中文母子對話互動中的母親互動風格與話題延續 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學語言學研究所碩士論文 National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of Linguistics Master Thesis. 指導教授：黃瓊之 Advisor ：Professor Chiung-chih Huang. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 sit. y. Nat. 中文母子對話互動中的母親互動風格與話題延續. io. er. Maternal Interactional Styles and Topic Maintenance in Mandarin Mother-child. n. a lConversational Interactions i v n Ch U engchi. 研究生：劉冠男撰 Student：Guan-nan Liu 中華民國九十九年九月 September, 2010.

(2) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v.

(3) Maternal Interactional Styles and Topic Maintenance in Mandarin Mother-child Conversational Interactions. By Guan-nan Liu. 學 ‧. ‧ 國. 立. 政治大. n. al. er. io. 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. September 2010. i n U. v.


(5) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. Copyright © 2010 Guan-nan Liu All Rights Reserved. i n U. v.


(7) To My Beloved Parents. 獻給我親愛的父母. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v.


(9) Acknowledgements 總算是完成了論文。當初論文口試結束的時候，我心中百感交集，恰巧又聽到兩位不知名的學妹在討論”冠男學長今年不畢業不行”，我想她們的確是道出了我的心聲。回想當初如願考進語言所的時候充滿了熱情，也很順利地在碩二修完所有課的時候開始做論文的準備。只是大綱口試通過後，得知需要修改的部分比預期的. 政治大. 多時候，心中升起了一股壓力。我也知道我的個性是有一個東西壓著就會想逃避. 立. 提不起勁的人，而面對寫論文這種需要長期抗戰的挑戰，有很長一段的時間我都. ‧ 國. 學. 不知該如何是好。途中碰到很多困難，也曾經考慮過換題目。雖然我從未放棄，. ‧. 但是一個學期過去了，兩個學期過去了，我的進度依然寥寥無幾。到了最後一年，. Nat. io. sit. y. 接踵而來的是當兵與休學的壓力，這一切又讓我更加惶恐。. er. 所幸的，這一路上有很多支持我的人，而最要感謝的就是黃瓊之老師。黃老. al. n. v i n Ch 師在許多次我自己都不知所措的面談中給我適度的提醒，並且總是一直鼓勵我要 engchi U 對自己有信心，要加油，要積極，即使我總是常常讓老師擔心。因為老師這些幫忙，一點一滴，我才能在不停懷疑自己是否能畢業的想法中振作起來，在最後的關頭還是告訴自己還有機會，只要肯拼就好。再來要感謝的是助教惠鈴學姐，常常在黃老師不在或是看到我在偷懶的時候提醒我要加油，並督促我，關心我的進度，也感謝學姐在聽到我可以進行最後的口試以及可以順利畢業的時候，臉上不可思議欣喜萬分的表情。 iv.

(10) 感謝非常親切的薩文蕙老師跟張麗香老師撥空擔任我的口試委員，在口試的時候也給了我很多寶貴的意見，讓我能夠順利地進行最後的修改。感謝蕭宇超老師、何萬順老師、徐佳慧老師、詹惠珍老師、賴惠玲老師、萬依萍給老師我的關心，以及所有在研究上助益良多的東西。還要感謝語言所的大家給我的意見跟支持。感謝工作室的大家時常會傾聽我寫論文碰到的困難，也會常常鼓勵我，給我許多意見和幫助。感謝妃容這位戰友，. 政治大. 常常提醒我，鼓勵我，並且講一些八卦讓我比較不苦悶。感謝元翔、曉晴、容瑜、. 立. 禎田，你們都在我寫論文這段熬苦湯的過程給了我很多幫助。. ‧ 國. 學. 另外，感謝所有在寫論文的過程中，所有曾經給我支持跟鼓勵甚至是罵過我. ‧. 的朋友們，哪怕只是一點點，我心裡都非常感謝。. Nat. sit er. io. 度。. y. 最後感謝我的父母親對我的支持，包容我這一路的任性與那些負面消極的態. al. n. v i n Ch 僅以此論文，獻給所有看得懂跟看不懂的親朋好友們。 engchi U. v.

(11) Table of Contents Acknowledgements ---------------------------------------------------------------- iv List of Figures -------------------------------------------------------------------- viii List of Tables ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ix Chinese Abstract -------------------------------------------------------------------- x English Abstract -------------------------------------------------------------------- xi Chapter 1 Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------- 1 1.1 Motivation ----------------------------------------------------------------- 3 1.2 Current Study ------------------------------------------------------------- 4 Chapter 2 Literature Review ----------------------------------------------------- 6 2.1 Maternal Speech and Child Language Development --------------- 6 2.2 Maternal Speech Styles -------------------------------------------------- 8 2.2.1 Previous Studies --------------------------------------------------- 8 2.2.2 Comparisons of Maternal Speech Styles --------------------- 12 2.3 Discourse Topic and Topic Management --------------------------- 14 Chapter 3 Methodology ---------------------------------------------------------- 20 3.1 Subject and Data Collection ------------------------------------------ 20 3.2 Coding Scheme --------------------------------------------------------- 21 3.2.1 Maternal Interactional Style ----------------------------------- 21 3.2.2 Children’s Topic Maintaining Competence ---------------- 24 3.3 Data Analysis ----------------------------------------------------------- 25 3.3.1 Maternal Interactional Style ----------------------------------- 25 3.3.2 Children’s Topic Maintaining Competence ------------------ 26 3.3.3 Mother-child Interaction—Topic Episode ------------------- 26 Chapter 4 Results ----------------------------------------------------------------- 30 4.1 Maternal Interactional Style ------------------------------------------ 30 4.1.1 The Speech Category Level ------------------------------------ 30 4.1.2 The Conversational Parameter Level ------------------------- 33 4.1.3 Maternal Interactional Style of the Two Mothers ----------- 34 4.2 Children’s Topic-maintaining Competence ------------------------- 35 4.2.1 Communicative Intents ----------------------------------------- 35 4.2.2 Topic Incorporation/Collaboration ---------------------------- 39 4.2.3 Rate of Topic Change ------------------------------------------- 46 4.3 Interaction of Maternal Interactional Styles and Topic Maintenance ------------------------------------------------ 47 Chapter 5 Discussions ------------------------------------------------------------ 58. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vi. i n U. v.

(12) 5.1 Comparisons with Previous Studies----------------------------------- 58 5.2 General Pictures for the two dyads’ Interactions -------------------- 62 Chapter 6 Conclusion ------------------------------------------------------------ 65 6.1 Concluding Remarks ---------------------------------------------------- 65 6.2 Limitations and Suggestions ------------------------------------------- 66 Appendix --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 68 References ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 69. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vii. i n U. v.

(13) List of Figures. Figure 1: Preliminary topic episode identification scheme --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Figure 2: Topic episode identification scheme involving two speakers --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Figure 3 Speaking turn with topic introducing / reintroducing utterance --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 Figure 4 General Picture of Interaction for LIN’s dyad --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 63 Figure 5 General Picture of Interaction for LJW’s dyad --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 64. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. viii. i n U. v.

(14) List of Tables. Table 1 Comparison of maternal styles in previous studies --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Table 2 Activity types in the two dyads’ conversational interaction --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Table 3 Results of the speech category level in two mothers’ utterances --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 Table 4 Results of two mothers’ conversational parameter level --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 Table 5 Results of two children’s communicative intents in topic-maintaining utterances --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 Table 6 Results of two children’s topic incorporation/collaboration in topic-maintaining utterance --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 39 Table 7 Results of two children’s rate of topic change --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 Table 8 Comparisons of the two Dyads’ rate of topic change --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 53 Table 9 Mothers’ speech category in topic-changing utterances that ended topic episodes --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 54. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. ix. i n U. v.

