Experimental Research on the Acquisition Order of Wh—questions of Mandarin—Speaking Children

高夢盈

Abstract：The paper focused on group study of a mandarin-speaking childrens development sequence of “what” and “who” questions. The subjects involved in the study were 769 children aged from 1 to 7 in Xin Xiang， Hunan. And at last 764 childrens response were taken into analysis because the number of subjects in 1 and 7 years old were too scarce. According to the analysis， the author figure out that the general developmental order of the two kinds of questions went from “what” “who” and both of them showed an inverted U-shaped development. The result of this experiment was consistent with those of other researches， which was “what” questions were easier to grasp than “who” questions.

Because of time limitation， there are still some problems in this study. Thus we need to improve on the experiment. And also our further research is to explode the acquisition order of argument sentences.

Key word：child language acquisition wh-questions group study

1 Introduction

It seemed， from various perspectives， that there was a relatively robust order of acquisition of wh-questions. Those who argued for semantic or syntactic complexity in childrens acquisition of words and grammatical constructions proposed that the wh-question that encode syntactically simple relationships （e.g. “what” and “where”） were acquired before other wh-words that refer to more complex concepts （“why”， “how”， and “when”）.

Although the acquisition of questions has been reported by a lot of researchers during the past decades， studies investigating the acquisition order of wh-words specifically on individual “what” and “who” questions on group study were relatively few. Thus this thesis reported an experimental research on the acquisition order of “what” and “who” of Mandarin-speaking children. It will contribute to the domain of early grammatical development research in some ways：

Firstly， this experimental research into the order of individual wh-questions acquisition can assist researchers gain an understanding of the development of childrens early syntax in general.

Secondly， this experimental research into the order of wh-questions acquisition comprises an essential part for linguistic studies and investigations of acquisition theories as well as a kind of testing of the previous research.

Last but not least， this experimental research into the order of wh-questions acquisition also sheds light on second language acquisition study.

2 Literature Review

2.1. Theoretical Description of Wh-questions.

According to Ervin- Tripp （1970）， wh-questions were information or open-class questions that require specific information in the answer， rather than just agreement or disagreement. Chen Min （2008） made a review on the types of wh-questions. She stated that wh-questions can be usually divided into two types， argument wh-questions and adjunct wh-questions. Grimshaw （1990） distinguished the difference between the constructions of the two kinds of wh-questions. He retained his belief that in the argument wh-question constructions， wh-word served as the argument which referred to the activities signified by the lexical and its role was assigned by the predicate.

“The focus of interrogatives in modern Chinese was proposed by Lv as early as 1982.” （Yin 2008）If there was only one wh-word in wh-questions， there would be one focus. Li （2009） also pointed out that multiple wh-questions （MWH） were interrogative sentences with more than one wh-word.

However， some others （Ning 1977） contended that wh-words cannot carry all the doubt information in wh-questions. The author agrees with the view in this aspect. Li （2009） presented that wh-words in Mandarin can act as indefinite pronouns， as was shown below：

Shui zai zhu shenme.

Who ASP cook what

a.Who is cooking what？

b.Someone is cooking something.

From the sentences listed above， Li （2009） drew the conclusion that the sentence can be interpreted as either a multiple wh- question or a declarative sentence.

2.2 Empirical Research on the Acquisition of Wh-questions.

2.2.1 Research from the Production Perspective

The acquisition of wh-questions was studied by Tyack and Ingram （1977） in 1977. In Tyack and Ingrams study， they investigated questions produced by 22 children ranging in age 2； 0 to 3； 11. This study revealed that： （1） the most frequent wh-questions used by two years old children were “what” and “where” questions. （2） “Why” and “how” questions were not used at all at two-year-old but they increased with age； （3） “Who” and “when” questions were rarely asked by children among these subjects.

Bloom et al. （1982） observed seven children aged from 22 to 36 months of age longitudinally. They found that “what” and “where” emerged at age about 26 months， “who” at age 28 months， “how” at age 33 months and “why” at age 35 months. Besides， they discovered that “which”， “whose” and “when” questions rarely produced by children at that ages. Then they came to the conclusion that the acquisition order of wh-questions was “what”/”where”， “who”， “how” and “why”.

