Form and function in the acquisition of Korean wh-questions

Clancy, Patricia M.

doi:10.1017/s0305000900010448

Cited by 30 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…(cf. Wode, 1974;Felix, 1976;Labov and Labov, 1978;Lightbown, 1978;Bloom et al, 1982;Stromswold, 1988;Clancy, 1989;. In my analysis of the developing English of six Korean children, who were learning English as an L2 in an immersion context, I have found a similar developmental pattern.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Table 4 shows the age of each subject and the number of wh-words used with S-V or S-AUX inversion. Clancy (1989) examined the order of the acquisition of whquestions by two Korean children in the age ranges 1; 8-2; 8 and 1; 10-2; 10. She found that the sequence of wh-questions produced and comprehended by the Korean children was similar to that of English-speaking children.…”

Section: Data From Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clancy (1989), based on acquisition of wh-questions in Korean, suggests that the ordered emergence of the wh-questions cannot be accounted for by only one factor, but need be considered from several aspects, such as the cognitive development of children, input data and functions of wh-questions. Conceptual development of children may be the most important constraint in the emergence of wh-questions but, according to Clancy, it has limitations for explaining the following problems: 1) children express the notion of causality or temporality by other linguistic expressions, such as adverbs or conjunctions, before they begin to use why-or when-questions.…”

Section: Antecedent-governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clancy (1989) says that the results of a correlation analysis between the frequency of wh-forms in the mother's input and the order of the emergence of wh-questions show that input has a significant effect. However, Clancy points out that the conceptual factor still does have priority in that a mother's use of wh-forms is dictated by the child's cognitive development; that is, mothers introduced wh-forms when they thought the child was conceptually ready for the meaning of the word (Clancy, 1989: 342).…”

Section: When-questions In Second Language Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One possible reason may be that the children did not have opportunities to use whenquestions. According to Clancy's (1989) functional analysis, young children do not produce when-questions at early stages because they do not have many chances to talk and ask about time. However, in the case of the Korean children, who were much older and who were engaged in wider social relationships, it would be impossible to assume that the children had no opportunity to use when-questions throughout the whole three-year period.…”

Section: Tense As a Referential Expressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When-questions in second language acquisition

Park

2000

Second Language Research

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It has been observed that when-questions are one of the last wh-questions produced by children learning English either as a first language (L1) or as a second language (L2). Explanations proposed for the late appearance of when-questions in L1 acquisition have been mostly based on cognitive factors. However, the cognition-based approach to when-questions faces problems in explaining L2 acquisition data, which show that L2 children who are cognitively more mature than L1 children follow the same developmental sequence. In this paper, I propose a possible explanation based on internal linguistic factors. According to Enç (1987), tense is a referential expression and temporal adverbials are antecedents of tense. I develop Enç's theory further and propose that in a when-question, tense is a bound variable, which is bound by the quantificational interrogative when. Thus, in order to produce when-questions, children must be at a stage where they understand bound variable readings. According to Roeper and de Villiers (1991), English-speaking children learn a bound variable reading approximately after 36 months, and the learning continues through the kindergarten years. The age at which a bound variable reading first appears corresponds to the point at which when-questions begin to occur. I propose that the complexity of the interaction between the quantificational when and tense, a bound variable, causes the delayed production of when-questions in developing grammars. I IntroductionCross-linguistic studies on the acquisition of wh-questions have shown that both L1 and L2 learners produce wh-questions in the sequential order of where, what > how, who > why > when (this indicates that where and what are acquired before how and who, which is acquired before why, etc.) (

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Data From Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Antecedent-governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: When-questions In Second Language Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tense As a Referential Expressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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