researcher

魁大语言中心科研项目

——婴幼儿语言习得研究

亲爱的家长：

当您还沉浸在对新生命的惊喜中时，也许您又因为宝宝的呀呀学语而激动不已吧。在这样一个多语言的环境中生活，您一定对宝宝的语言学习和语言发展非常关心也非常好奇吧？

魁大语言中心正在进行多项联邦政府重点资助的有关婴幼儿语言习得的科研项目。我们希望通过研究，发现婴幼儿习得语言的规律。我们的研究方法是自然观察的方法。

如果您的家庭成员与宝宝交流的主要语言为国语，而且宝宝的年龄在4个月到24个月之间，欢迎您与宝宝一起参与到我们的研究中来。您可以选择参加一次或若干次。

您只需要带着宝宝到研究中心，抱着他/她听一些语音和看一些图像，我们会对宝宝听到这些声音和看到这些图像时的自然反应进行观察。整个过程大约半小时。我们还会义务为您提供有关婴幼儿语言学习的咨询，帮助您遵循宝宝语言习得的规律自然习得语言。

联系方式： babylanguagelearning@gmail.com

researcher

我们语言中心关于婴幼儿语言习得各个方面的不断研究将会得到类似于以下研究成果的成果（希望能给家长们提供一些参考）：

以下内容摘自首都师范大学学报(社会科学版)（顾雪芬）中国婴幼儿前语言阶段和单词句阶段
的语言习得———陶陶早期语言的个案研究

一、前语言阶段
在前语言阶段,儿童经历了早期发音、呀呀练声、用体态语和声音交流等几个过程。
1.早期发音:
婴儿前6个月的早期发音并不是乱叫,各种声音的出现遵从了一个很有规律的顺
序。
☆出生时的啼哭。从出生时那一刻起,婴儿就可以听到人们说话,并能区别不同人
的声音。也能自己发声。一出生他就可以听到人们说话并做出反应。(Lenneberge)

☆咕咕声。出现在第一个月末,最初所有语言环境下的婴儿发出的声音都是一样的,只是到了呀呀练声期,他们才丧失了辨别并发出非听力环境语音的能力（摘录者注：关于“丧失了辨别并发出非听力环境语音的能力”这个说法，不同理论有不同的观点。不是对所有的非母语语音的听辨和产出能力都丧失，最近研究有不同看法。）。根据研究结果,两个月的婴儿甚至能辨别出外语的声音(Weaker &Lalonde ,1988),尽管婴儿不能用语言谈话,但他们却很了解怎样表达自己的需要。从那单调的、没头没脑的哭叫声中,一个细心的母亲甚至可以区分出它的孩子需要什么:是喂奶、喝水,还是换尿片。
2.呀呀练声:
呀呀练声在语言发展过程中是很重要的阶段,大概出现在第6个月。开始只是发一
些简单语音,如ba ba ba ba , ma ma ma ma或da da da da。然后才是一些富于变化的音节。许政援教授(北京大学心理系)作了详细的记录（请见附件图片1）:

researcher

以下是其他研究总结的语言发展阶段图（请见附件）

shazi

is it for free?

researcher

这是科研项目，所以不存在收费和不收费的问题。
谢谢您的关注！

如果还有问题，请发邮件到babylanguagelearning@gmail.com。

最好把这里的空间留出来可以张贴相关科研结果，供各位家长参考。谢谢！

researcher

以下内容摘自首都师范大学学报(社会科学版)（顾雪芬）中国婴幼儿前语言阶段和单词句阶段的语言习得———陶陶早期语言的个案研究

......6个月的婴儿开始呀呀练声了。在学龄前,终究会说些含义丰富的,复杂的句子。这种技能是不可思议的。
......