(15) 國立政治大學研究所碩士論文摘要研究所別: 語言學研究所論文名稱: 中文母子對話互動中的母親互動風格與話題延續指導教授: 黃瓊之研究生: 劉冠男論文提要內容: 共一冊，分六章. 本研究的目的為探究中文母子對話中，母親的互動風格與話題延續的關係。研究問題為: (a)本研究中兩位母親的互動風格為何? (b)兩位孩童的話題延續表現有何不同? (c)母親的互動風格與話題延續有怎樣的互動關係? 研究語料為兩組親子互動的自然語料，各取三個小時，孩童的年紀約為三歲。研究結果顯示兩位母親的互動風格有所不同，分別屬於命令型和引誘型。而小孩的在話題延續上表現則是相近，大多用回應母親問題的方式來延續話題並且能在不同的情境中提供新資訊。對兩組親子互動的探究顯示命令型的母親比較不會延續對話而經常改變話題，造成較短的話題片斷。引誘型的母親則較注重對話的延續且較少改變話題，造成較長的話題片斷。. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. x. i n U. v.

(16) Abstract. The purpose of the study is to investigate the interaction of the maternal interactional styles and topic maintenance in Mandarin mother-child conversational interaction. There are three research questions: (a) What are the mothers’ interactional styles in the current case? (b) What are the differences among children’s competences of topic maintenance? (c) How do the maternal interaction styles interact with topic maintenance in the conversational interactions? Naturally occurring conversations of. 政治大 suggested that while the two mothers differed in terms of their interactional styles, the 立 two dyads' conversational interactions were adopted as the data and analyzed. Results. two children showed nearly equal sophistication in terms of their topic-maintaining. ‧ 國. 學. competences. Examinations of the two dyads' interactions also revealed that the. ‧. directive mother was less interested in maintaining the conversations, changed topics. sit. y. Nat. more frequently, and maintained discourse topics for less turns. The. io. er. conversation-eliciting mother paid more attention on maintaining of the conversations, change topics less frequently, and maintained discourse topics for much more turns.. n. al. Ch. engchi. xi. i n U. v.

(17) 1. Chapter 1 Introduction Being a primary caregiver, the mother plays a significant role in the child’s language development (Pine, 1994). In terms of child language acquisition, mother’s language use is of great concern, especially how mothers modify their language uses to compensate for children’s immature linguistic capacity (Pine, 1994). However, the question as to whether child-directed speech (CDS) is necessary for language acquisition has not come to a full. 治政大 just as those raised in where children seem having no difficulties acquiring language 立. agreement among researchers, e.g., CDS is not adopted in some South- Africa families,. environments or cultures with CDS (Lieven, 1994). Nevertheless, plenty of studies still. ‧ 國. 學. suggest that maternal language inputs have great influence on children’s language. ‧. development and deserving close investigations (Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1977; Snow, 1982; McDonald & Pien, 1982; Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1987).. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Individual differences among children who acquire language have been well recognized in studies within the field of child language acquisition. In addition to. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. individual differences among children, previous studies also revealed that different. engchi. maternal interactional styles are distinguishable among mother-child interaction (Nelson , 1973; Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1977; McDonald & Pien, 1982; Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1987; Lin, 2006). Nelson (1973) is the very first researcher who studied mother’s conversational behaviors and showed that distinct maternal styles could be distinguished by means of variables such as syntactic and semantic features. The most significant contribution is that he found that some characteristics of maternal speech could facilitate or inhibit children’s.

(18) 2. language development. Nelson’s study was followed by many subsequent studies, e.g., Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman (1977), McDonald & Pien (1982), Olsen-Fulero (1982), and Hoff-Ginsberg (1987). They examined maternal conversational style in terms of both structural and functional features and looked for characteristics that are related to child’s language development, including grammatical development, e.g., acquisition of certain linguistic forms, and pragmatic development, e.g., acquiring communicative capacities such as conversational exchange and topic management. Nevertheless, in studies of. 治政 1982; Olsen-Fulero,1982), it was merely treated as one of大 the variables which might help 立 maternal speech styles where topic maintenance was investigated (McDonald & Pien,. differentiate distinct maternal interactional styles. In sum, the interaction of maternal. ‧ 國. 學. speech style and topic maintenance didn’t receive explicit examination.. ‧. In spite of the various definitions of the term topic within distinct frameworks, topic refers to discourse topic in our study. A discourse topic is the proposition (or set of. y. Nat. er. io. sit. propositions) about which the speaker is either providing or requesting new information (Keenan & Schieffelin,1983). As for topic management, it includes the ability to initiate. n. al. Ch. and maintain discourse topic in conversation.. engchi. i n U. v. In research of the acquisition of topic management, not only children’s but also parents’ pragmatic competences have been investigated in interactional contexts (Keenan & Schieffelin,1983; Wanska & Bedrosian,1986; Huang, 2004). These studies are concerned with the model as to how a discourse topic is established through exchanging turns in conversations, the types of discourse topic discussed, or the participants’ communicative intents, by means of investigations into topic-initiating and topic-maintaining utterances. Although the aims pursued and methodologies adopted vary.

(19) 3. in these studies, results of all these studies suggest that parents’ language inputs have great influence on children’s development in conversational skills. For younger children, it would be difficult to maintain discourse topics without parents’ aids because of their inadequate linguistic and pragmatic competences. For example, parents may continue asking questions that serve to pass the floor to children and keep the topic going on at the same time. Wanska and Bedrosian (1986) stated that mothers play significant roles in facilitating their children’s discourse skills. In consistence with their study, Huang (2004). 政治大. also pointed out that the mothers’ interactional styles could facilitate the children’s acquisition of discourse skills.. 立. 1.1 Motivation. ‧ 國. 學. It has been widely recognized that adults talk to children in different ways from. ‧. which they talk to adults. In order to communicate with the linguistically unsophisticated children, adjustments of speech are necessary for the adults. In such adjustments,. y. Nat. er. io. sit. characteristics such as simplicity and redundancy were found and recognized as features of child-directed speech by Snow (1977). Snow further pointed out that these. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. characteristics were significant for the parents to maintain the interaction with their. engchi. children. In terms of child language acquisition, studies regarding the mother’s language inputs were greatly conducted due to the role of primary caregiver. In order to investigate the relationships between maternal speech styles and the child’s language development, both structural and pragmatic characteristics of maternal speech has been analyzed in previous studies (Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman , 1977; Olsen-Fulero’s study, 1982; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1986, 1987). However, concerning the pragmatic aspects, topic maintenance was examined.

(20) 4. merely as one of variables in the study concerning maternal speech styles and the child’s language development and did not receive clear explanations (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Olsen-Fulero, 1982). Since the mother is usually the dominant speaker in the mother-child conversational interaction, the process of engaging the child in the conversation becomes significant for the dyad. For the mother, continuing of the conversation enables her to encourage the child’s conversational participation and request information from the child in the conversation. For the child, being engaged in the. 治政大 competences such as conversational exchange and topic maintenance. Considering the 立 ongoing conversation plays a significant role for him or her to acquire conversational. relationship between the maternal interactional style and the mother-child conversational. ‧ 國. 學. interaction, it could be expected that if the mother is careless for engaging the child in the. ‧. conversation, the dyad’s interaction would become less interactive. In sum, in maintaining discourse topics, the mother’s interactional style may thus influence the way. y. Nat. er. io. sit. the child maintain discourse topics. In the present study, we are to investigate how maternal speech styles interact with topic maintenance in the Mandarin mother-child. n. al. conversational interaction. 1.2 The Present Study. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Previous studies focusing on maternal linguistic inputs / interactional styles and child’s language development have been extensively conducted (Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman , 1977; Olsen-Fulero’s study, 1982; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1986, 1987). These studies are mainly concerned with the child’s acquisition of certain linguistic forms, e.g., child’s acquiring of auxiliaries, or the child’s development of linguistic competence, e.g., syntactic and morphological development, development of MLU. For example,.

