Sum: Mandarin question forms

[Madalena Cruz-Ferreira]

Dear all,

Below is a summary of the responses I got from my query to info-childes. The original query is at the end.
Many thanks to all who volunteered information on this!

Madalena

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Summary: Mandarin question forms

>From Twila Tardif     twila at umich.edu
There is an old paper on this that she might be interested in by Miao, but
it is in Chinese and not easy to find:
Miao, X. (1986).  Youer dui yuwenci de lijie - youer huida teshu yiwenju de
fazhan tedian (Preschooler's understanding of question words - Developmental
characteristics of preschoolers' answers to questions).  In M.S. Zhu (Ed.),
Ertong yuyan fazhan yanjiu (Research in children's language development),
pp. 126-134.  Shanghai, China: East China Normal University Publishing
House.
[Twila also mentioned Erbaugh's 1992 chapter, below.]


>From Tom Roeper	roeper at linguist.umass.edu
We have done a lot of work in a broad series of papers on the acquisition
of questions and barriers.   The most recent dissertations are from Bart Hollebrandse--Groningen-- Lamya Abdulkarim-- lamya at comdis.umass.edu and D'jaris Coles at Wayne University.  Bart's paper is in the most recent BU proceedings from which one can get other refs.


>From Mary Erbaugh	erbaugh at transit212.com
Questions generally are not problematic for pre-school Mandarin speakers.  (There are a few problems with Verb-Not-Verb forms, and with the final particle questions (because the particles have so many competing meanings).
I discuss acquisition of questions in:
Mary S. Erbaugh.  1992.  'The acquisition of Mandarin'.   In Dan Isaac Slobin, ed.  The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquistion, Volume 3.  Hillsdale, NJ:  Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.   Pp. 373-455. See section 5.3.2, and also sections 8 and 14.
Acquisition of questions is discussed at greater length in my dissertation, available from University Microfilms in hard copy or microfilm   www.umi.com.  (It is available in digital form also, to libraries.)   It is dissertation #8300490.
Mary S. Erbaugh.  Coming to Order:  Natural Selection and the Origins of Syntax in the Mandarin-speaking Child.  PhD dissertation in linguistics, University of California, Berkeley.  1982.
A very comprehensive Chinese language description of early acquistion is:   Li Yuming.  1995.  Ertong yuyan de fazhan (Child language acquistion).  Wuchang:  Huazhong shifan daxue chuban she. He discusses acquisition of questions on pp. 223-234.
[Mary also mentioned Miao (1986), above.]
There is some English language information in Joseph H. Hsu.  1996.  A Study of the Stages of Develpment and Acquisition fo Mandarin Chinese by Children in Taiwan.  Taipei:  The Crane Publishing Company.   Prof. Hsu is at Fu Jen (pinyin:  Furen) University in Taipei.
Also, of course, Anna Kwan-Terry's article on children's acquisition of particles includes some information on question particle acquisition. Anna Kwan-Terry.  1991.  Through the Looking Glass:  A child's use of particles in Chinese and English and its implications for language transfer.  In Anna Kwan-Terry, ed. Child language development in  Singapore and Malaysia.  Singapore: Singapore University Press.
Beijing Normal University is conducting very broad testing of stages of normal language acquisition, developing screening tests in collaboration with Dr. Ping LI at University of Hong Kong.


>From Liang Chen	brighterchen at yahoo.com	chen at louisiana.edu
I would recommend the following paper by Thomas Lee. 
Thomas H.-T. Lee. 1996. "Theoretical issues in language development and
Chinese child language" in James C-T Huang and Audrey Li (eds.) New
Horizons in Chinese Linguistics. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 293-356. 
It is an extensive review of acquisitional studies of various aspects of
Chinese. As far as I know, he himself did some research on acquisition of
Cantonese wh-questions, and he maintains a database of Child Cantonese.
Dr. Lee's homepage is
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~linglab/linguists/lee.html
******************************
======================================
Madalena Cruz-Ferreira
Dept. English Language and Literature
National University of Singapore
ellmcf at nus.edu.sg
======================================


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Madalena Cruz-Ferreira 
> Sent: Tuesday, 12 August, 2003 1:11 PM
> To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
> Subject: Mandarin question forms
> 
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> A graduate student of mine is looking for literature on 
> stages in the acquisition of question forms in Mandarin. 
> She has checked the chibib and the Childes Mandarin database.
> Could anyone help with other pointers?
> Please reply to me for the time being, she has just 
> subscribed to this network but there were some problems accessing it.
> Thank you!
> 
> Madalena
> 
> ======================================
> Madalena Cruz-Ferreira
> Dept. English Language and Literature
> National University of Singapore
> ellmcf at nus.edu.sg
> ======================================