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Chinese preschoolers’ acquisition of temporal adverbs indicating past, present, and future: a corpus-based study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2019

Lu Yao LIANG Open the ORCID record for Lu Yao LIANG [Opens in a new window] ,
Dandan WU  and
Hui LI
Lu Yao LIANG*
Affiliation:
Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Australia
Dandan WU
Affiliation:
Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Australia
Hui LI
Affiliation:
Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Australia
*
*Corresponding author: Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This study investigated the development of temporal adverbs in early childhood Mandarin. All cases of temporal adverbs indicating the past, present, and future were extracted from the Early Child Mandarin Corpus (168 children in four age groups: 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, 5;6). Data analyses indicated: (1) Mandarin-speaking children produced a repertoire of 21 types of temporal adverbs, and the children in the first age group (M = 2;6) were capable of using temporal adverbs to denote past, present, and future events; (2) within each age group, the children produced significantly more future temporal adverbs than the other two subtypes; and (3) there was a significant age effect that, with increased age, more children were able to produce all subtypes of temporal adverbs. Overall, findings of this corpus-based investigation shed light upon Chinese children's early-attained ability to express the three fundamental notions of time by resorting to the appropriate linguistic devices.

Keywords

corpus-based studypreschool childrenMandarin Chinesetemporal adverbstemporal expression
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 760 - 784
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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