ 國. 學. verb type of children speaking typologically different languages in conversation. In other words, according to two of Slobin's study (1996b; 2000), S-language children. ‧. used more types of Manner verbs and V-language children used more types of Path. sit. y. Nat. verbs in both conversation and narration. These two studies have implied that. n. al. er. io. children’s narrative and conversational motion encoding both showed language-. i n U. v. specific characteristics in terms of verb type. Although the purpose of Slobin’s. Ch. engchi. studies did not aim to solve the issue of genre differences in motion encoding, he did pin out the importance to examine actual language use in different genres, and his studies have proposed that certain similarity, namely verb type usage, might be found in the children’s expressions of motion events in both genres. Another study of Selimis and Katis (2010) takes the genre differences of speech into account as a factor of affecting children’s motion expression’s usage. The researchers studied English-speaking and Greek-speaking children’s motion expressions by examining the data collected from three different methods: picture !24.

(34) narratives, film narratives, and spontaneous conversation. They found that, despite that Greek and English are typologically different languages, children in both language groups used more types of Manner lexeme in conversation than in narration. Therefore, they claimed that Manner is more salient in conversation than narration. According to Selimis and Katis's study, it is expected in the current study that more Manner types can be found in conversation than in narration in Mandarin children’s motion expressions. The above two studies of Slobin (1999b, 2000) and Selimis and Katis (2010). 政治大 only examined the usage of verb type. However, the analyses concerning the speech 立. ‧ 國. 學. habit of motion encoding from other previous studies were not confined to the usage of verb type. The usage of verb token and verb construction has also been analyzed. ‧. in other previous studies on motion expressions. In fact, a language-specific. sit. y. Nat. characteristics of motion expressions was said to be even stronger when verb token. n. al. er. io. was being analyzed. For example, Özçalışkan and Slobin (1999) found systematic. i n U. v. differences in verb token between V-languages and S-languages, but not in verb type.. Ch. engchi. Therefore, in this current study, in addition to verb type, verb token and verb construction are also included and analyzed. Although few studies discuss the differences of motion verb token in conversation and narration, previous studies did imply that children’s linguistic expressions can vary in some respects. Selimis el al.(2010) has pointed out that speaker’s habitual speech “can vary depending upon factors such as the type of discourse, its context and content”. There are several differences between conversation and narration. The first difference is that the two discourses demand !25.

(35) different communication responsibilities. Narration demands greater communication responsibility as opposed to conversation (Logan et al., 2011). In conversation, there is at least one interlocutor interacting with the target child, while in narration, the participation of the other interlocutors, if any, is little. The joint participation in message development will influence children’s language use (Logan et al., 2011). The second difference is the degree to which the motion element can be inferred. In conversation, children may talk about the current motion that can be observed by both the speaker and the listener. However, in narration, the motion that. 政治大 the children talk about is depicted in pictures, in which the motions are not shown in 立. ‧ 國. 學. real world. The way speakers talk about motions seems to be influenced by whether the motion is presupposed or not by the audience. For example, Papafragou et al.. ‧. (2006) found that when Manner was not inferable by the hearer, Greek speakers were. sit. y. Nat. more likely to mention this element, even though Greek is a V-framed language that. n. al. er. io. prefer to use Path. If so, then the difference of the visibility of motion in narration. i n U. v. and conversation might affect how children talk about Path and Manner.. Ch. engchi. Finally, it was found that children produced more complex utterances in narration than in conversation (Dollaghan et al., 1990). For example, children’s MLU was higher in narration, and the frequency of bound morphemes was also higher in narration, compared to conversation (Leadholm & Miller, 1992). Therefore, it is also expected to find difference between the motion construction in narration and in conversation in this current study. In terms of motion construction, it is possible that children might use more complex construction, i.e., more number of verbs, in narration than in conversation. !26.

(36) A language like Mandarin, in which Manner and Path are equally encodable, allows children to have more freedom to choose what to mention and what not to. With the freedom provided by Mandarin, what affect children to attend to certain aspect of motion might lie in context and in language use, just like the previous studies on Mandarin children’s motion expression mentioned in section 2.2.2 suggested. Although previous studies suggested that there have been some distinctions in Mandarin children’s motion expression patterns in different genres, the comparison needs to be done in a more consistent way.. 政治大 In sum of section 2.3, how context in different genres affects children’s motion 立. ‧ 國. 學. expressions does not seem to have a consistent and extensive conclusion, no matter in Mandarin or other languages. In order to cope with this issue, the current study re-. ‧. examined and compared the results collected from conversation and narration data. sit. y. Nat. respectively. The comparison aims to answer the last research question “How do the. n. al. er. io. motion encodings of Mandarin-speaking children ages 3, 4 and 5 differ in. i n U. v. conversation and in narration?” The possible differences might be found based on the. Ch. engchi. suggestions of previous studies. First, in terms of verb type, previous studies have shown that children used more types of Manner verbs in conversation than in narration. Second, children’s motion expressions can be different because of the following characteristics: the communication responsibility is higher in narration, and the salience of the motion elements is higher in conversation. Last, in terms of motion constructions, previous studies suggested that children’s utterances were more complex in narration, so more complex motion construction might be observed in narration in the current study. !27.

