新加坡英汉双语儿童常用身体动词习得情况研究 = A study of the acquisition of commonly used physical action verbs by English-Chinese bilingual children in Singapore

Abstract

许多学者对双语儿童的语言能力以及词汇量提出不同的看法与解释。对于双语儿童两个语言的词汇发展是否平均，学者对此的说法也不同。Grosjean (2010) 认为双语者在日常生活中经常使用两种语言。新加坡儿童自幼同时接触英语和自己种族的母语，这使他们成为双语儿童。虽然本地儿童都是双语儿童，他们两种语言能力是否对等？双语儿童的词汇运用及理解能力也是否相同？本研究希望通过不同的身体动作动词考察儿童双语词汇习得和使用的情况并且评鉴本地儿童的双语能力。本研究从 Gao (2001) 的身体动作动词表中选用了 13 个身体动词作为研究基础，并在研究结果中加以分析讨论。研究也考虑到新加坡的双语环境，因此本研究不仅以这 13 个汉语身体动作动词为主，同时译出它们对应的英语动词，再以英汉双语进行两次测试。测试者在测试中使用了不同的图片作为刺激物，考察儿童的动词运用和认知能力。另外，研究主要针对 5-7 岁的新加坡儿童进行调查，试图从不同的年龄层看出儿童语言习得的速度与理解能力是否和年龄有关。在测试结束后转录所有完整的儿童作答语料并进行统计和分析，从而探讨儿童在两次测试中的表现以及双语词汇的习得和使用情况。 研究不但发现本地儿童双语能力不对等，双语儿童在习得词汇时也会受到年龄、外在因素、两种语言相互干扰以及视觉刺激的影响。本研究希望通过此调查结果了解新加坡儿童的语言使用情况及双语发展，同时也为今后新加坡学前与小学生的语言教学提供参考。Bilingualism in early childhood is a widely-debated topic with several schools of thoughts. There are also varying responses regarding lexical acquisition in bilingual children. Grosjean (2010) defines bilinguals as “those who use two or more languages (or dialects) in their everyday lives.” This is an empirical study which aims to investigate the competencies in both English and Chinese of 5-to-7-year-old Singaporean children. The study also intends to examine the characteristics of verb acquisition by Singaporean bilingual children. An experiment was designed using 13 selected physical action verbs from Gao’s (2001) physical action verb list: Verbs of Direct Physical Contact. The experiment was conducted in 2 sessions, one in English and the other in Chinese. Pictures of different objects were shown to each of the children one by one and they were asked if they could use a certain verb X on the different stimuli. A total of 46 children who were English-Chinese bilinguals were recruited for the study and 36 children’s responses were valid and included in the analysis. The results of the study show that the children have a higher level of language competency in English as compared to that of Chinese. We also found that there were several factors which affected the children’s verb acquisition namely: age, internal and external factors, language interference, and visual interference. We hope that the findings of this study can serve as a basis for further studies related to the bilingual development in children in Singapore.