A Study on the Early Acquisition of Causative Expression in Mandarin-Speaking Children

Abstract

The word causative is the most basic cognitive category in the conceptualization of human beings, and the causative expression in the early stage is the implicit expression in the interactive context. Limited by language ability, although the verb, subject-predicate or predicate-object structures produced in children’s early stage are not complete causative construction in the interactive context, we can clearly interpret children’s communicative intentions and observe the patterns before children acquire complete causative construction. In the interactive context, this paper examines the language material of a mandarin-speaking child LXY when he was at the age of 1;02-1;07. Based on the quantitative analysis of the data, we conclude that all linguistic elements associated with causative expressions of mandarin-speaking children. The order of output is (Vp2) > causative+causative result semantic elements (Np2+Vp2) > verb-complement causative construction (Vp1+Vp2) > Ràng construction (Vp1+Np2+Vp2).