(21) 5. Olsen-Fulero (1982) discussed the relationship between maternal styles and children’s development in various aspects on the basis of research across individual mothers. The conversational mother in his study, who asks many yes/no questions and gives few directives, may facilitate the child’s linguistic development more than other mothers; the didactic mother in Olsen-Fulero’s study, who encourages autonomy in the child, may provide facilitation for the child’s cognitive development. Yoder and Kaiser (1992) examined several variables that may be relevant in the study of relations between. 治政大 that child addressed and development measurement such as percentage of test questions 立. maternal language input and child language development in English, including pragmatic. number of child questions. In their study attention was paid to the general pragmatic. ‧ 國. 學. development rather than development in specific conversational capacities. Lin (2006). ‧. investigated maternal styles in conversation with children in Mandarin and provides detailed descriptions as to how mothers differ in terms of speech categories and. y. Nat. er. io. sit. conversation parameters. However, how maternal speech styles may interact with child’s communicative capacities in Mandarin are still awaited further studies.. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. Based on the categorical system in previous studies (McDonald & Pien, 1982;. engchi. Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Wanska & Bedrosian, 1986; Huang, 2004), the purpose of our study is to investigate the interaction of the maternal interactional styles and topic maintenance in Mandarin mother-child conversational interaction. What follows are our three research questions in our current study: (a) What are the mothers’ interactional styles? (b) What are the differences among children’s competences of topic maintenance? (c) How do the maternal interaction styles interact with topic maintenance in the conversational interactions?.

(22) 6. Chapter 2 Literature Review 2.1 Maternal Speech and Child Language Development Plenty of studies have been conducted to examine influence of the maternal language inputs on children’s language development (Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1977, McDonald & Pien, 1982, Olsen-Fulero, 1982, Snow, 1984, Hoff-Ginsberg, 1987, Yoder & Kaiser, 1989). However, researchers’ perspectives on how children’s language. 治政大 aspects of mother speech (1984) adopted correlational and longitudinal studies to identify 立 development is influenced by the maternal language inputs differ. For example, Snow. with the assumption that maternal speech observed in the earlier stage (time 1) affects the. ‧ 國. 學. child’s language development at a later point (time 2). Many researchers have reported. ‧. that this time 1-time 2 relationships do not necessarily represent direct or unidirectional influence. These researchers have thus turned to look for evidence supporting indirect or. y. Nat. er. io. sit. bidirectional influence.. In the direct maternal influence model, it is proposed that children’s language. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. development is facilitated by specific maternal utterance types since they frequently. engchi. present to-be-learned linguistic structures in salient ways. For example, Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman (1977) suggested that child’s acquisition of auxiliaries is predicted by mother’s use of yes/no questions. Olsen-Fulero (1982) provided a model of how specific pragmatic and discourse features of mother interactional styles may positively influence child language development. They posited that the conversation-elicitating style is positively associated with subsequent child language development. Following Olsen-Fulero’s study,.

(23) 7. Hoff-Ginsberg (1986, 1987) found that requests for unknown information contained more auxiliaries, providing more language model than other utterances did. In indirect influence models, the mother affects some parts of the child’s outer behavior or inter process and in turn causes changes in the child’s language capacity. Furthermore, there are two possible types of indirect models: immediate and cumulative. Hoff-Ginsberg’s study (1987) implied an immediate indirect model where it is proposed that questions may be facilitative because they immediately elicit the child’s conversation,. 治政 model is implied when they propose that question may be大 facilitative because they 立. which in turns elicits future language model for analysis. However, a cumulative indirect. prompt the child to analyze language so that they can eventually converse appropriately.. ‧ 國. 學. It should be noted that in such a model cumulative influence occurs repeatedly.. ‧. In the discussion of models of children’s language development, Yoder and Kaiser (1989) explicated that in child-driven models, it is assumed that specific aspects of the. y. Nat. er. io. sit. child’s language elicit particular maternal interaction styles. For example, child’s long utterances may further stimulate mother’s follow-up questions. In children-directed. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. model, children that have more competent linguistic performance at time 1 may progress. engchi. more over time since they are linguistically or cognitively more equipped, which in turn facilitates their later language development. Based on results of their study on the relationship between maternal verbal interaction style and child language development, Yoder and Kaiser (1989) reported that a mother-driven, direct influence model may be inappropriate for determining the relationships between mother speech and child language development. Instead, they argued that child-driven and mother-driven explanatory model for the indirect.

(24) 8. relationships are equally practical. They further conjectured that since many instances of social influence are bidirectional, a model of bidirectional influence is possible in some cases. 2.2 Maternal Speech Styles Major studies considering maternal speech styles are presented in section 2.2.1. In section 2.2.2, maternal speech styles in previous studies are compared to illustrate how they were categorized and differentiated in these studies.. 治政大 Nelson (1973) is the first Among studies on the characteristics of maternal speech, 立. 2.2.1 Previous Studies. researcher who reported the connection between maternal conversational style and early. ‧ 國. 學. child language development. By investigating structural characteristics such as. ‧. interrogatives and imperatives in maternal speech and relating these characteristics to children’s language development, Nelson found that some characteristics could facilitate. y. Nat. er. io. sit. or inhibit children’s later language development. With the argument that the structural characteristics such as syntactic and semantic characteristics of maternal speech are. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. determined by the underlying intention of mother to influence the child, Nelson further. engchi. distinguished responsive and directive maternal speech styles and explicated that imperatives were closely attributed to the mother’s intention to control the child. Supporting Nelson’s perspective of associating maternal structural characteristics with underlying intention, Snow (1977) then proposed characteristics of maternal speech, such as prevalence of interrogatives, simplicity, and redundancy, are associated with the mother’s intention to converse with the child and to maintain interaction. Such intention of the mother thus drives the mother to engage the child in the ongoing conversation..

(25) 9. Nevertheless, Newport (1977) and Newport et al. (1977) argued that those same characteristic reported by Snow resulted from the mother’s desire to control the behavior of her child. They argued that the prevalence of interrogatives to be explained by the mother’s controlling or directive purposes and that simplicity and redundancy increase the effectiveness of directive communication. Results of Newport (1977) and Newport et al. (1977) were later considered insufficient for explaining the prevalence of interrogatives in maternal speech by. 治政大led to the outcome that two speech is determined by the mother’s underlying intention 立. McDonald & Pien (1982). They stated that the former studies with the idea that maternal. hypothetical mother intentions (direction and conversation) seems in some aspects. ‧ 國. 學. accounting for the same phenomenon. In addition, McDonald and Pien (1982) indicated. ‧. that the focus of syntactic and semantic characteristics in the former studies may cause the two hypothetical mother intentions to be seemingly compatible. As a result,. y. Nat. er. io. sit. McDonald and Pien turned to analyze the illocutionary behavior of mothers with respect to two hypotheses: first, determination of maternal underlying intention would be. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. inferable from patterning of illocutionary acts of mothers. Second, utterances with a. engchi. directive function would show a negative relationship to those with a conversation-eliciting function. Eleven mother-child pairs were included in McDonald and Pien (1982)’s study. Free play session of these dyads were videotaped in the laboratory and each dyad was observed on four sessions, 30 minutes in total. The children, six male and five female, aged from 2;5 to 3;0, which fell within a narrow range since the purpose was to examine the variation and internal structure of conversational behavior among mothers. All the.

