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Referential place-holding in Chinese children's acquisition of English articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Kang Lee ,
Catherine Ann Cameron ,
Murrary J. Linton  and
Anne K. Hunt
Kang Lee
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
Catherine Ann Cameron*
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
Murrary J. Linton
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
Anne K. Hunt
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
*
Catherine Ann Cameron, Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick E3B 6E4, Canada. E-mail: Cameron @ UNB.CA.Bitnet
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Abstract

This longitudinal study examines the acquisition of English articles by three 6-year-old, second language learning children whose native tongue is Chinese, a language without articles. Brown's coding scheme and an extended coding scheme were used in scoring the corpora of children's responses to a Syntax Elicitation Task. Results revealed that the Chinese children's acquisition of the definite article differed from- what had been previously found using Brown's coding scheme with English as first language learners and second language learning children of other native language origins. Chinese children's use of the definite article developed through an unmarked phase, a referential place-holding phase, a marked phase, and a referential substitution phase before the definite article was fully acquired. The acquisition of the indefinite article, on the other hand, was similar to the acquisition pattern already reported for children learning English as a first language or as a second language. It is suggested that referential place-holding, as well as referential substitution, might not be a Chinese-specific second language learning phenomenon; rather, they might be derived from a universal referential strategy for learning articles.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , January 1994 , pp. 29 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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