(37) Chapter 3 Method As mentioned in Chapter two, previous studies concerning children’s motion expressions collected data from two genres: eliciting narration and spontaneous conversation. In this current study, with the purpose of examining children’s expressions of motion events in these two different genres in a consistent way, both types of the data will be collected, namely the conversational data from natural. 政治大. spontaneous interactions and the narration data elicited by story-telling.. 立. ‧ 國. 學. 3.1 Subjects. ‧. The information of the subjects and the data are presented in Table 1. The age. sit. y. Nat. range of the participants chosen was between 3 and 5 considering children under. n. al. er. io. three lacking the ability to narrate a whole story. Children under the age of 5 have. i n U. v. been widely used as a sample in other studies, which means it is possible to compare. Ch. engchi. the data found in this study with those works. Therefore, the three age groups of participants are 3, 4 and 5 years old. In conversational data, 8 children in total participated. In the group of age 3, there were 2 females and 1 male; age 4, 1 female and 1 male; age 5, 1 female and 2 males. The data length of each age group was roughly three hours. In accordance with the participants in natural conversation, children of 3, 4 and 5 years old were participated in narrative data. 22 children participated in total. In the group of age 3, there were 3 females and 4 males; age 4, 2 females and 5 males; age 5, 4 females and 4 males. The data length of each age !28.

(38) group was about 30 minutes. The data length from the two genres was determined by the motion clauses collected. The number of motion clauses from conversational data and narrative data reached a comparable quantity. The motion clauses from these two set of data can be found in Table 2 and Table 7 respectively. All the participants and their caregivers in both conversational and narrative data are native Taiwanese Mandarin speakers. The main language the children use at home and at school is also Taiwanese Mandarin. All the participants live in Taipei City.. 政治大 Table 1. Information of subjects and data length 立. Narration. 學. 4. 5. 3. participants. No. of. 3 (2 females,1 male). 2 (1 females, 1 male). 3 (1 female, 2 males). 7 (3 females, 4 males). Age mean. 3;2. 4;1. 5;1. 3;6. Nat. 4;0 - 4;5. 4;11 - 5;3. 3;0 - 3;10. Data length. 3 hours 8 minutes. 2 hours 56 minutes. 3 hours 9 minutes. 32 minutes. engchi. 7 (2 females, 5 males). 8 (4 females, 4 males). 4;5. 5;4. 4;2 - 4;7. 5;0 - 5;9. 30 minutes. 28 minutes. er. n 3.2 Data collection. Ch. 5. sit. 3;1 - 3;5. io. Age range. al. 4. ‧. 3. y. Age. Conversation. ‧ 國. Genre. i n U. v. 3.2.1 Motion expressions in natural conversation The data was from the Language Acquisition Lab in the Graduate Institute of Linguistics in National Chengchi University directed by Professor Chiung-chih Huang. The data was collected in daily interaction between mother and child at home. The observer went to the participant’s house and recorded the natural interaction between mother and child with little intrusion. The situations include the !29.

(39) child playing with toys, helping the mother with house chores, drawing pictures, etc. The story-reading sessions were excluded from the conversational data. Each session lasted around one hour. All sessions were video-taped and transcribed in accordance with the CHAT Transcription Format.. 3.2.2 Motion expressions in elicited narration The data on elicited narration was also from the Language Acquisition Lab in. 政治大. the Graduate Institute of Linguistics in National Chengchi University. The wordless. 立. picture book Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969) was used to elicit children’s. ‧ 國. 學. narration. The book has been widely used in eliciting motion expressions from adults. ‧. and children of different languages (Berman & Slobin, 1994), since the storyline. sit. y. Nat. includes many movements of the characters. The book is about a boy and his dog. io. al. er. finding a pet frog which escapes from his house. The data collection process. v. n. followed these steps as follow: first, the picture book was shown to the child from. Ch. engchi. i n U. the start to the end. Second, the researcher turned to the first page of the book and asked the participant to tell the story from the beginning. The observer only gave minimal instruction to encourage the child to speak more or to continue speaking, such as saying “And then?”, “What about the boy/the dog?” or “What happens here?” Each participant was tested individually. The whole process was recorded and the utterances were transcribed in accordance with the CHAT Transcription Format.. 3.3 Coding !30.

(40) Before coding, motion clauses were first identified in the transcription. All the motion clauses contain either one motion verb or a motion serial-verb, and it is either a Path verb, a Manner verb, a Deictic verb or a combination of any of the two or all three verbs. According to Talmy (2000) and Guo and Chen (2009), a motion clause includes that: a) The Figure moves between two macro-locations. The sentence below conveys that the Figure “the train” moves from its original point to another location “the grass”. ⽕火⾞車. 到立 huoche dao. 政治大草裡⾯面了。︒. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. cao limian le train arrive grass inside PRT “The train goes into the grass.”. b) The Figure changes posture. . Nat. sit. y. As illustrated in this example, the Figure “the car” changes its posture by. n. al. er. io. turning from one direction to another. 汽⾞車. 就. 轉. Ch. 過. e n g c hlaii. qiche jiu zhuan guo car then turn pass “Then the car turns over.”. i n U. 來。︒. v. come. c) The Figure disappears or appears with respect to the ground. The Figure “he” appears from a place that is not specifically pointed out, but it is obvious that the motion conveys the beginning point of the change of location — here. 他. 從. 這裡. 鑽 !31. 出. 來。︒.