研究者进一步发现,所有的婴儿都能呀呀练声,那些听不到别人说话的人也会,但聋儿的呀呀练声不久即消失了。不过,如果听力困难在早期就已被诊断出来了,父母开始用手势语与孩子交流,这些聋儿也能在同等水平上,以一种与听力很好的婴儿相似的方式,形成类似于呀呀练声的手势语(Pettito &Marentette,1991)。当成人向聋儿比划手势语时,他们会重复这一手势或相似的手势(每一手势代表了一个音节);他们甚至会用手势语练习发声,一遍又一遍地使用同一手势。(自《孩子在不断变化的世界———发展与社会问题》第二版,第227页。Edward F. Zigler,Matia Finn Stevenson )

3.用体势语和声音交流
在呀呀练声阶段后,婴儿能发出一些很短的声音,伴以动作,表达自己的喜好和需要。陶陶在9个月时学会了摆手“再见”,11个月时学会了两手交叉“谢谢”,点头表示同意、肯定,并能按成人的要求指出身体的各部位。......在这一阶段,婴儿可能还不会说话,但他们能交流,对他们说的大部分话他们都能理解。

二、语言阶段
直到1岁末或2岁初时,有意义的发声——第一个单词才出现。在语言阶段,幼儿从第一个单词开始,学会了单词句、电报句、简单句,最后掌握了复杂句。
1.第一个单词———单词句
说出第一个单词的标志是:孩子主动地而不是被动地使用某一单词,而且使用的是这一单词的普遍意义。也就是说,这个单词不是用来回答成人的问题,也不是鹦鹉学舌,幼儿必须已理解了这个词的意思,并在情境中正确地使用。
陶陶在1岁3个月的时候,说出了他的第一个单词。一天,他正在蹒跚学步,指着地对我说“nao”,我不知道他在说什么,在他重复了两次之后,顺着他的手指一看,我终于明白,他的意思是“鸟”——“地上有一只鸟。”
我很奇怪,为什么他的第一个单词是对婴儿来说这么难的一个词。然后我查看了一下他过去四个月的语言记录,发现他已经被动地学过了许多词汇。第11个月会说“爸爸、妈妈”,1岁时能跟我说的词有:“爷爷、奶奶、酸酸的(shuānshuānde)、甜甜的”。

1岁1个月时有:“鸡蛋、花、舅舅、抱”。
1岁2个月时有:“姨、妹妹、哥哥、球、宝贝、汽车、烫”等。

那时有一个很大的进步,他能够用一个字回答简单的问题,当然可能答得不对。比如:
成人(以下略):你姓什么?
陶陶(以下略):戴。
　　:你叫什么?
　　:戴。
　　:你是男孩吗?
　　:是。
　　:你是女孩吗?
　　:是。
(夜里)
　　:去晒太阳吗?
　　:去
尽管答得不对,但显然他已发现回答这类问题有一定规律。这是很重要的。儿童大多以这种方式学习语法,他们能自动地确定并重设那些语法参数,而且常常泛化语法规则。这时也能运用更复杂的体势语了。
......

1岁3个月以后(包括1岁3个月)他能发出的声音如下:
名词:一、二、八、鱼、袜、眼、笔、表、帽、饭、刀、头、狗、姐、鞋、书等;
动词:掉、拿;
形容词:高;
代词:谁、什么。
起初他用单音节词,如“察”代替双音节词“警察”。尽管他已经会说“鸡蛋”和“羹”,仍不能连续地说“鸡蛋羹”。
当然,起初有些词说得不清楚,像“车、吃、球”;“爸、八、抱、表”;“拿、奶、尿、尿”;“妈、帽”,说得很含糊,你只能根据情境猜测他说的是什么。
即使你明白了他说的是什么词,你还要进一步判断他说的是什么。因为幼儿用一个词表达的意思,一个成人需要用一个句子来表达。单词句的意思就是“是一个句子的词”。所以幼儿可能用同一个词在不同的情境中表达不同的想法和愿望。直到1岁7个月,陶陶一直在使用单词句。比如他说“笔”意思可能是“这是一支笔”,“给我笔”或“给你笔”。

