The development of using function word “zài” to learn novel verbs in young Mandarin speakers

Abstract

The present research examined whether Mandarin-speaking children could use function words to learn novel verbs and recognize verbs in a new sentential context. In Experiment 1, 3-to 6-year-old children were taught two novel verbs supported by the verb marker “zài.” The 5-and 6-year-old children successfully used the function word “zài” to learn novel verbs, but the 3-and 4-year-olds failed to interpret the novel words as verbs. In Experiment 2 and 3, the children had to recognize the newly learned verbs in new sentences containing a different function word (a different verb-biased marker “le” or a non-verb-biased marker “shì”). Results showed that the 5-year-old children could recognize the newly learned verbs with another verb-biased marker “le,” but only the 6-year-old children could recognize the newly learned verbs with the non-verb-biased marker “shì.” The study verified that Mandarin-speaking children could use the function word “zài” to determine a novel word as a verb and revealed that such an ability appeared between the ages of 4 and 5 years. In addition, the ability to extend a newly learned verb across different morphosyntactic markers is developed in 5-to 6-year-olds.

Keywords

function words / Mandarin / syntactic bootstrapping / verb learning

References

[1] Bowerman, M. (1980). The structure and origin of semantic categories in the language learning child. In M. L. Foster & S. H. Brandes (Eds.), Symbol as a sense: New approaches to the analysis of meaning. Academic Press.

[2] Brandone, A. C., Pence, K. L., Golinkoff, R. M., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2007). Action speaks louder than words: Young children differentially weight perceptual, social, and linguistic cues to learn verbs. Child Development, 78(4), 1322–1342.

[3] Chen, J., & Shirai, Y. (2010). The development of aspectual marking in child mandarin Chinese. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 31(1), 1–28.

[4] Chen, L., An, S., Dai, H., & He, X. (2022). Use of aspect markers by mandarin-speaking children with high-functioning autism plus language impairment and children with developmental language disorder. Journal of Communication Disorders, 99, 106245.

[5] Chen, L., & Durrleman, S. (2022). Comprehension of mandarin aspect markers by preschool children with and without developmental language disorder. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 839951.

[6] Childers, J. B., Paik, J. H., Flores, M., Lai, G., & Dolan, M. (2017). Does variability across events affect verb learning in English, mandarin, and Korean? Cognitive Science, 41(suppl. 4), 808–830.

[7] de Carvalho, A., Crimon, C., Barrault, A., Trueswell, J., & Christophe, A. (2021). ‘Look! It is not a bamoule!': 18-and 24-month-olds can use negative sentences to constrain their interpretation of novel word meanings. Developmental Science, 24(4), e13085.

[8] de Carvalho, A., He, A. X., Lidz, J., & Christophe, A. (2019). Prosody and function words cue the acquisition of word meanings in 18-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 30(3), 319–332.

[9] Forbes, J. N., & Poulin-Dubois, D. (1997). Representational change in young children's understanding of familiar verb meaning. Journal of Child Language, 24(2), 389–406.

[10] Gao, S. (2015). Grammaticalization and acquisition order of "zai". In S. Gao (Ed.), A study on the acquisition sequence of Chinese concurrent function words based on grammaticalization theory (pp. 32–53). China Social Sciences Press (in Chinese).

[11] Gentner, D. (1982). Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In S. Kuczaj (Ed.), Language development: Language, cognition, and culture (pp. 301–334). Erlbaum.

[12] Gertner, Y., Fisher, C., & Eisengart, J. (2006). Learning words and rules: Abstract knowledge of word order in early sentence comprehension. Psychological Science, 17(8), 684–691.

[13] Gleitman, L. (1990). The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition, 1(1), 3–55.

[14] Haryu, E., Imai, M., & Okada, H. (2011). Object similarity bootstraps young children to action-based verb extension. Child Development, 82(2), 674–686.

[15] He, A. X., & Lidz, J. (2017). Verb learning in 14-and 18-month-old English-learning infants. Language Learning and Development, 13(3), 335–356.

[16] Hollich, G. J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Brand, R. J., Brown, E., Chung, H. L., Hennon, E., & Rocroi, C. (2000). Breaking the language barrier: An emergentist coalition model for the origins of word learning. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 65(3), v–135.

[17] Imai, E. H., Haryu, E., & Okada, H. (2005b). The role of object labels and familiarity in Japanese children's verb learning. In S. Watanabe (Ed.), CARLS series of advanced study of logic and sensibility (pp. 177–190). Keio University Press.

[18] Imai, M., Haryu, E., & Okada, H. (2005a). Mapping novel nouns and verbs onto dynamic action events: Are verb meanings easier to learn than noun meanings for Japanese children? Child Development, 76(2), 340–355.

[19] Imai, M., Li, L., Haryu, E., Okada, H., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., & Shigematsu, J. (2008). Novel noun and verb learning in Chinese-, English-, and Japanese-speaking children. Child Development, 79(4), 979–1000.

[20] Kersten, A. W., & Smith, L. B. (2002). Attention to novel objects during verb learning. Child Development, 73(1), 93–109.

[21] Klein, W., Li, P., & Hendriks, H. (2000). Aspect and assertion in mandarin Chinese. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 18(4), 723–770.