(26) 10. families were middle class and educational levels the parents were college or doctoral. Referring to the illocutionary force of Searle (1969), the category system in McDonald and Pien (1982)’s study included speech categories and conversational parameters. In the speech category level, utterances were categorized as directives, questions, prompts, attention devices, response to questions/directives, acknowledgement, and spontaneous declaratives. In the conversational parameter level, mothers’ talkativeness, conversational dominance, iequality of participation, rate of topic change,. 治政 according to the speech category level and conversational大 parameter level, McDonald and 立 and dyads’ topic maintenance were investigated. By analyzing the mothers’ speech. Pien (1982) discovered variability and patterns of distribution among categories across. ‧ 國. 學. mothers. Results suggested that most of mothers’ conversational behaviors were polarized. ‧. into two negatively related clusters and each cluster represents an underlying mother intention for the interaction. The pervasive polarization of mother behavior into cluster. y. Nat. incompatible and even opposing in nature.. n. al. Ch. er. io. sit. supports their hypotheses that the processes of direction and conversation-elicitation are. i n U. v. Moreover, McDonald and Pien (1982) reported a relationship between. engchi. conversational parameters and speech categories: the mother’s directive intention was positively related to mother monologue, mother dominance and inequality of participation. Regarding the other conversational parameters, it was found that mothers who intend to direct or control the child’s actions tend to change topic frequently and fail to maintain the conversational topic. As for the conversation-eliciting intention, a close survey performed focused on topic shifts revealed that it appears to be served by maintenance of conversational topics or by abandonment of an uninteresting topic..

(27) 11. Although McDonald and Pien (1982) came out with a clear polarization into directive/conversation-eliciting of the mother’s intention, they were also aware that there had been evidence suggesting that illocutionary behavior of mothers changes with respect to the child’s age. They stated that when the child matures, the mother might be expected to be less motivated by the desire to control him or to elicit his conversational participation, but more motivated by the intention to communicate information with him (McDonald and Pien, 1982). However, since the maternal speech behaviors varied to a. 治政大likelihood of significant effect pointed out that should such stylistic stability be found, the 立 great extent regarding the restricted range of child age, McDonald and Pien (1982). on the child is very high.. ‧ 國. 學. Following McDonald and Pien, Olsen-Fulero (1982) adopted the same category. ‧. system and differentiated utterances by illocutionary force. Their data collecting method was designed similarly to McDonald and Pien’s. Subjects were eleven middle class. y. Nat. er. io. sit. mothers of six and five female children and each mother-child dyad was videotaped in the play room in the laboratory. The purpose of Olsen-Fulero’s study was to categorize. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. maternal speech styles based on the relative dominance of directive or. engchi. conversation-eliciting behaviors. In addition, in order to solve the stability problem brought out by McDonald and Pien (1982), stability within each mother was examine by surveying two sessions of each dyad’s free play. Variability in maternal speech styles was proved significant statistically and qualitatively by Olsen-Fulero (1982). Stability of maternal speech style within each mother was calculated by Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients and also proved stable across two sessions. Since results also suggested that conversational variables.

(28) 12. belonged significantly to the directive and conversation-eliciting clusters, Olsen-Fulero (1982) created two scales, one indicating directiveness and the other indicating conversation-elicitation. The score of a mother on one scale was then plotted against the score on the other according to the combined data. In this way, the relative dominance of each mother’s conversational behaviors was illustrated and each mother’s pattern of her overall conversational behavior was located and compared with that in any other mother in the directive/conversation-eliciting continuum.. 治政大 The style of mothers who the style of mothers who influence and mothers who instruct. 立. The maternal speech styles were distinguished by Olsen-Fulero into two major types:. influence was further divided into directive mothers, conversational mothers, and. ‧ 國. 學. intrusive mothers. Mothers who instruct were termed as didactic mothers, who encourage. ‧. autonomy of their children and neither direct nor elicit their children. 2.2.2 Comparisons of Maternal Speech Styles. y. Nat. er. io. sit. How maternal interactional styles were differentiated in previous studies is presented and compared in Table 1. Nelson (1973) distinguished responsive and directive. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. maternal speech styles by means of syntactic and semantic features. However, both. engchi. McDonald & Pien (1982) and Olsen-Fulero (1982) categorized the mother’s conversational behaviors on the basis of illocutionary force and conversational parameters..

(29) 13. Table 1 Comparison of maternal styles in previous studies ( Nelson,1973; McDonald & Pien, 1982; Olsen-Fulero,1982) Category System. Maternal Speech Style. syntactic and. directive. semantic features. responsive. McDonald & Pien. illocutionary force. directive. (1982). and conversational. conversation-eliciting. Nelson (1973). 政治大 illocutionary force mother who 立 parameters. Olsen-Fulero. and conversational. influences. intrusive. 學. ‧ 國. (1982). directive. parameters. conversational. ‧. mother who. didactic. n. al. y er. io. sit. Nat. instructs. Ch. i n U. v. McDonald & Pien (1982) categorized two mothers’ and their children’s utterances. engchi. by taking illocutionary force and conversational parameters into consideration. Results of their study suggest that intercorrelations among all maternal variables reflect two polar predominant intentions for conversational interaction: the control of the child’s physical actions, and the elicitation of his conversational participation. They stated that mothers’ conversational behaviors are thus clusters of behaviors that reflect their communicative intentions which are negatively correlated— the more a mother displays conversation-eliciting behavior, the less she tends to control and direct the child in.

(30) 14. conversations. Acknowledging the contributions and conducting further study of McDonald and Pien’s (1982) study, Olsen-Fulero’s (1982) distinguished two major styles of maternal speech by adopting illocutionary force and conversational parameters as categorization systems: mother who influences and mother who instructs. To provide detailed description of the conversational style displayed by each mother, the mother who influences are divided into three sub-categories that together form a. 治政 child’s linguistic and cognitive development of the child.大 The instructive style is also 立. continuum—directive, intrusive, and conversational speech styles, which influence the. classified as didactic by Olsen-Fulero, which is considered an information-oriented style. ‧ 國. 學. opposed to child-oriented style, or directive style. In Olsen-Fulero’s classification, the. is conformed to the responsive mother in Nelson’s (1973) study.. Nat. y. ‧. mother who influences is conformed to the directive mother and the mother who instructs. er. io. sit. In sum, what the above studies contribute to the inquiry of maternal styles related to children’s language development is that they provide plausible ways in which mothers’. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. individual differences and underlying communicative intents can be examined by clusters. engchi. of intercorrelated variables. In addition, statistically significant differences among distinct maternal styles and stability of maternal styles across two time sessions (Olsen-Fulero, 1982) also suggest that maternal styles can be distinguished. 2.3 Discourse Topic and Topic Management In research concerning the term topic, there have been plenty of definitions and ideas within distinct theoretical approaches. Considering topic a syntactic notion, Mandarin has been considered a topic-prominent language where sentences are usually.