researcher

以下内容摘自首都师范大学学报(社会科学版)（顾雪芬）-中国婴幼儿前语言阶段和单词句阶段的语言习得

1岁4个月时,他经常说的词如下:
名词:爸、妈、爷、奶、姨、羹、鞋、车、勺、广告;
动词:要、抱、拿、尿、下;
格沃兹捷夫(Gvozdev,гвоздев, 1961 )的报告中说,从发出第一个词到正确地应用,
需要20天。陶陶证实了这种说法。
他能够跟我重复的词如下:
名词:鸭、月、羊、外、碗、杯、泡、盆、马、木、米、灯、他、土、你、牛、猴、蛇、光、象;
动词:爬、怕、跑、买、踢、跳、够、进、起、洗、上;
形容词:新、胖。
许多词发音不准确,但有规律,并能与其它词区分开。……
除了“鸡蛋”、“广告”之外,又能说很多双音节词了。如:“不要、没有、再见、爱婴、奥迪、眼镜”等。他自己为此也很兴奋。那几天他嘴里不停地叨唠刚会说的、经常用的词—“不要”。“不要不要不要”,一遍又一遍地说,没任何意义,只是兴奋。
不过,这时他仍然要用单音节词来代表双音节词。如:木-积木、干-饼干、太-太阳、啤-啤酒、新-新闻、塔-桑塔纳(多音节词)。
……
1岁5个月时,陶陶能够用单音节词说出其它一些事物的名称。如,“烟、妹、钱、莓-草莓”。
能够跟我重复的词有:
名词:风、房、腿、瓜、酒、粥、虫、山;
动词:站、找;
形容词:苦、坏、长、粗、错;
数词:7、10。
……
尼尔森(Nelson,1973)发现儿童早期的词汇相当一致,也注意到,婴幼儿的词汇是很有选择性的,倾向于包括那些像“妈妈、牛奶”和“球”这样的词。这些词在他们的生活中起了很重要的作用,婴幼儿也可以很容易地对他们采取动作。
尽管早期词汇相当一致,在婴幼儿中也存在个体差异。有些幼儿比其他幼儿更爱使用某一类词。尼尔森(1981)推断,这些个性差异可能反映了特定儿童的气质和性格。一个合群的孩子可能常说“好!”和“再见!”(如陶陶),而好动的幼儿可能常使用“去”或“走”这类的词。
如前所述,许多音发得仍不准确,如:
影-yǎng、辣-nà、楼-nóu、凉-niáng、脏-zhāng、三-shān、四-xì、-酸shuān、少-xiǎo。
控制发音的顺序是随着发音器官的成熟而渐变的。陶陶在1岁2个月时有14颗牙,1岁半以后长出的另6颗牙主要是用于咀嚼,所以他的基本发音器官与成人相差无几。不准确的发音归因于一系列复杂的肌肉运动缺乏协调。相反,一系列准确的发音是因能控制一系列协调。
……
尽管在1岁5个月时他已经会连续地发“点灯、说话、做伴”,
成人:小小子,坐门—　        陶陶:墩。
哭着喊着要媳—                  妇。
要媳—                          妇,
干吗?点灯、说话、作伴。（摘录者注：对话内容为儿歌）
当回答问题需要用双音节词时,他仍然只说最后一个音节。如:
成人:大吊车,看见了吗?
陶陶:见。
　　:尿尿蹲蹲,知道吗?
    :道。
　　:干净吗?
　　:净。

　　:道。
　　:干净吗?
:净。

2.电报句:
从1岁半起,陶陶开始组词了。布鲁姆(Bloom)发现,在单词句和之后的句子有一个很重要的中断,幼儿不知道怎样基于词法和句法连接词语。一旦他们摆脱了一句话用一个词的局限,他们即获得了创造由规则制约的句子的能力。在此阶段,幼儿用名词、动词、形容词,但省略了介词、连词和助词。研究者常称之为电报句。陶陶的一些电报句如下:
1岁8个月:
亲爱(的)妈妈
1岁9个月:
放床(上),坐地(下)
1岁10个月:
能咽肚(子里)吗?

3.简单句:
这些功能词逐渐掌握后,陶陶在句子中加入了副词,位置相当准确,如:
1岁9个月:
成人:这是什么车?              陶陶:可能是捷达。
1岁10个月:　　
:把冰箱门关上去。              :已经关上了。
2岁:
刚才有只蚊子飞过去了。         爸爸肯定在家。

这时儿童说出的句子与成人的语法越来越接近了。他们开始使用一些句法或者说语法上的功能词。在这个过程中,会出现一些有规律的可预见的非随意的错误。……

researcher

From Werker, J. F., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2008). Bilingualism in infancy: First steps in perception and comprehension of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(4), 144-151

