Wh-Acquisition: Evidence from Converging Methodologies

摘要“问句习得”是指儿童获得使用疑问代词和理解疑问代词的能力，英语中通常以字母“wh”开头的单词：谁、什么、在哪里等。这些疑问句的形成涉及语言的一些中心抽象特征：远距离关系、约束变量和空语类。现有的对儿童语言的自然主义研究，基于对儿童话语的抽样，并没有很好地揭示各种wh结构是如何出现的，因为关键的形式相对较少出现。此外，理解语言发展的这一方面需要儿童对问题的解释以及问题的产生的证据。本项目将构成对wh-短语习得的协调研究。将使用日记研究、对少数儿童的纵向抽样以及测试儿童解释的实验相结合的方法。这些实验还将对40名儿童进行更大的样本，以获得关于wh疑问句结构的解释在3至6岁之间如何变化的纵向数据。其目标是提供wh运动发展的个人概况，其中可以同时检查广泛的结构。试点工作表明，有可能为障碍理论、约束变量的语义以及词汇或语用效果获得重要证据。所获得的数据将有助于建立一个现实的问题习得参数模型。

ABSTRACT "Wh-acquisition" refers to the child's acquiring the ability to use and understand questions using interrogative pronouns, words which in English usually begin with the letters "wh": who, what, where, etc. The formation of such questions involves some of the central abstract features of language: long-distance relations, bound variables, and empty categories. Existing naturalistic studies of child language, based on sampling of children's utterances, have not been very revealing of how various wh- structures emerge, because the crucial forms appear relatively infrequently. Also, understanding this facet of language development requires evidence of the child's interpretation of questions, as well as production of questions. The present project will constitute a coordinated study of the acquisition of wh-expressions. A combination of diary studies, longitudinal sampling of a small number of children, and experiments testing children's interpretations will be used. The experiments will also be run with a larger sample of 40 children, to obtain longitudinal data on how interpretations of wh-question structures change between the ages of three to six. The goal is to provide individual profiles of the growth of wh-movement where a wide range of structures can be simultaneously examined. Pilot work indicates the possibility of obtaining important evidence for the theory of barriers, the semantics of bound variables, and lexical or pragmatic effects. The data obtained will contribute to a realistic parametric model of the acquisition of questions.