Department of Linguistics,University of California San Diego,USA.
J Child Lang. 2019 Mar;46(2):214-240. doi: 10.1017/S0305000918000417. Epub 2018 Oct 17.
Previous studies suggest that age of acquisition affects the outcomes of learning, especially at the morphosyntactic level. Unknown is how syntactic development is affected by increased cognitive maturity and delayed language onset. The current paper studied the early syntactic development of adolescent first language learners by examining word order patterns in American Sign Language (ASL). ASL uses a basic Subject-Verb-Object order, but also employs multiple word order variations. Child learners produce variable word order at the initial stage of acquisition, but later primarily produce canonical word order. We asked whether adolescent first language learners acquire ASL word order in a fashion parallel to child learners. We analyzed word order preference in spontaneous language samples from four adolescent L1 learners collected longitudinally from 12 months to six years of ASL exposure. Our results suggest that adolescent L1 learners go through stages similar to child native learners, although this process also appears to be prolonged.
先前的研究表明，习得年龄会影响学习的结果，尤其是在形态句法层面。而对于认知成熟度的提高和语言习得时间的延迟如何影响句法发展，目前还不得而知。本研究通过考察美国手语（ASL）中的语序模式，研究了青少年母语学习者的早期句法发展。ASL 采用基本的主语-动词-宾语语序，但也采用多种语序变化。儿童学习者在习得的初始阶段会产生可变的语序，但后来主要会产生规范的语序。我们想知道青少年母语学习者是否会以类似于儿童学习者的方式习得 ASL 语序。我们分析了从四个青少年母语学习者的自然语言样本中获得的词序偏好，这些样本是在他们接触 ASL 12 个月到 6 年的时间内进行纵向收集的。我们的结果表明，青少年母语学习者经历了与儿童母语学习者相似的阶段，尽管这个过程似乎也被延长了。
