Learning to express causal events in Mandarin Chinese: A multimodal perspective.
Previous research has shown language-specific features play a guiding role in how children develop expression of events with speech and gestures. This study adopts a multimodal approach and examines Mandarin Chinese, a language that features context use and verb serializations. Forty children (four-...
| Published in: | Journal of Child Language Vol. 51; no. 1; pp. 191 - 217 |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | pictorial research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
Jan2024
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=176652132&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 176652132 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 03050009 JCL jtl: Journal of Child Language issn: 03050009 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jan2024 vid: 51 iid: 1 pid: 15979 pub: Cambridge University Press artinfo: ui: 176652132 176652132 176652132 10.1017/S0305000922000447 176652132 ppf: 191 ppct: 26 formats: tig: atl: Learning to express causal events in Mandarin Chinese: A multimodal perspective. aug: au: NIU, Chenxi CIENKI, Alan ORTEGA, Gerardo COENE, Martine affil: Department of Language, Literature and Communication, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands sug: subj: Learning Methods China Language Development Chinese Persons Psychosocial Factors Human Female Child, Preschool Child Adult China Body Language Child Development Semantics Speech Physiology Socioeconomic Factors Videorecording Data Analysis Descriptive Statistics Comparative Studies Confidence Intervals Child, Preschool: 2-5 years Child: 6-12 years Adult: 19-44 years Female ab: Previous research has shown language-specific features play a guiding role in how children develop expression of events with speech and gestures. This study adopts a multimodal approach and examines Mandarin Chinese, a language that features context use and verb serializations. Forty children (four-to-seven years old) and ten adults were asked to describe fourteen video stimuli depicting different types of causal events involving location/state changes. Participants' speech was segmented into clauses and co-occurring gestures were analyzed in relation to causation. The results show that the older the children, the greater the use of contextual clauses which contribute meaning to event descriptions. It is not until the age of six that children used adult-like structures – namely, using single gestures representing causing actions and aligning them with verb serializations in single clauses. We discuss the implications of these findings for the guiding role of language specificity in multimodal language development. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: pictorial research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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