(31) 15. expressed in topic-comment structure (Li & Thompson, 1981). Rather than preposed or base-generated syntactic topic and semantic topic, or frame proposed by Her (1991), topic is used as a discourse notion in this study in line with Keenan and Schieffelin’s (1976, 1983) model. Keenan and Schieffelin (1983) stated that discourse topic is the proposition (or set of propositions) about which the speaker is either providing or requesting new information—not an NP but a proposition. In mother-child conversation, continuation of. 治政大was made by Keenan and In terms of the continuity of discourse topics, a distinction 立. a discourse topic is frequently achieved by means of adjacency pair of question-answer.. Schieffelin (1983): continuous discourse and discontinuous discourse. Continuous. ‧ 國. 學. discourse is further divided into collaborating discourse topic and incorporating discourse. ‧. topic, where the former refers to a topic that matches exactly that of the immediately preceding utterance and the later refers to a topic that takes some presupposition of the. y. Nat. er. io. sit. immediately preceding topic and integrates a claim or new information. As for discontinuous discourse, it includes introducing topic and reintroducing topic. In both. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. cases there are changes of discourse without drawing on the previous utterance.. engchi. According to Keenan and Schieffelin (1983), there are four prerequisites for establishing a discourse topic for both the speaker and the hearer: being attentive, articulating and receiving of the utterances, identification of the referents mentioned in the utterances, and identification of the semantic relations obtaining between the referents. Those prerequisites thus explicate the difficulty for young children to participate in and attend to a discourse topic. First, children may have not attended in the first place. Even if they do, they only have limited attention span and thus usually fail to collaborate on or.

(32) 16. incorporate discourse for an extended period of time. Second, they are easily distracted by other new things they have noticed in the physical environment, which is frequently presented by children’s sudden topic initiations in conversation. Finally, they may not provide a relevant next utterance because they do not understand the point due to their inadequacy in linguistic competence or failure in identification of the relationships between the introduced referents. Foster (1982) paid attention on the ability to initiate and maintain conversational. 治政大propositions about which the discourse topic was assumed to be the proposition or set of 立 topics of children’s development of the communicative competence. In the study. speaker is either providing or requesting information, which was in line with Keenan and. ‧ 國. 學. Schieffelin’s (1976). In addition, Foster pointed out that a fully developed discourse topic. ‧. involves not merely a single proposition but a sequence of propositions related both to each other and to a macroproposition that represents the sequence as a whole. The. y. Nat. management in the prelinguistic and early linguistic period.. n. al. Ch. er. io. sit. purpose of Foster’s study was to discover how children acquire the skills of topic. i n U. v. Subjects were five middle-class first-born children. Data were collected at six points. engchi. with their ages growing, from 0;1 to 2;6. An hour of videotape of mother-child interaction at home was collected from each child at specified ages. Results indicated that mothers tended to produce more contributions to topics and in general there tended to be few contributions on the same topic except for mother-child mutual engagement in a structured routine, e.g., games and other predictable sequences such as meals and book-reading. These routines provide child with task structure that sometimes children can contribute ‘performance without competence’ (Clark, 1974). Or children are provided.

(33) 17. ready-made structure by mother-controlled activities in which mothers scaffold children’s contributions by incorporating them into conversations as they are relevant to the ongoing activity. In such routines, children need only response to requests and questions and their mothers will put all the responses together into the larger framework of a topic. Foster (1982) also suggested that as children’s communicative competence develops, children display increasing control of these structures and even manipulate the structure by coming up with unexpected information.. 治政 ranging in age from 2;0 to 6;3 in mother-child interaction大 in free play sessions. Since 立. Wanska and Bedrosian (1986) investigated topic discourse skills in thirty children. children develop the ability to perform more sophisticated discourse skills in. ‧ 國. 學. conversation with increasing age, they proposed that the role of the participants,. ‧. particularly the mother, in relationship to the child within an interactional framework be examined constantly. This study was concerned with the discourse skill of topic. y. Nat. er. io. sit. performance and its relationship to communicative intent. In this study the types of topics discussed by the participants, performance of topic management, and communicative. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. intents in mother-child dyads were examined regarding topic initiation, shading, and topic. engchi. maintenance. While topic initiation refers to the topic which is not linked in any way with the immediately preceding topic (Keenan & Schieffelin,1976), topic shading refers to the topic which involves a change of focus rather than a discrete transition from one topic to another. Results showed that topic maintenance was much greater for fantasy and here-and-now topics than for displacement topic. In addition, mother initiated/shaded and maintained topics primarily by requests for all the three topic categories. Children used more informatives to initiate/shaded these topics, and maintained fantasy and.

(34) 18. displacement topics primarily by responses to mothers’ questions. These results suggested difficulty for children to discuss non-present objects or events and mothers’ significant role in facilitating their children’s discourse skills. In research of the way in which discourse topics are presented in Mandarin conversations and narratives, Chiu (2001) proposes that discourse topic is a topic chain which consists of semantically related clauses, which can be further categorized into sub-topic chains and sub-sub-topic chains. This hierarchical organization of discourse. 治政大 both to each other and to a just a single proposition, but a sequence of proposition related 立 topic is in line with Foster’s (1982) assumption that a fully developed topic involves not. macroproposition that represents the sequence as a whole. Huang (2002, 2004). ‧ 國. 學. investigated the child’s capacity of topic management, including topic initiation and topic. ‧. maintenance in Mandarin Chinese. In this study subjects were two two-year-old, two three-year-old, and two four-year-old Mandarin-speaking children and their parents, one. y. Nat. er. io. sit. father and five mothers. The categorical system, in which mothers and children’s communicative intents were examined, was similar to Wanska and Bedrosian’s (1986). n. al. Ch. i n U. v. study. Huang’s study indicated that children’s capacities increase through age and their. engchi. advanced abilities may affect mothers’ language uses. While younger children showed tendencies toward topic collaboration, where topics are maintained without addition of new information, when maintaining discourse topics, increasingly sophisticated capacity of topic incorporation, where topics are maintained through adding new information, was observed among older children. Results also showed that in the use of communicative intents, children initiated and maintained topics primarily with informatives, which was conformed to Wanska and Bedrosian’s (1986) finding. Huang further indicated that the.

(35) 19. prevalence of informatives in children’s topic- initiating and topic-maintaining utterances might be explained by informatives’ less interactive nature and children’s egocentric nature in parent-child interaction. Huang’s study also illustrated that in order to keep the discourse topics going on in parent-child conversation, parents’ elicitations and scaffolding play important roles. While young children’s conversational skills are less developed and immature, topic maintenance relies largely on parents’ elicitations, which engage children in. 治政大 make adjustments in being sensitive to children’s language abilities, parents would 立. conversations and make the topic maintenance less demanding for children. However,. adopting more topic incorporation as they find that their children have became more. ‧ 國. 學. competent in communicative skills. As children’s capacities increase, parents would. ‧. become less dominant in parent-child conversational interactions. This finding is consistent with Foster’s (1986) study, in which children’s learning of topic management. y. Nat. er. io. sit. was examined. Yoder and Kaiser (1989) have also pointed out the possibility of bidirectional or mutual influence, especially in social interaction.. n. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v.

