Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1996

Young children's grasp of Cantonese g r ammar is r e f l e c t e d i n t h e i r use o f sentences containing a series o f verbs or v e r b phrases s t r un g together. I n these sentences, the first verb may express a desire or intention, e . g . ‘ 要搭的士喎 (want- take-taxi)' or ' 我鍾意食西瓜 ( I - l i k e - e a t- watermelon)'. These sentences ma y also contain verbs denoting successive actions.‘ 食完早餐行街 (eat-breakfast-walk-street)' o r ‘搭車車去百佳（ take-car-go-Park 'N Shop)'. Th e researchers also f o u n d i n y o u n g children's speech th e t y pe of c omp l e x s e n t e n c e r e f e r r ed t o as t he ' p i v o t al construction '， in wh i c h the object of the first verb serves as the subject or object of the second verb. Examples of these are ‘ A 姐姐 幫我寫（ Sister A-help-me-write)' and ‘ 有雪 條食 ( h a v e - l o l l i p o p - e a t ) '. A c t i v e Y o u n g Learners of Language Re s e a r ch f i n d i n g s p o i n t to t he conclusion that children are not passive learners of their mother tongue ； instead, they make active hypotheses abou t the structure of their language based on what they hear and understand. They do no t however always hit on the right hypothesis, and w i l l often make systematic errors. One c h i l d has been f o u n d to always attach a negator to classifiers at a certain po i n t i n his language development. Thus he gave c o m b i n a t i o ns s u c h as '唔件呀（n o t - c l a s s i f i e r - p a r t i c l e )' a n d ' 唔粒呀（ not - classifier-particle)', whic h are ungrammatical by adult standards. T h i nk of an English- speaking child saying, 'a not cup (of water)'. While arguing that very young children have rich linguistic knowledge, the researchers do not dispute that there are still many details to be f i l l ed in. For e x amp l e, it normally takes children more than five or six years to fully understand which classifiers go w i t h wh i c h nouns. Errors of classifier- n o u n i n c omp a t i b i l i ty have l o n g b e en observed. A n example f r om the group o f c h i l d r en s t u d i ed is ：'我隻毛巾呢？（ my - classifier for animal-towel-particle)'. C h a r a c t e r i s t i c s o f M o t h e r T o n g u e Reflected T h e s p e e c h o f y o u n g Cantonese- speaking childre n also clearly reflects the characteristics of their mother tongue. For instance, sentence final particles are peculiar to certain languages such as Cantonese, and are n ot f o u nd in the speech o f English- speaking children. These particles emerge a l mo s t at t he same t i me w h e n w o r d combinations appear. In a similar vein, serial verb phrases figure more p r om i nen t l y in Cantonese child language than i n the speech of English children . This k i nd o f variation across different child languages poses new challenges for theoretical analysis. Chinese University Bulletin Autumn • Winter 1996 20