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

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.

To what extent do children’s expressions of time actually refer to time? An investigation into the temporal and discursive usages of temporal adverbs in family interaction

“…The development of temporal adverbs has been described for a number of languages (e.g., Ames, 1946;Chejnová, 2017;Liang et al, 2019;Parm, 2013;Surakka, 2019;Weist, 1989;Weist & Buczowska, 1987). This body of research suggests that temporal adverbs emerge in children's language between the ages of 2-3 years, depending on the language.…”

“…Given that research shows that adverbs are often polysemous (Hakulinen & Saari, 1995) and that the meaning of the abstract concepts can change depending on the context (Lebois et al, 2015) we assume that our target adverbs JO and KOHTA can also have multiple meanings (see examples (1) -(3) above). The only previous studies that we are aware of that consider discursive meanings in children's adverb use are Liang et al (2019) and Surakka (2019). Liang et al (2019) studied the acquisition of temporal adverbs in Mandarin Chinese, and suggested that by varying the positions of temporal adverbs in utterances, it is possible either to highlight certain meaning components or to constitute a discourse function concerning an ongoing action (e.g., ).…”

“…The temporal meaning can be considered prototypical for temporal adverbs and thus it has been the focus in previous studies of children's acquisition of these items (e.g., Ames, 1946;Chejnová, 2017;Liang et al, 2019;Parm, 2013;Weist, 1989;Weist & Buczowska, 1987). Our focus on both  and  uses in child and caregiver language is thus novel and provides a more detailed account of the development of temporal adverbs.…”

“…Children's language use can inform us as to how they experience the world and what kinds of strategies they use to convey meaning while their linguistic abilities are developing. In relation to these, researchers have been interested in how children develop in expressing abstract and difficult concepts such as time (Ames, 1946;Chejnová, 2017;Liang et al, 2019;Parm, 2013;Surakka, 2019;Weist, 1989;Weist & Buczowska, 1987). According to these studies, children start using temporal adverbs (e.g., soon, yesterday) during their third year of life indicating that children can refer to abstract concepts (time) relatively early on in development.…”

“…Thus, young children's use of adverbs is informative not only in relation to their ability to refer to time, but it also provides a window to children's conceptual, cognitive, and interactional development. However, even though the order of appearance of temporal adverbs, the temporal meanings of adverbs and the development of temporal concepts in children have received a fair amount of attention from researchers (Ames, 1946;Chejnová, 2017;Liang et al, 2019;Parm, 2013;Surakka, 2019;Weist & Buczowska, 1987), we still do not fully understand how/why children use temporal adverbs at an early age, given their highly abstract nature. The current study aims to widen the scope of our understanding of adverb acquisition and addresses adverb use in child-parent interaction that emerges through the association of adverbs to specific discourse contexts like urging, threatening, and reassuring.…”