新加坡双语学前儿童中英文描述“拿”和“搬”类手部动作情况研究 = How pre-school bilingual children describe "taking" and "carrying" hand actions in Mandarin and English

新加坡是一个包含众多国家移民的岛国，其社会种族的多样性决定了社会语言的多样性。除了新加坡的行政语言英语之外，华语是新加坡社会的主要语言。学习华语是维系华人之间文化认同感的重要基础，政府也大力支持新加坡华人学习华语。在学校教育体系的配合下，新加坡华族儿童从小就开始接触英语和华语，成为双语儿童。儿童早期词汇发展是儿童语言习得的一个重要阶段。动词是最显著的一类词汇，手部动作动词又是动词的重要组成部分。随着儿童的身体发育，手部动作动词也是儿童较早习得的词汇。通过对新加坡双语儿童手部动作动词的测试进而了解他们双语水平的发展，是最为直接的方式。本研究采用了 Gao(2013)《新加坡双语儿童词汇发展家长报告表》，对 30 名来自新加坡两所幼儿园的 3 至 5 岁华族双语儿童进行了背景调查及中英文 “拿” 和 “搬”类手部动作动词的测试。测试的分析结果显示，从手部动作动词的不同类型来看，新加坡儿童对日常生活中经常使用的这类手部动作动词掌握比较好；从中英文手部动作动词习得来看，在 3 至 5 岁的年龄段，英文手部动作动词比华语手部动作动词的使用更多样；从手部动作动词习得的影响因素来看，它是受到性别、年龄、家庭用语等多种因素影响的结果。Singapore is a multi-lingual and multi-racial country. The ethnic diversity of its community determines the diversity of language use. Both English and Chinese are the main languages used. Learning Chinese is to build an important foundation for maintaining cultural identity and Singapore government also strongly supports learning Chinese in Singapore. In cooperation with the school education system, the kindergartens and schools in Singapore start to teach children in both English and Chinese from an early age to develop their bilingual capability. Early lexical development is an important stage in children's language acquisition. Verbs are the most significant class of lexicon and hand action verbs are an important part of the verbs. Hand action verbs are more quickly acquired by children with their physical development. Testing hand action verb acquisition is the most direct way to study the bilingual capability and bilingual development of Singapore Children.In this study, Gao’s (2014) “Parent Report Form for the Studies of Lexical Development in Bilingual Children in Singapore” was used for the background study as well as investigating the acquisition of a group of “taking” and “carrying” Chinese and English hand action verbs for 30 3-5 years old children from two kindergartens in Singapore. Results showed that among the different types of “taking” and “carrying” hand action verbs, the children used better the verbs that are frequently used in daily life. For the comparison between the English and Chinese verbs the children used, the English verbs were better used than Chinese ones. We also found that Singapore Chinese Children’s vocabulary acquisition is affected by other non-linguistic factors such as gender, age, and family language, etc.Bachelor of Art