[22] Kline, M., & Demuth, K. (2014). Syntactic generalization with novel intransitive verbs. Journal of Child Language, 41(3), 543–574.

[23] Lee, J. N., & Naigles, L. R. (2005). The input to verb learning in mandarin Chinese: A role for syntactic bootstrapping. Developmental Psychology, 41(3), 529–540.

[24] Li, P., & Bowerman, M. (1998). The acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect in Chinese. First Language, 18(54), 311–350.

[25] Ma, W., Zhou, P., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2020). Young mandarin learners use function words to distinguish between nouns and verbs. Developmental Science, 23(5), e12927.

[26] Ma, W., Zhou, P., Golinkoff, R. M., Lee, J., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2019). Syntactic cues to the noun and verb distinction in mandarin child-directed speech. First Language, 39(4), 433–461.

[27] Maguire, M. J., Hennon, E. a., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., Slutzky, C. B., & Sootsman, J. (2002). Mapping words to actions and events: How do 18-month-olds learn a verb? In B. Skarabela, S. Fish, & A. Do (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th annual Boston University conference on language (pp. 371–382). Cascadilla Press.

[28] Maguire, M. J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., & Brandone, A. C. (2008). Focusing on the relation: Fewer exemplars facilitate children's initial verb learning and extension. Developmental Science, 11(4), 628–634.

[29] Naigles, L. (1990). Children use syntax to learn verb meanings. Journal of Child Language, 17(2), 357–374.

[30] Naigles, L. R., Bavin, E. L., & Smith, M. A. (2005). Toddlers recognize verbs in novel situations and sentences. Developmental Science, 8(5), 424–431.

[31] Scott, R. M., & Fisher, C. (2012). 2.5-year-olds use cross-situational consistency to learn verbs under referential uncertainty. Cognition, 122(2), 163–180.

[32] Shen, J. X. (2018). Problems caused by modelling Chinese grammar on subject and predicate. Journal of Foreign Languages, 41(6), 2–15. (in Chinese).

[33] Su, Y., & Naigles, L. R. (2021). Comprehension of grammatical aspect markers le and zai in a diverse sample of mandarin-exposed preschool children with autism spectrum disorder. Reading and Writing, 1–24, 1369–1392.

[34] Tardif, T. (1996). Nouns are not always learned before verbs: Evidence from mandarin speakers' early vocabularies. Developmental Psychology, 32(3), 492–504.

[35] Tardif, T. (2006). But are they really verbs? Chinese words for action. In K. Hirsh-Pasek & R. M. Golinkoff (Eds.), Action meets world: How children learn verbs (Vol. 1, pp. 477–498). Oxford University Press.

[36] Tatsumi, T., Ambridge, B., & Pine, J. (2018). Disentangling effects of input frequency and morphophonological complexity on Children's Acquisition of Verb Inflection: An elicited production study of Japanese. Cognitive Science, 42(S2), 555–577.

[37] Theakston, A., Lieven, E., Pine, J., & Rowland, C. (2002). Going, going, gone: The acquisition of the verb ‘go'. Journal of Child Language, 29(4), 783–811.

[38] Wakefield, E. M., Hall, C., James, K. H., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2018). Gesture for generalization: Gesture facilitates flexible learning of words for actions on objects. Developmental Science, 21(5), e12656.

[39] Wang, H. L. (2019). A study on the acquisition order of the “Shi” sentences of Chinese learners in Malawi. Master's thesis. Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua(in Chinese).

[40] Wang, Z. Q., Yang, X. L., & Shi, R. S. (in press). Mandarin-learning 19-month-old toddlers' sensitivity to word order cues that differentiate unaccusative and unergative verbs. Journal of Child Language, (published online), 1–22.

[41] Yang, X., Shi, R., & Xu, K. (2018). Grammatical aspect in early child mandarin: Evidence from a preferential looking experiment. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 47(6), 1301–1320.

[42] Yuan, B. (1999). Acquiring the unaccusative/unergative distinction in a second language: Evidence from English-speaking learners of L2 Chinese. Linguistics, 37(2), 275–296.

[43] Yuan, S., & Fisher, C. (2006). ‘Really? He blicked the cat?': Two-year-olds learn distributional facts about verbs in the absence of a referential context. In Proceedings of the 30th annual Boston University conference on language development (pp. 689–700). Cascadilla Press.

[44] Yuan, S., & Fisher, C. (2009). ‘Really? She blicked the baby?' Two-year-olds learn combinatorial facts about verbs by listening. Psychological Science, 20(5), 619–626.

[45] Yuan, S., Fisher, C., & Snedeker, J. (2012). Counting the nouns: Simple structural cues to verb meaning. Child Development, 83(4), 1382–1399.

[46] Zhou, P., Crain, S., & Zhan, L. (2014). Grammatical aspect and event recognition in children's online sentence comprehension. Cognition, 133(1), 262–276.

[47] Zhou, P., & Ma, W. (2018). Children's use of morphological cues in real-time event representation. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 47(1), 241–260.

[48] Zhu, J., Franck, J., Rizzi, L., & Gavarro, A. (2022). Do infants have abstract grammatical knowledge of word order at 17 months? Evidence from mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 49(1), 60–79.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2023 2023 The Authors. PsyCh Journal published by Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.