2.2.2 Research from the Comprehension Perspective

Ervin- Tripp （1970） claimed that the acquisition order of wh-question， with which children correctly respond to questions， was “what”， “where”， “whose”， “whom”， “who”， “how”， and “when”.

Lee Thomas （1989） was one of them who made a study on a Mandarin- speaking child （Xiao Min）s comprehension of “what”， “where” and “who” questions. The study revealed that the semantic acquisition of the three question words followed such an order： shenme “what”/ nail “where” and then shei “who”.

To sum up， the researches mentioned above draw the conclusion that there is a relatively robust order of acquisition of wh-questions. “what” ， “where” and “who” are acquired before other wh-words “why”， “how”， and “when”. This robust sequence of acquisition in both production and comprehension has been reported in many studies.

3 Experiment Design

The research was carried out in October， 2008， which involved 769 children from Xin Xiang in HuNan. Procedures for recruitment， data collection and transcription were all devised by Ning Chunyan and his colleagues. Data description was done by the author.

3.1 Subjects

All 769 subjects were aged from 1 to 7 in this experiment. And these children and their parents were known to be physically and mentally sound and spoke Mandarin.

3.2 Methods

The places where the research conducted were their homes or their school or at least some places that they familiar with.

In this experiment， experimenters were responsible for different work. One experimenter asked the questions and at the same time displayed the pictures or presented the entity to the subjects. The experimenter showed each picture individually and the subjects were given certain seconds for the answer. If the subjects did not answer in five seconds， the experimenters would repeat the question to make sure that these children could understand the questions and avoid other influencing factors. In the meantime， the experimenter was required to use the natural voice and intonation to ask questions. Other experimenters took notes on the objects response and recorded them using the recorder. The whole procedure was recorded by the recorder. The responses of each subject were preserved in both the recorder and the notes based on the childrens answers written by experimenters.

3.3 Materials

The experimenter designed questions including shenme “what”， near “where” and shui “who” as for pictures in Chinese and made the subjects answer the questions. There are 4 questions being selected in this thesis. The experimental materials were paintings in card that was kept in paper file. These paintings were rich-colored.

In the experiment， the questions were devised from easy to difficult to children. MWH that was interrogative sentence with more than one wh-word was also included in these 4 questions.

4 Results and Discussion

All answers of each subject are decoded into Excel files by the experimenters.

Figure 4.1 shows the distribution patterns of shenme” what”/ shui”who” questions by age. The figure displays that the acquisition rate of “what”/“who” questions increase gradually with age before the age of 4. As the figure reveals， at the age of 2 years old， the acquisition rate of “what”/“who” questions only represent a small proportion. However， the period from the age of 2 to 4 years sees a sharp increase to 44.4%. There is a tendency to descend between 4 and 6 years old. And after the year of 6 years old， the acquisition rate of ”what”/ “who” questions decreases gradually 43.6% and 38.3%.

As for the individual wh-questions， what we can see from the line chart above is that at the age of 2 years old， the acquisition rate of “what” questions is 17.5% and the acquisition of “who” is 12.5%， which means that “what” questions acquired earlier than “who” questions by children at that age. Similarly， it manifests the same result from the line chart above at the age of 3 years old. While at the age of 4 years old， the acquisition rate turns out to be the same. And also it is obviously that at the “what” questions acquired earlier than “who” questions by children at the age of 4 to 6， although the acquisition rate decreases gradually.

We can notice that the acquisition rate is the same at the age of 4 years old. In order to figure out whether or not children acquire “what”- questions earlier than “who” –questions， it is necessary to analyze the acquisition rate at the age of 4 in detail.

