Cognitive perspective development of Chinese children’s lexicon based on corpus Daddy where are we going

【Abstract】The study of children language development has been the hot topic of numerous researchers. The thesis attempts to make analysis to Chinese content words of these five star children from constructional approach based on the corpus Daddy where are we going， whose innovation lies in parentage. In this TV， five fathers and their children spend 72 hours in villages personally. Based on the five videos downloaded from the Hunan Satellite official website， and collect more evidences from each child. The evidences mainly include Chinese content words and conversations to analyze the cognitive features of these five children from 4-6-year old.

【Key words】cognition； lexicon； cognitive ability

1. Prototype Theory towards Children Language

Basically， there are two kinds of different explanation of prototype. The first one is that prototype is the classic representative of a category. The classic representative， also being called prototypical exemplar， salient example， etc.， is the clearest case of category membership and the most representative of things included in a category. It is the representative of the basic-level categories and has the maximum family resemblance. When a category is mentioned， its prototype comes into people's mind first. The prototype is unmarked and taken to be a reference point for the establishment of a category. Prototype also plays an important part in recognizing a specific category. The second explanation is that prototype is the generative schematic representation of the category members. Therefore， if a member has more attributes of its category， it will be more close to the prototype or the central member.

From the above analyses， both the two points of view emphasize the important role prototype plays in categories and categorization. We should also notice that the prototypical exemplar of a category may be different of different community， different cultural background and different times. For instance， if bird， is mentioned， the British will think of “robin” while the Chinese will think of “sparrow”.

Prototype theory is very powerful in explaining the forming of polysemous words. From the above analyses， we know that category takes prototype as its center and constantly extends through family resemblance， A polysemous word also has the same characteristic. It has a central meaning， on which it is constantly extended to form a meaning chain and construct a semantic network through the specific semantic extension mechanism such as fami.

2. In-put of Children Language

In the process of children language acquisition， language in-put is necessary. Obviously， a child must hear （or see， in the case of a sign language） a language in order to learn/acquire it.

A demonstration comes to that the constructions what children acquire are highly relevant with the frequency what the children hear under the same conditions. While the words what children hear in their daily life are mainly nouns and verbs. The following are the selected five terms of the first quarter about nouns used by these five children. For example：

The author collected about 203 lexicons from the five video in all. Among these lexicons， The two figures turn out that the nouns what children acquire are highly relevant with their own experience. Most of nouns are concrete nouns， while abstract nouns are rare. And the concrete nouns are what children often hear in their daily life.

3. Imitativeness in Lexical Language

In reality， no matter the young children or adults imitate something they like frequently. Generally speaking， the younger the children are， the higher ability the imitation of them. The imitation refers that both imitators and imitatees are face-to-face in a certain condition.

林：老板算便宜一點

老板：2塊5，現在漲價了。

林：我們只有50塊可以買，Kimi你說老板你算便宜點。

Kimi：算便宜點。

林：月餅多少錢？

老板：月餅2塊5一個

Kimi：便宜點。（條件反射）

In this conversation between Lin and Kimi， when Lin asked Kimi to say “老板你算便宜點”. And Kimi just imitated Lins utterance. Through this time Kimi knows well about that lexicon phonetically， yet he may not know the meaning of that lexicon semantically. That is to say， they can articulate the lexicon words again but they do not know the natural meaning of lexicon. Only under that given bargaining surroundings， do children may say that lexicon again. Nonetheless， they can imitate once more without asking， because the younger children are likely to imitate lexicon without conversion. A dialogue below can demonstrate such point.

林：幾歲了過完今天

Kimi：不知道

田亮：Kimi，來拿著這個你告訴大家

林：來，你這樣子你說我幾歲

Kimi：我幾歲

石頭：說4歲

Angela：這個叫4

林：Kimi，告訴大家說我四歲了

Kimi：我四歲了

When Lin said “你這樣子你說我幾歲” which means he wants Kimi to tell his age to the other people， but Kimi just imitated what Lin said again. Only when Lin said “告訴大家說我四歲了”， does Kimi pronounce “我四歲了”. Kimi does not know the meaning of the lexicons “幾歲” and “四歲了”. Kimi is just four years old， the youngest children among these five children. Maybe such phenomenon takes place because of limited ability to recognize the world.

4. Significance of the Study

This thesis studies Chinese children content words from a constructional approach based on the corpus Daddy where are we going， mainly discussing the words change condition of these five children. And the recognition features as they are growing up. The major findings are summarized as follows： Firstly， children acquire more and more lexicon words when they are growing up， however， the rate of such increase is slowing down. Secondly， the younger children are likely to make more mistakes the elder children， relatively， what they have experienced is less than that of elder children.

However， due to a lot of uncertain factors in process of children language development， the elements affecting language acquisition are various. This paper tries to find out features in Chinese lexical acquisition based on constructional approach. Firstly， the previous study of Children Language mainly focuses on Chomskys Innateness Theory and Skinners Behaviorist Theory. However， the thesis focuses on that of Construction Grammars “Based on Usage”， thus it presents a brand new perspective to investigate Children Language in Lexical Acquisition. Secondly， it is effective to take an active action to develop Children Language in Lexical Acquisition by studying the external factor affecting children language， which will drive the development of children language towards an explicit direction.Thirdly， it is not only theoretic but also practical to teach First Language Acquisition on children， Second Language Acquisition on adults and it is benefited to speech therapy of special children by mastering the external factors which make an effect on Morphology.

This thesis tries to analyze Chinese children lexicon based on the five video of he program Daddy where are we going. And in the process of analysis some other problems turn up which are not mentioned in this paper. Based on the analysis the this thesis， there are at least two issues can be studied in further researches. Firstly， the existing cognitive methods consist of many elements which are uncertain and changing all the time， therefore， the further researchers can fill in the blank on such point. In other words， the cognitive methods of children can be studied in a fixed form.Secondly， the examples of this thesis are chosen from Daddy where are we going， and the study of the theories of the prototype theory and image schema can be extended to other kinds of TV programs such as Baobao baobao （寶寶抱抱） which is on show for the first time.

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作者簡介：李娜（1986.7-），河南輝縣人，助教，武警工程大學，英語語言文學，碩士生。