新加坡英汉双语学前儿童几个汉语常用具体与一般身体动作动词应用情况调查 = A study of the application of some commonly used general and specific Chinese physical action verbs by English-Chinese bilingual pre-school children in Singapore

儿童语言发展是一段奇妙的旅程。儿童从咿呀学语到能够与成人自由地沟通只需短短的几年。这不禁令人好奇儿童习得语言的机制和关键到底是什么。新加坡华族儿童自小生活在复杂的语言环境中，各种语言相互交融为儿童提供了一个特殊的双语成长经验。本项研究通过七组儿童常用的一般动词与具体动词，即“喝”、“吸”、“坐”、“骑”、“剪”、“切”、“开”的使用情况，来窥视 3-5 岁新加坡华族双语儿童认知发展水平与语言发展状况，并对测试结果进行分析从而得出这几个不同年龄层的儿童在语言习得和认知灵活性方面的发展特征。本项测试一共收录了 37 名该年龄层儿童的测试情况。研究结果发现，3-5 岁儿童的总体语言发展情况出现断层现象，即 3 岁儿童呈现跳跃性发展趋势，而 4 岁和 5 岁儿童则呈现稳定发展趋势。再者，3-5 岁儿童在面对同一属性的测试物品时，例如有着相近形状或相同性质，展现了更灵活的认知能力。研究还发现，4 以后的儿童已经基本掌握了一般词，如“喝”和“坐”，但是对于具体词，即“吸”和“骑”，即使是 5 岁儿童也还未能习得。以上研究结果揭露了双语儿童词汇习得的规律和认知灵活性的特征，并有望进一步推动和加强新加坡学前儿童的母语教育。 The process of children acquiring a language is both fascinating and intriguing for the fact that progress and advancements take place at a marvellous speed. From babbling to effective communication with adults, it takes only a few years of time. Furthermore, Singapore’s unique and rather complicated language environment provides an effective bilingual learning experience for children. The aim of the study is to explore the cognitive and language development in Chinese-English bilingual children aged between 3 to 5 years by testing their cognitive flexibility in the usage of 7 Chinese action verbs that are associated with various body parts. They are “喝” (drink)/ “吸” (suck)/ “坐” (sit)/ “骑” (ride)/ “剪” (cut with scissor) / “切” (cut with knife)/ “开” (open). Results of this study shown that the cognitive and language development of the children exhibit a discontinuous trend amongst the abovementioned age groups. 3-year old children exhibited an exponentially increasing trend in their cognitive and language development, whereas children beyond the age of 4 exhibited a linear trend. In addition, 3 to 5 years old children were more likely to extend their cognitive flexibility onto objects with comparable properties such as test objects with similar shape or under the same classification. It is also found that by the age of 4, the children were likely to have acquired hypernym terms in a general-specific pair, however hyponym terms were still not acquired even after the age of 5. The findings of this study gave light to the general trend of lexicon acquisition and characteristics of flexible cognition of bilingual children. Furthermore, it uncovers critical areas in the educational process of preschool children in Singapore.Bachelor of Art