scholarly journals The four tones of Mandarin Chinese

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 180-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen van de Weijer ◽  
Marjoleine Sloos
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Relative Frequency ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
First Language ◽  
Phonological Representation ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Beijing Mandarin

In this paper we discuss the four tones of Standard (Beijing) Mandarin Chinese. First, we will suggest a proposal for their phonological representation. Then, we discuss the order in which they are acquired in first language acquisition, relating this both to the representations we propose and to the relative frequency with which these tones appear in the most frequently used Chinese words. It turns out that the former predicts the order of acquisition more closely than the latter: We provide an explanation for this based on the early stage at which the tones are acquired.

scholarly journals Are donkey sentences and bare conditionals family or friends?

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-94
Author(s):  
Wei-ling Eileen Lin ◽  
Chun-yin Doris Chen ◽  
Gerardo Fernandez-Salgueiro
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
First Language ◽  
Contextual Effects ◽  
Developmental Pattern ◽  
Control Group ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Truth Value

Abstract The present study investigates children’s first language acquisition of donkey sentences and bare conditionals in Mandarin Chinese, both of which are concerned with quantification. Kindergarteners, Grade 2 and Grade 4 were recruited for experimental groups, each group consisting of 18 subjects, and 18 adults comprised a control group against which to compare their interpretations. Each subject finished two Truth-Value Judgment tasks, which were sentences in isolation and sentences in context. The results of this research identified a developmental pattern regarding the acquisition of donkey sentences and bare conditionals in Mandarin Chinese. It was found that overall children under seven years of age had difficulty interpreting quantificational sentences. First, concerning the relatedness of the two constructions, all four groups showed a tendency to find donkey sentences easier to interpret than bare conditionals. With respect to contextual effects, by Grade 2, children could obtain adult-like interpretations of donkey sentences in a biasing context, but it was not until they were in Grade 4 that they could interpret both donkey sentences and bare conditionals in their supporting context with adult-like readings. As a result, the subjects’ interpretations were greatly affected by context, but the two constructions were affected in different ways.

Acquisition of the nominal case system in Russian as a second language

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832098805
Author(s):  
Natalia Cherepovskaia ◽  
Natalia Slioussar ◽  
Anna Denissenko Denissenko
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Relative Frequency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Case System

Using written texts elicited from students with different proficiency levels, we studied the acquisition of nominal cases in Russian as a second language. We established the order in which cases were acquired (nominative, locative, accusative, genitive, instrumental, and dative), as well as certain characteristics of their acquisition trajectories. We argue that the order of acquisition is determined by two groups of factors: how essential a given case is for successful language use and how complex it is, both semantically and morphologically. Many important differences between first and second language acquisition were identified. The maturation of the case system was observed both in the number of correct forms participants produced and in error rates. The distribution of correct forms changed, gradually approaching that found for native speakers. With growth in proficiency, the incidence of different error types declined, and the relative frequency of errors more characteristic of first language acquisition increased.

scholarly journals Early Mixing in Bilingual Children: A Psycholinguistics View

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Dwi Ide Rahayu
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
First Language ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Related Literature ◽  
Linguistic Awareness ◽  
Language Mixing ◽  
Language Differentiation

Most studies on Bilinguals First Language Acquisition (BFLA) are concerned with giving explanation for language mixing in young bilinguals. It is commonly stated that language mixing in children has to be interpreted as evidence for confusions in the bilingual’s language acquisition, in the sense that the two languages are not acquired separately but start out as a single system. In other words, it is in contrast to adults’ code-switching. In this article, early mixing in bilingual children is explored based on psycholinguistics view. This article will first discuss the language acquisition, then the theories and assumptions on bilingualism in early childhood, and last the early mixing in bilingual children. According to the review of related literature, it can be inferred that from psycholinguistics view, language mixing cannot indicate the bilingual children’s lack of ability to differentiate the two language system. Spontaneous translation employed by the bilingual children shows that bilingual awareness and language differentiation is possible at an early stage. Bilingual infants can do language mixing as an evidence of their meta-linguistic awareness and language differentiation. As language mixing may be a good indicator of bilingual fluency, we can say that children who become bilingual in their early childhood will reach their fluency in the two languages by doing language mixing according to the two languages they have acquired.

Infant-Directed Speech Effects in Adult Artificial Grammar Learning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Sára Lukics ◽  
Ágnes Lukács
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
Artificial Grammar ◽  
Combined Effect ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Grammar Learning ◽  
Learning Rates

First language acquisition is facilitated by several characteristics of infant-directed speech, but we know little about their relative contribution to learning different aspects of language. We investigated infant-directed speech effects on the acquisition of a linear artificial grammar in two experiments. We examined the effect of incremental presentation of strings (starting small) and prosody (comparing monotonous, arbitrary and phrase prosody). Presenting shorter strings before longer ones led to higher learning rates compared to random presentation. Prosody marking phrases had a similar effect, yet, prosody without marking syntactic units did not facilitate learning. These studies were the first to test the starting small effect with a linear artificial grammar, and also the first to investigate the combined effect of starting small and prosody. Our results suggest that starting small and prosody facilitate the extraction of regularities from artificial linguistic stimuli, indicating they may play an important role in natural language acquisition.

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