Acquisition Rate

Age （years）

Figure 4.2 Distribution of what/who questions at the age of 4

As the line chart above shows， the acquisition rate of “what” questions and “who” questions are almost above 50%， which indicate that children at the age of 4 have already acquire these two kinds of wh-questions. While it also reveals the inverted U-shaped distractions for “what” and “who”-questions. I.e. the number of these wh-questions increases sharply in a short period time， and then it gradually decrease down. For example： the development of “who” questions. At the age of 4.01 years old， the percentage of “who” -questions suddenly increase from 39.4% to 53.3%， and afterward it gradually decreases to 41.2% in the following five months. As a whole， the acquisition rate of “what” question above the acquisition rate of “who” question.

Discussion

Li （1997） advocated that three-year-old childrens understanding questions was quite good. And concerning the quantity of the question format and the complexity of the semantic content， children at the age of three and four years old had a greater development. Thus this period could be regarded as the critical period of childrens understanding of questions system. It could be the reason that the acquisition rate of “what” questions and “who” questions are almost above 50% at the age of 4.

In sum， the general developmental order of the two kinds of questions went from “what” “who” and both of them showed an inverted U-shaped development. The result of this experiment showed “what” question was easier to grasp than “who” question， which was consistent with those of other researches in the world. While the result that both of the two kinds of wh-questions showed an inverted U-shaped development was not following Deng （2009）s result.

Deng （2009） exploded from the production perspective， and he insisted that only “who” was thought to have an inverted U-shaped development. The rate of “what” questions fluctuated a great deal before the age of 2. After the age of 2 years old， the percentage of what questions to all wh-questions was stabilized， ranging from 40% to 50%. Chen （2008）s research revealed that the order of childs acquisition of wh-questions was the same both in production aspect and in comprehension aspect. While in this experiment， we can draw the conclusion that children experienced a sharp increase during the age of 2 to 4. In this thesis， as figure 4.1 displayed， there was a tendency to descend between 4 and 6 years old. Thus this result seemed disaccord with Deng （2009）s findings.

One reason should be mentioned was the individual variation. There were a lot of ecological differences in the development of wh-questions， which would affect childrens language acquisition. Another reason involved in was the limitation of this experiment. Different criterion as for the same experiment might cause differences. Furthermore， the evaluation was done totally by the author in this thesis. So it was inevitable that some differences might be found out. It would be better to have the assessment tool to measure the response of the subjects. Only in this way， could we diminish the emotional factors of the examiners as far as possible.

Apart from these limitation caused the findings inconsistent with the previous studies， there were some other problems which need to be noticed in the further research.

Firstly， the author only chose the samples that this thesis needed out of the whole investigation samples， which enclosed the thesis. The question samples were a little bit small. Thus we should enlarge the samples of wh-questions in the future.

Secondly， because of the sample missing in “where” questions， the author only selected the “what” and “who” questions to be the target of this thesis. Cheung made a conclusion of what researchers had done before and retained that “who”， “what” and “which” were argument sentences in interrogative sentences. So our further research is to explode the acquisition order of argument sentences.

Thirdly， the number of subjects in the earlier stage was not rich enough. Children at the age of 1 to 2 years old were a critical period for acquisition language， which should included in this experiment.

Conclusion

Summary of the findings：

In our analysis， the general developmental order of the two kinds of questions went from “what” “who” and both of them showed an inverted U-shaped development. The result of this experiment was consistent with those of other researches， which was “what” questions were easier to grasp than “who” questions. While， the result that both of the two kinds of wh-questions showed an inverted U-shaped development were a little bit different from Deng （2009）s findings. He argued that after the age of 2 years old， the percentage of what questions to all wh-questions was stabilized.

Implications：

This research was considered to have clear implications for early grammatical development research in many ways： it was not only contributed to the linguistic studies and investigations of acquisition theories， but also verification of studies conducted by some researchers. What should not be ignored was that it could help researchers gain an understanding of the development of childrens early syntax in general and also shed light on second language acquisition study.

Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research：

Firstly， the evaluation was done totally by the author in this thesis， which involved the emotional factors of the examiners. Moreover， the question samples were far too few to achieve statistical significance. Last but not least， the number of subjects in the earlier stage was too scarce. Children at the age of 1 to 2 years old were a critical period for acquisition language， thus it would be better to enlarge the number of subjects at that age.

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