(36) 20. Chapter 3 Methodology 3.1 Subject and Data collection Subjects were two 3-year-old girls, LIN and LJW, who were both the first-borns and acquired Mandarin as their first language in middle class families, and their mothers. LIN’s mother’s educational level was college and LJW’s mother was master. Naturally occurring conversations of mother-child interactions were videotaped at. 治政大 Huang’s project of children. Both children had participated in Professor Chiung-chih 立 home. Mothers were told to do what she would do as usual in interaction with their. child language acquisition 1 where their nature interaction with the mothers had been. ‧ 國. 學. recorded and traced for several times, eliminating factors such as unfamiliarity with the. ‧. observer and anxiety in front of the camera that might affect the naturalness of the data. The collected data were transcribed manually in accordance with the CHAT (Codes for. y. Nat. io. sit. the Human Analysis of Transcripts) format.. n. al. er. For each dyad, two sessions 2of one-hour data in which the child was around age 3. Ch. were examined, making up four hours in total.. i n U. v. Activities engaged by the two dyads are. engchi. presented in table 2. In both LIN and LJW’s dyads, free talks were commonly observed. These free talks included discussion of the child’s likes and dislikes, recalling things that happened at school or in the past, and information-oriented discussions. In addition, story-telling took up great portions in both dyads’ interaction. When LIN’s dyad was dealing with story-telling, several episodes were concerned with role-playing. Besides free talks and story-telling, eating was also observed in both dyads’ interaction. As for. 1 2. I am grateful for Professor Huang’s kind support for the present study. In the two sessions of each child, LIN’s age were 3;1.1 and 3;1.16, LJW’s were 3;0.25 and 3;1.8..

(37) 21. differences among their activities, while LIN’s dyad was engaged in toy-playing at times, LJW’s dyad focused on book-reading instead. Other activities, including dancing, drawing, and singing, took up merely minor portions of the data. Table 2 Activity types in the two dyads’ conversational interaction Mother-child Dyad. LIN. LJW. Free talk. Free talk. Story-telling (Role Playing). Story- telling. Eating 治政大 Toy-playing. Activity Types. 立. Eating Book-reading. Dancing. Drawing. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Singing. sit. y. Nat. 3.2 Coding Scheme. io. er. This section contains two parts and explicates how data were categorized in our study. Section 3.2.1 is concerned with the coding scheme of maternal speech styles which. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. consists of speech category and conversational parameter. In section 3.2.2, category. engchi. systems regarding the child’s topic-maintaining capacities are presented. 3.2.1 Maternal Interactional Style In the mother-child interactions, mothers’ utterances are categorized based on previous studies (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Lin, 2006). The categorization system contained the speech category level and the conversational parameter level. In addition, the category system was revised for purpose of our study:.

(38) 22. Speech Category a. Directives. A directive is an utterance which elicits and constraints the physical behavior of the hearer (Searle, 1975), e.g., “坐好!” b. Questions. Questions are utterances which elicit verbal responses from the hearer and pass the floor to the hearer at the same time (Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Lin, 2006). Since question serve as a device for mother to engage the child in conversation and pass the turn to the child, it usually takes up a great portion within mother’s. 政治大 analyze the performance of mother’s interactional styles to a greater extent, in this 立 utterances (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Lin, 2006). In order to. ‧ 國. 學. study we are to take a close look into mother’s utterances in question forms. (1) Repairs. Repairs are used to keep the conversation going on, which usually. ‧. appear in the forms of total or partial repetition of the hearer’s previous. y. sit. io. al. er. 麼?”. Nat. utterance (Lin, 2006), e.g., CHI: “媽媽我想要喝可樂.”, MOT: “你要喝什. n. iv n C h &ePien, for the hearer (McDonald n g1982; c h iLin,U2006),e.g., “這是什麼顏色?”,”. (2) Test questions. For a test question, a specific or restricted answer is required. 綠的還是紅的?” (3) Real questions. Real question refers to question that seeks information unknown to the speaker from the hearer (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Lin, 2006),e.g., “你中午吃什麼?” (4) Verbal reflective questions. Verbal reflective questions are questions that pass the turn to the hearer without adding new information (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Lin, 2006), e.g., “他很乖, 對不對?”.

(39) 23. (5) Action reflective questions. Action reflective questions are questions that pass the turn to the hearer when paying attention the hearer’s action, which often take the form of tag questions with falling intonation (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Lin, 2006), e.g., “你撞到了, 是不是?” (6) Report questions. Report questions are questions serving to inform or comment on the child when he or she is not aware of a certain fact or event or becomes aware of that, which often take the form of tag questions with. 政治大. falling intonation (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Lin, 2006), e.g., “是不是像爸爸. 立. 那麼胖?”. ‧ 國. 學. (7) Permission requests / offers of help. Permission requests are question used by the speaker to seek permission or acceptance for a certain action of the. ‧. speaker (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Lin, 2006), e.g., “媽媽幫你把這個打開. Nat. sit. y. 好不好?”. n. al. er. io. c. Declaratives: an utterance which provides new information or comments on. i n U. v. children’s previous utterance or activity (Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Lin, 2006).. Ch. engchi. d. Prompts: an utterance with an attempt to force a response from the hearer to the speaker’s previous utterance (Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Lin, 2006), e.g., “我們來看. 書.”, ”好不好?” e. Attention devices: Attention devices are utterances which are intended to attract the attention of the hearer (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Lin, 2006), e.g., “好我們來. 看喔.” f. Responses: Responses are utterances which serve as feedbacks for questions or.

(40) 24. directives (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Lin, 2006), e.g., CHI: “媽媽這是什麼?”, MOT: “這是長頸鹿啊.” g. Acknowledgements: Acknowledgements are utterances which acknowledge either the child’s previous declarative statement or activity without adding new information or commenting (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Lin, 2006), e.g., CHI: “我. 喜歡吃番茄.”, MOT: “好.” Conversational Parameters. 政治大. a. Topic Maintenance: The average number of speaking turns devoted to the same. 立. discourse topic by the dyad as a unit.. ‧ 國. 學. b. Mother’s Rate of Topic Change: The proportion of utterances which shift the discourse topic out of the child’s total number of utterances.. ‧. 3.2.2 Children’s Topic-maintaining Competence. Nat. sit. n. al. er. io. categories.. y. The child’s topic maintaining utterances were analyzed according to the following. i n U. v. Communicative Intents (Wanska & Bedrosian, 1986; Huang, 2004). Ch. engchi. a. Informative: an utterance which gives information or comment in a declarative form. b. Question: an utterance which asks for information in a question form. c. Request: an utterance which asks for an action to be performed in a question, declarative or imperative form. d. Acknowledgement: an utterance which recognizes the fact that the previous speaker has said or done something. e. Response: an utterance involving a yes/no response to a question, or an answer.

(41) 25. supplied to a question asked. Topic Incorporation/Collaboration (Keenan & Schieffelin, 1976; Huang, 2004) In order to examine how frequently new information was provided by the children when maintaining discourse topics in interactional contexts, children’s topic-maintaining utterances were further divided into topic incorporation and topic collaboration according to the information status provided. Topic incorporation refers to an utterance that continues the topic by matching the proposition of the previous utterance; topic. 政治大. collaboration refers to an utterance that continues the topic by adding or requesting additional information.. 立. Child’s Rate of Topic Change. ‧ 國. 學. The proportion of utterances which shift the discourse topic out of the child’s total. ‧. number of utterances. 3.3 Data Analysis. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Section 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 regards how the collected data were analyzed according to the category system in previous studies. In section 3.3.3, how topic episode is identified. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. for analyzing topic maintenance in mother-child interaction is presented. 3.3.1 Maternal Interactional Style. engchi. In order to differentiate maternal interactional styles in Mandarin mother-child conversational interactions, the category system was designed similarly to previous studies concerning maternal interactional styles (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Lin, 2006). For the speech category level, all the utterances produced by each mother were coded. For the conversational parameter level, the dyads’ topic maintenance and the mother’s rate of topic change were examined. Results of the two levels would.