Language discrimination

Language discrimination is an essential task for the bilingual infant. Infants born into a monolingual home need to treat all the speech they hear or see as comprising a single language, whereas bilingual infants need to distinguish and separate speech input into two languages. Even in the one-person-one-language context, the infant needs to determine which differences between speakers are characteristics of the individual speaking and which are characteristics of the language they are using and then use this information in interactions with new speakers (Box 1). It was once widely believed that bilingual children begin acquisition with a default assumption that all language input is part of a single language and that they only separate their languages after establishing an initial lexicon and syntax [5]. Although there is ample evidence that a bilingual’s two languages do influence each other [6], there is also increasing evidence, which will be reviewed below, that bilingual infants commence the process of language acquisition by separating the languages from the start [7–9].

Box 1. Language mixing in early bilingualism

Parents considering exposing their children to two languages early in life are sometimes concerned that their child will become confused and/or will experience a language delay. Part of this concern arises owing to the common phenomenon of code mixing, whereby children mix words in two languages across a single utterance or situation. As will be noted below, code mixing does not imply language confusion. Nonetheless, some parents of bilingual children adhere to a strict one-person-one-language policy in an attempt to minimize confusion.
There is little evidence to suggest that the one-person-one-language approach is advantageous, compared with other types of bilingual exposure. There also is little evidence to support the claim that early bilingualism leads to language confusion and/or delay in language acquisition. Indeed, all estimates suggest that the incidence of language disability is equivalent in bilingual and inmonolingual children [53], and bilingual children pass language milestones at an age similar to monolinguals [54–56].
Rather than indicating confusion, research with young children has suggested that code mixing might reflect a child’s attempt to communicate given limited linguistic resources. Children often seem to use words from a nontarget language when they do not know an appropriate word in the target language [57]. Moreover, code mixing in children is better characterized as rule governed rather than haphazard, and the rules that children’s mixing follow are similar to those that characterize adult mixing [58].
Other studies of young bilinguals have shown that even when they produce mixed utterances, bilingual children do show sensitivity to the language choice of their interlocutor. Two-year-old bilingual children reliably increase the proportion of words from a given language to match the language used by an interlocutor, either a stranger or a parent with whom that language is normally spoken [59,60]. Young bilingual children also are able to match their rates of code mixing to the rate modeled by an adult interlocutor [61].
The majority/minority status of the language also interacts with language dominance to influence the language choices of young children. A study of bilingual French-English 3- and 4-year-olds in a setting where French was the minority language revealed that English words were used in a French context more often than French words were used in an English context. Moreover, there was an interaction with language dominance. French-dominant children were more successful at using each of their languages appropriately when required, whereas English-dominant children showed more code mixing when speaking in a French context [62]. All of these findings suggest that instead of indicating confusion between the two languages, there are systematic factors that account for bilingual children’s code mixing.
5 Volterra, V. and Taeschner, T. (1978) The acquisition and development of language by bilingual children. J. Child Lang. 5, 311–326
6 Lanza, E. (2000) Concluding remarks: language contact–a dilemma for the bilingual child or for the linguist? In Cross-Linguistic Structures in Simultaneous Bilingualism (Do¨pke, S., ed.), pp. 227–245, John Benjamins Publishing Company
7 Meisel, J.M. (2001) The simultaneous acquisition of two first languages: early differentiation and subsequent development of
grammars. In Trends in Bilingual Acquisition (Cenoz, J. and Genesee, F., eds), pp. 11–41, John Benjamins Publishing Company
8 Genesee, F. (1989) Early bilingual development: one language or two? J. Child Lang. 16, 161–179
9 Bosch, L. and Sebastia´n-Galle´s, N. (2001) Early language differentiation in bilingual infants. In Trends in Bilingual Acquisition (Cenoz, J. and Genesee, F., eds), pp. 71–93, John Benjamins Publishing Company

53 Paradis, J. (2007) Bilingual children with specific language impairment: theoretical and applied issues. Appl. Psycholinguist. 28, 551–564

54 Oller, D.K. et al. (1997) Development of precursors to speech in infants exposed to two languages. J. Child Lang. 24, 407–425

55 Holowka, S. et al. (2002) Semantic and conceptual knowledge underlying bilingual babies’ first signs and words. Lang. Learn. 52, 205–262

