The Polysemy of the Chinese Action Verb “Dǎ” and Its Implications in Child Language Acquisition

The Chinese verb “dǎ” is a polysemous and frequently used verb. Studies have shown that it is one of the earliest verbs acquired by monolingual children by the age of five year old, they can use most of the commonly used senses in their daily life. But whether it is an easy task for bilingual childr...

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Main Authors: Sak, Hui Er, Gao, Helena Hong
Other Authors: Dong, Minghui
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: 2017
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/82306
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/43511
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-823062020-03-07T12:10:36Z The Polysemy of the Chinese Action Verb “Dǎ” and Its Implications in Child Language Acquisition Sak, Hui Er Gao, Helena Hong Dong, Minghui Lin, Jingxia Tang, Xuri School of Humanities and Social Sciences 17th Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop (CLSW2016) dǎ polysemy Chinese language acquisition The Chinese verb “dǎ” is a polysemous and frequently used verb. Studies have shown that it is one of the earliest verbs acquired by monolingual children by the age of five year old, they can use most of the commonly used senses in their daily life. But whether it is an easy task for bilingual children to acquire and use the verb in different contexts is unknown. Our study investigated the usage pattern of “dǎ” by 30 Chinese-English bilingual preschool children in Singapore. Visual stimuli depicting “dǎ” actions were used to elicit descriptions from the participants. The results reveal that the meaning representations of “dǎ” in the semantic domains such as “social interaction” and “physical punishment” are most commonly used by the children while the meaning representations of “dǎ” in the semantic domains such as “fastening” and “possession” are the least used by the children. This paper will discuss the factors that affect the children’s use of the polysemous verb. MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore) Accepted version 2017-08-01T08:24:09Z 2019-12-06T14:52:57Z 2017-08-01T08:24:09Z 2019-12-06T14:52:57Z 2016 Conference Paper Sak, H. E., & Gao, H. H. (2016). The Polysemy of the Chinese Action Verb “Dǎ” and Its Implications in Child Language Acquisition. 17th Chinese Lexical Semantics Workshop, 524-533. 978-3-319-49507-1 978-3-319-49508-8 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/82306 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/43511 10.1007/978-3-319-49508-8_49 en © 2016 Springer International Publishing AG. This is the author created version of a work that has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication by Chinese Lexical Semantics, Springer International Publishing AG. It incorporates referee’s comments but changes resulting from the publishing process, such as copyediting, structural formatting, may not be reflected in this document. The published version is available at: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49508-8_49]. 10 p. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
country Singapore
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic dǎ polysemy
Chinese language acquisition
spellingShingle dǎ polysemy
Chinese language acquisition
Sak, Hui Er
Gao, Helena Hong
The Polysemy of the Chinese Action Verb “Dǎ” and Its Implications in Child Language Acquisition
description The Chinese verb “dǎ” is a polysemous and frequently used verb. Studies have shown that it is one of the earliest verbs acquired by monolingual children by the age of five year old, they can use most of the commonly used senses in their daily life. But whether it is an easy task for bilingual children to acquire and use the verb in different contexts is unknown. Our study investigated the usage pattern of “dǎ” by 30 Chinese-English bilingual preschool children in Singapore. Visual stimuli depicting “dǎ” actions were used to elicit descriptions from the participants. The results reveal that the meaning representations of “dǎ” in the semantic domains such as “social interaction” and “physical punishment” are most commonly used by the children while the meaning representations of “dǎ” in the semantic domains such as “fastening” and “possession” are the least used by the children. This paper will discuss the factors that affect the children’s use of the polysemous verb.
author2 Dong, Minghui
author_facet Dong, Minghui
Sak, Hui Er
Gao, Helena Hong
format Conference or Workshop Item
author Sak, Hui Er
Gao, Helena Hong
author_sort Sak, Hui Er
title The Polysemy of the Chinese Action Verb “Dǎ” and Its Implications in Child Language Acquisition
title_short The Polysemy of the Chinese Action Verb “Dǎ” and Its Implications in Child Language Acquisition
title_full The Polysemy of the Chinese Action Verb “Dǎ” and Its Implications in Child Language Acquisition
title_fullStr The Polysemy of the Chinese Action Verb “Dǎ” and Its Implications in Child Language Acquisition
title_full_unstemmed The Polysemy of the Chinese Action Verb “Dǎ” and Its Implications in Child Language Acquisition
title_sort polysemy of the chinese action verb “dǎ” and its implications in child language acquisition
publishDate 2017
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/82306
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/43511
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