(42) 26. together be investigated to see if their tendencies of conversational behaviors were consistent with those maternal interactional styles distinguished in previous studies. 3.3.2 Children’s Topic-maintaining Competence In order to investigate how children related their utterances to preceding utterances produced by their mothers in the process of ongoing conversational exchange, all the topic-maintaining utterances of each child were first identified and then analyzed in accordance with communicative intents (Wanska & Bedrosian, 1986; Huang, 2004).. 治政大 of adding new and topic incorporation (Huang, 2004). In such a way, frequency 立. These topic-maintaining utterances were further analyzed in terms of topic collaboration. information in children’s topic-maintaining utterances could be observed. In addition,. ‧ 國. 學. children’s rate of topic change was examined to see how frequent they change topics in. ‧. the conversational interaction (McDonald & Pien, 1982; Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Lin, 2006). 3.3.3 Mother-child Interaction—Topic Episode. y. Nat. er. io. sit. In order to investigate topic maintenance in mother-child interaction, data were examined based on topic episode, or conversational exchanges conforming to a. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. propositional content. For the purpose of our study, a topic episode is defined as a stretch. engchi. of discourse that contains utterances that continue a discourse topic. A stretch of discourse may contain a series of linked utterances and the utterances may be linked in a least two ways (Keenan & Schieffelin, 1983): First, two or more utterances may share the same discourse topic, which is considered collaborating discourse topics by Keenan and Schieffelin (1983). Second, discourse topics may take some presupposition of the immediately preceding discourse topic and/or the new information provided relevant to the discourse preceding and use it in a new utterance, which is considered incorporating.

(43) 27. discourse topics by Keenan and Schieffelin (1983). In addition, both collaborating and incorporating discourse topics are continuous topics. The following scheme presents how a topic episode is identified in our study: Figure 1: Preliminary topic episode identification scheme. Topic Episode. U1. topic introducing / reintroducing discourse topic A. U2. collaborating / incorporating discourse topic A. ((. 治政大 topic A collaborating / incorporating discourse 立. )) Un-1. topic introducing / reintroducing discourse topic B. 學. ‧ 國. Un. A minimum topic episode is consisted of at least two utterances, a topic introducing /. ‧. reintroducing utterance and a topic continuing utterance. If the immediately following utterance continues the discourse topic, the topic episode will become longer. Un. y. Nat. er. io. sit. represents that in theory the same discourse topic can be continued or maintained endlessly, which is nevertheless hardly possible in daily conversation due to physical. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. limitation of the speakers. Suppose that Un discontinues the discourse topic and. engchi. introduces a new discourse topic / reintroduces a previously introduced discourse, then the present topic episode ends. In sum, a topic episode begins with an utterance with a discourse topic that is continued by the immediate following utterance and ends with an utterance with a discourse topic that is discontinued by the immediate following utterance. Here it should be noted that the above model is in theory utterance-based but not speaker-based. If such a topic episode involves only one speaker, it is realized as a.

(44) 28. monologue or narration. However, in real conversational exchanges, a discourse topic is usually maintained through several utterances by at least two speakers. To capture the nature of mother-child interaction of topic maintenance in our study, the identification scheme of a topic episode should thus be presented as speaker turns consisting of subordinated utterances that continue a discourse topic: Figure 2: Topic episode identification scheme involving two speakers S1 TURN 1. U1. topic introducing/reintroducing discourse topic A. 治政大 discourse topic A Un collaborating / incorporating ((. 立. (( Un. collaborating / incorporating discourse topic A. U1. collaborating / incorporating discourse topic A. io. n. al. Un. er. ((. sit. y. Nat ((. Sx TURN n. collaborating / incorporating discourse topic A. ‧. S1 TURN 2. )). U1. 學. Topic Episode. ‧ 國. S2 TURN 1. collaborating / incorporating discourse topic A. i v discourse topic A n CU1h collaborating / incorporating engchi U ((. Sy TURN n. Un. collaborating / incorporating discourse topic A. U1. topic introducing / reintroducing discourse topic B. The above scheme shows that in our study, for a topic episode a discourse topic is maintained or continued by at least two speaking turns and each speaking turn contains at least one utterance. This model is in theory necessary since in conversational exchanges speakers frequently elaborate their statements or add more comments when maintaining.

(45) 29. discourse topics in a single speaking turn. In addition, if in a given speaking turn the speaker makes a topic introducing / reintroducing utterance at a certain point, the given speaking turn will serve as the closure of the topic episode: Figure 3 Speaking turn with topic introducing / reintroducing utterance S1 Turn. U1. topic introducing / reintroducing discourse topic A. ((. S2 Turn. collaborating / incorporating discourse topic A. 治政大 ((. U1 collaborating / incorporating discourse topic A. 立. Un-1 collaborating / incorporating discourse topic A. 學. ‧ 國. Topic Episode. Un. Un topic introducing / reintroducing discourse topic B. interaction of maternal interacitonal styles and topic maintenance.. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. y. ‧. The total number of topic episode were identified and analyzed to investigate the. Ch. engchi. i n U. v.

(46) 30. Chapter 4 Results Results of data analysis are presented in this chapter. In section 4.1, utterances of the two mothers were analyzed in terms of the speech category level and the conversational parameter level. In addition, their conversational characteristics and interactional styles were compared on the basis of previous studies. Section 4.2 is concerned with the two children’s topic maintaining utterances and their topic maintaining competences. In. 治政 mothers’ interactional styles in interactional contexts. 大立. section 4.3, the two dyads’ topic maintenance was examined and related to the two. 4.1 Maternal Interacitonal Style. ‧ 國. 學. Results regarding the speech category and conversational parameter level are presented in. ‧. section 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 respectively. The two mothers’ interacitonal styles are distinguished according to previous studies.. y. Nat. er. io. sit. 4.1.1 The Speech Category Level. Results of the speech category level in the two mothers’ utterances are presented in. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. table 3. Over one-third of LIN’s mother’s (35.4%) and LJW’s mother’s (38.9%). engchi. utterances are questions. It suggests that questions are frequently adopted by adults to compensate for children’s immature conversational skills such as conversational exchanging and topic maintenance, which conforms to previous studies concerning mother-child conversation. As for the subcategories of questions, no significant difference is observed in two mothers except for the more frequent use of report questions and permission requests in LJW’s mother’s questioning utterances. While LJW’s mother adopted prompts (8.6%), attention devices (5.4%), and declaratives.

(47) 31. (23.7%) slightly more frequently than LIN’s mother, LIN’s mother (19.6%) adopted more directives than LJW’s mother (5.9%). Table 3 Results of the speech category level in two mothers’ utterances LIN’s Mother. LJW’s Mother. 260(19.6%). 172(5.9%). Repairs. 28(2.1%). 42(1.4%). Test Questions. 122(9.3%). 281(9.6%). 179(13.6%) 政治大 Verbal Reflectives 49(3.7%) 立. 331(11.3%). Directives. Real Questions. Report Questions. 48(3.6%). Permission. 268(9.7%). 129(4.4%). y. 26(1.9%). sit. Nat. Requests/. io. n. a Total l C h. er. Offer of Helps. Prompts. 12(0.4%). ‧. ‧ 國. 14(1.1%). 學. Questions. Action Reflectives. 76(2.6%). 466(35.4%). n i U e n g c h69(5.2%). iv. 1139(38.9%) 252(8.6%). Attention Devices. 43(3.3%). 159(5.4%). Responses to Question/Directives. 76(5.8%). 105(3.6%). Acknowledgements. 151(11.5%). 405(13.8%). Declaratives. 251(19.1%). 693(23.7%). Total. 1316(100%). 2925(100%). In both mothers’ utterances, questions were the most frequently. The mother could keep.

