ABSTRACT

Compared with other subdisciplines in Chinese linguistics, children’s language acquisition is a significant field with relatively limited achievements. Based on data from a dynamic and developmental corpus, this book is a comprehensive exploration of the early development of Chinese-speaking children’s language acquisition.
   Anchoring the discussions regarding phonetics, semantics and aspects of syntax in a cognitive and functional framework, the author conducts an in-depth analysis of many acquisition characteristics, such as the inevitable and incidental errors of their learning of initials; their ability to obtain the concept of time at a young age and the utilization of Le in the expression of the past tense; their understanding of subjectivity at a young age and the ability to express it; their learning of the degree of modality following the order of from probability to necessity; and children’s acquisition of syntactic structures being impacted by genetics and also affected by the steps involved in syntactic processing. Although genetics, cognition and experience all play a role in children’s language acquisition, this book focuses on the role of cognitive functions.
   By successfully explaining the acquisition rules based on some cutting-edge linguistic theories, the book will certainly be beneficial to scholars studying linguistics, psychology, cognitive science and early childhood educators.

chapter 1|12 pages

Introduction

chapter 8|30 pages

Early acquisition of degrees of modality

chapter 9|18 pages

Acquisition of the Zai 在 construction

chapter 11|21 pages

Acquisition of simplex relative clauses 1