21.4343, Books: Language Acquisition/Semantics: Tien

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LINGUIST List: Vol-21-4343. Sat Oct 30 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.4343, Books: Language Acquisition/Semantics: Tien

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1)
Date: 21-Oct-2010
From: Ulrich Lueders [lincom.europa at t-online.de]
Subject: Lexical Semantics of Children?s Chinese During the First Four
Years: Tien
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 23:02:39
From: Ulrich Lueders [lincom.europa at t-online.de]
Subject: Lexical Semantics of Children?s Chinese During the First Four Years: Tien

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Title: Lexical Semantics of Children?s Chinese During the First Four
Years 
Series Title: LINCOM Studies in Language Acquisition 29  

Publication Year: 2010 
Publisher: Lincom GmbH
	   http://www.lincom.eu
	
Author: Adrian Tien

Paperback: ISBN:  9783862880256 Pages: 525 Price: Europe EURO 78.80


Abstract:

If children's early words or word-like "phrasemes" have any meanings at all, 
then it should be possible to study and analyse their meanings. But how can 
early words and meanings be rigorously studied and analysed? In examining 
naturalistic production data from forty-seven subjects acquiring Mandarin 
during the first four years, this innovative study takes a radical, semantic 
approach to words and their meanings in child Mandarin i.e. the Natural 
Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) (e.g. Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002).

Amongst our findings, lexical exponents of sixty-one or so semantic "primes" 
posited in NSM are present in child Mandarin before the end of the fourth 
year. Many of these are among the earliest and the most frequent words that 
children produce. In addition, combinatorial properties of these lexical 
exponents also support hypotheses advanced about universal syntax within 
the NSM framework, despite challenges posed by a certain few exponents.

Early vocabulary comprises a great many semantically complex i.e. "non-
prime", words. Before an NSM prime acquires a lexical exponent, it may first 
be conceptually present as core semantic elements in the meanings of 
common non-prime words. This phenomenon is termed "latency" (following 
Tien 1999): a semantic prime is considered "latent" when it is first 
represented conceptually and expounded lexically only later in development.

On the whole, in adopting a representational system which is the NSM and 
which is commensurable with the adult system, this study has demonstrated 
that there is, in fact, developmental continuity between "the young child's 
semantic system" and "the adult's system" (Goddard 2001: 219). 

Adrian Tien is an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore. 
His research and teaching areas have included semantics, language 
acquisition, intercultural and intracultural communication; relationship 
between language, music and culture; and, English-Chinese and Chinese-
English translation studies. 



Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
                     Semantics

Subject Language(s): Chinese, Mandarin (cmn)


Written In: English  (eng)
	
See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=51092


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