(48) 32. the conversation continuing by manipulate different kinds of questions: (1) MOT is questioning about where LJW’s bag is. 1. *MOT:. 你的袋子咧? ‘Where is your bag?’. 2. *LJW:. 袋子. ‘Bag.’. 3. *LJW:. 袋子放在那邊. ‘The bag is put there.’. 4. *MOT:. /ha/? ‘What?’. 5. *MOT:. 袋子放在哪裡?. 立. 政治大. ‘Where is the bag put?’. ‧ 國. *LJW:. 學. 6. 在那 [= pointing to a bag on the floor]. ‘It’s there.’. ‧. As shown in example (1), LJW’s mother began with a real question that elicited LJW’s. y. Nat. er. io. sit. verbal response. LJW then provided the answer, in which the location requested was not explicit due to the use of referential expression ‘there’. Since LJW’s mother didn’t. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. receive enough information to infer the location of the bag, she replied with a repair. In. engchi. order to elicit the answer she needed, the repair was immediately followed by a new real question which served the same function to the first real question. Results presented in table (3) have illustrated that among all the speech categories, both LIN and LJW’s mother questioned their children the most frequently. What differed the most significantly in their speech categories was that while LJW’s mother appealed to declaratives the second frequently, LIN’s mother appealed to directives. In the middle of periods of ongoing conversations, it’s observed that LIN’s mother frequently used directives to.

(49) 33. control LIN’s physical behaviors rather than verbal behaviors: (2) LIN is looking at a penguin on the cover of a videotape. 1. *MOT:. 一綾姊姊請問你在幹什麼?. ‘What are you doing, LIN?’ 2. *LIN:. 我在看企鵝.. ‘I’m looking at the penguin.’ 3. *MOT:. 你在看企鵝.. ‘You’re looking at the penguin.’ 4. *MOT:. 那請你的腳可不可以把他放出來.. 政治大 *LIN: 唉唷我知道了啦 [= in loud voice]! 立 ‘O.K. I knew it!’ ‘Please take out your feet.’. 學. ‧ 國. 5. In example (2), LIN was thinking about which videotape to watch and looking at one of. ‧. the videotapes. LIN’s mother asked what she was doing and was provided with LIN’s. y. Nat. sit. proper response. However, LIN’s mother didn’t elicit more information about what LIN. n. al. er. io. was focusing on but turned to control the place she thought her child’s feet should be in. 4.1.2 The Conversational Parameter Level. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Table 4 Results of two mothers’ conversational parameter level LIN’s Mother. LJW’s Mother. Topic Maintenance. 9.4 (952/101). 19.2(1973/103). Rate of Topic Change. 9.9% (131/1316). 2.7%(78/2925). Results of the mothers’ conversational parameter are illustrated in table 4. It can be clearly observed that the average length of topic episode maintained by LJW’s mother and LJW was 19.2, which is much longer than that maintained by LIN’s mother and LIN.

(50) 34. (9.4). As for the rate of topic change, results showed that LIN’s mother changed topics much more frequently than LJW’s mother. In general, the two mothers’ conversational behaviors in the conversational parameter differed to a great extent. In section 4.1.1 and 4.1.2, the two mothers’ speech was analyzed in terms of the speech category level and the conversational parameter level. In the next section, results of the two levels are to be compared to those in McDonald and Pien (1982) and Olsen-Fulero (1982)’s study. In addition, results of the conversational parameter level. 政治大. will be further examined in terms of the two dyads’ conversational interactions in section 4.3.. 立. 4.1.2 Maternal Interactional Style of the Two Mothers. ‧ 國. 學. By looking into the two mothers’ distribution of utterances in the speech category. ‧. level and the conversational parameter level in the previous sections, pictures of the two mother’s conversational characteristics were presented. As hypothesized by McDonald. y. Nat. er. io. sit. and Pien (1982), determination of maternal underlying intention would be inferable from patterning of illocutionary acts of mothers. In terms of the speech category level, by. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. adopting directives much more frequently than LJW’s mother, LIN’s mother seemed. engchi. intending more to control LIN’s physical actions. In terms of the conversational parameter level, LIN’s mother changed topics much more frequently than LJW’s mother and LIN’s dyad maintained topics through less turns than LJW’s dyad. Compared with McDonald & Pien (1982), LIN’s mother’s cluster of conversational behaviors conformed more to the directive mother distinguished in their study, and LJW’s mother’s cluster of conversational behaviors conformed more to the conversation-elicitatiing mother. Compared with Olsen-Fulero (1982)’s study, LIN’s mother conformed more to the.

(51) 35. directive mother, and LJW’s mother conformed more to the conversational mother. In the study, the interactional style of LIN’s mother would be considered more directive and LJW’s mother would be considered more conversational-eliciting in the study. With such intentions of the two mothers in mind, we are to relate them to the two dyads’ topic-maintaining in section 4.3. 4.2 Children’s Speech in Topic Maintaining Utterances In this section, the two children’s topic maintaining competences are examined by. 政治大. means of communicative intents, topic collaboration / incorporation, and rate of topic change.. 立. 4.2.1 Communicative Intents. ‧ 國. 學. Table 5 Results of two children’s communicative intents in topic-maintaining utterances. Declaratives. Responses Total. y. sit. 29(6.3%). al. n. Acknowledgements. 198(19.8%). 77(16.7%). 37(3.7%). er. io. Requests. 84(18.2%). Nat. Questions. LJW. ‧. LIN. i n C h 27(5.9%) engchi U. v. 70(7%) 77(7.7%). 243(52.8%). 617(61.8%). 460(100%). 999(100%). Results of two children’s communicative intents in topic-maintaining utterances are presented in table 5. In both LIN’s and LJW’s topic-maintaining utterances, responses are the most frequently occurring communicative intent, taking up nearly half tokens in both data, which corresponds to their mother’s frequent uses of questions in their utterances..

(52) 36. Nevertheless, LJW appealed to responses more often than LIN did when maintaining topics, which might suggest that LJW attended more to her mother’s questions or requests than LIN. (3) MOT and LJW are talking about LJW’s going to the dentist in the morning. 1. *MOT:. 去哪裡看牙齒? ‘Where did you go check your teeth?’. 2. *LJW:. 去 -: 醫院. ‘Went to the hospital.’. 3. *MOT:. 政治大. 去醫院.. ‘Went to the hospital.’ 4. *MOT:. 立. 去萬芳醫院對不對?. *LJW:. ‧ 國. 5. 學. ‘Went to Wan Fang Hospital, right? ’ 嗯.. 6. *MOT:. ‧. ‘Yes.’. 然後呢?. Nat. sit. *MOT:. 啊 <你> [/] 你有沒有哭?. io. al. er. 7. y. ’Then?’. n. ‘Did you cry?’ 8. *LJW:. 0 [= nodding].. 9. *MOT:. 有喔.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. ‘You did.’ 10. *MOT:. 為什麼會哭? ‘Why did you cry?’. 11. *LJW:. <因為> [/] 因為很痛. ‘Because it hurt.’. In example (3), LJW’s mother asked LJW about the incident of seeing dentist earlier in the morning. Instead of leaving LJW to describe the whole incident by herself, LJW’s.