单双语儿童“拉”类 手部动作动词使用情况实证对比研究 = A comparative study of the application of the Chinese “La” hand action verbs by monolingual and bilingual children

在多种族和多语言的环境熏陶下，对新加坡华人而言华语和英语都有着举足轻重的地位。随着新加坡教育制度的不断完善以及科技信息技术的迅速发展，越来越多新加坡儿童能够广泛的接触和使用两种语言。但是新加坡华人儿童在日常生活中 是否可以很好的同时掌握这两种语言 ，以及新加坡儿童是否与中国儿童在华语的习得上有显著的差距。这些都是值得研究和探讨的问题。 研究选取一系列在 Gao, （2001）被定义为手部动词的“拉”类动词来更深入的讨论和研究。研究不仅将测试 3-5 岁儿童是否全面的习得“拉”这类动词，也会测试新加坡儿童是否双语均衡发展或者更偏向某一个语言。进而与中国单语儿童做对比，以研究影响新加坡双语儿童在华语的动词词汇习得方面与单语儿童差距的因素。 本研究一共包括四个部分：1.汉语为母语的成人对“拉”的理解，此部分将为之后儿童的语言测试奠定基础和标准 。2.儿童家长问卷调查，家长问卷是采用了高虹教授(Gao, 2014)为之前的研究项目设计的家长问卷，调查的主要目的是收集儿童的基本状况，例如家庭的语言环境，家庭状况，父母所使用的语言以及背景资料等。于此同时，问卷中包含了对新加坡华族双语儿童的中英文身体动作动词的习得情况调查，以得到家长对于儿童动词掌握的了解情况。3. 单双语 3-5 岁儿童语义习得实证研究。双语儿童的测试为英语和华语两种语言分别测试，而单语儿童部分仅以华语为测试语言。测试包含两部分，测试一截取 PPVT-IV（Peabody Picture VocabularyTest-Fourth Edition）中身体动作的图片让儿童描述，以收集他们整体的身体动作动词习得情况。4.单双语 3-5 岁儿童语义习得实证研究测试二，采用视频节选的形式，以不同形式的“拉”类动作呈现（例如拉旅行箱，拽头发等），以测试儿童是否全面习得这一类的手部动作动词。 本文将采用研究得出的实际数据和结果，分析与调查新加坡双语儿童的手部动作动词习得情况。以及通过与单语儿童的对比来探讨影响儿童词汇习得因素。 Under the influence of multi-lingual and multi-racial society, English and Mandarin Chinese are both considered to be crucial to Chinese Singaporeans. With the education system heading towards a better direction and rapid growth of technology, more Singapore children have exposure to two languages and to be bilinguals to a large extent. However, whether Singapore Chinese children are able to master both English and Mandarin well, and whether there is a huge difference in vocabulary acquisition between the Mandarin Chinese speaking children in Singapore and China, are the questions worth investigating and discussing. This study selected a class of hand action verbs defined by Gao, (2001) as Pulling Verbs support further discussion. The purposes of this study result are to show whether 3-5 year-old children have learnt these verbs and whether bilingual children have acquired the English and Mandarin Chinese verbs equally. A comparison of the differences between the two groups of children’s acquired words will be conducted as well. There are four parts in this research, 1. Understanding of Chinese Pulling Verbs by native Mandarin Chinese speakers. This part will set a bench mark for the assessment of the children’s verb use collected from the experiment. 2. Parent Report. This parent report is designed by Prof. Helena Gao (Gao, 2014) for the Studies of lexical development in bilingual children in Singapore. One of the main purposes of this Parent Report is to collect children’s basic information such as language background of their family, language used in their daily life, family situation. The Parent Report also includes a list of Chinese and English physical action verbs for parents to check their children’s acquisition, which allows us to have a better understanding of children’s acquisition of these verbs from parents’ observations. 3. Action Description Test for monolingual and bilingual children. The Action Description Test for the bilingual children is in both Chinese and English whereas for the monolingual children is only in Chinese. This Action Description Test consists of two parts; firstly, children will describe the pictures of physical actions. The pictures are selected from PPVT-4 (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition). The purpose is to test the overall physical action verb acquisition of these children. Secondly, children will be asked to describe the videos of Pulling Actions (such as pulling car, dragging luggage etc.). The purpose of this part of the test is to find out whether children have acquired this type of verbs. This paper will use the actual data and test results to study and analyse the acquisition of hand action verbs by Singapore bilingual children, and to further compare the results with that of the monolingual children in China to discuss the factors that affect the lexicon acquisition of the children.Bachelor of Art