56 Pearson, B.Z. et al. (1993) Lexical development in bilingual infants and toddlers: comparison to monolingual norms. Lang. Learn. 43, 93–120

57 Deuchar, M. and Quay, S. (1999) Language choice in the earliest utterances: a case study with methodological implications. J. Child Lang. 26, 461–475

58 Paradis, J. et al. (2000) Early emergence of structural constraints on code-mixing: evidence from French-English bilingual children. Biling. Lang. Cogn. 3, 245–261

59 Genesee, F. et al. (1995) Language differentiation in early bilingual development. J. Child Lang. 22, 611–631

60 Genesee, F. et al. (1996) Talking with strangers: a study of bilingual children’s communicative competence. Appl. Psycholinguist. 17, 427–442

61 Comeau, L. et al. (2003) The modeling hypothesis and child bilingual code mixing. Int. J. Biling. 7, 113

62 Paradis, J. and Nicoladis, E. (2007) The influence of dominance and sociolinguistic context on bilingual preschoolers’ language choice. Int. J. Biling. Educ. Biling. 10, 277–297

researcher

From Werker, J. F., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (2008). Bilingualism in infancy: First steps in perception and comprehension of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(4), 144-151

Setting up sound systems（建立语音系统）

The smallest unit in language is the phonetic segment（音段）, the individual consonant（辅音） and vowel （元音）sounds that comprise syllables（音节） and words. Very young infants are able to discriminate many consonant and vowel distinctions（对立） that are used in the world’s languages, but sensitivity to nonnative distinctions （非母语语音对立）declines over the first year of life [22] while discrimination of native distinctions sharpens [23]. Converging evidence from studies of maternal speech [24,25], artificial language learning studies with infants [26,27] and computer modeling studies [28,29], suggests that infants use distributional regularities（分布规律） in the input to learn their native phonetic categories. For example, unlike English, Japanese makes a distinction between short and long vowels. This is evident as a bimodal distribution of vowel lengths in Japanese, but not English, mothers’ speech [24]. This type of distributional information could allow Japanese infants to infer two categories and English infants only one [26,27].
Bilingual infants simultaneously encounter phonetic segments from two languages, each with its own distribution. Fluent adult bilinguals who acquired both of their languages from birth can discriminate phonetic distinctions in each of their languages, although they often perform better in their dominant language. However, if they acquired one language after the other (sometimes called sequential bilinguals), there are phonetic distinctions for which they show poorer discrimination in the second language [30,31].
There are still only a handful of studies of the process by which bilingual infants establish the phonetic categories of each of their languages. One study of Spanish-Catalan bilingual infants suggested that bilingual infants might temporarily merge two vowel categories at 8 months while successfully discriminating the vowels at younger and older ages (4 and 12 months) [32]. An initial study of French-English bilinguals indicated that consonant perception might show a similar pattern, whereby consonant categories across the two languages were merged at age 10–12 months before separating again [33]. However, in a subsequent analysis with a larger sample, infants showed discrimination of the consonant boundaries in both of their languages throughout the first year of life [34]. Similarly, bilingual French-English infants maintain the ability to discriminate a French/d/from an English/d/[35]. These studies show that although sometimes showing a unique developmental pattern, bilingual infants are able to discriminate vowel and consonant distinctions in each of their languages by the end of the first year of life. The complexity of the pattern of results could reflect the variability among bilinguals as a function of different amounts of exposure to each language.
Even as infants maintain discrimination of phonemes in the native language, they also must learn the rules for allowable sequences of these phonemes (the phonotactics)（语音搭配组合顺序）. Monolingual infants can use both absolute frequency information （频率信息）[36] and distributional statistics （分布统计）to learn the phonotactic patterns of the native language [37,38]. Recent evidence indicates that bilingual infants show a different pattern of phonotactic learning from monolinguals. When tested at age 10 months, Spanish-Catalan bilinguals who were dominant in Catalan showed phonotactic preferences similar to same-aged Catalan monolinguals, whereas the performance of Spanish-dominant bilinguals was between that of Catalan and Spanish monolinguals [39]. These results suggest that even among bilinguals, differences in the amount of exposure to each language can have consequences for language learning.

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