Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1996

Ea r l i e r Hy p o t h e s es I n c o r r e c t The early child Cantonese data have led to a mo r e precise understanding of specific details of c h i l d r en ' s language development. It has allowed the researchers to test hypotheses w h i c h aim to captur e universal features of c h i l d language. A hypothesis which was proposed in the late 1980s was that c h i l d r en t y p i c a l l y pass through a stage (from around1 1/2 to 2 years old) in w h i c h their grammar lacks functional categories such as tense markers, complementizers (e.g. clause-introducing 'that'), and prepositions. I t was believed that at that stage, not all syntactic categories are available to the child ； children onl y have lexical categories such as nouns and verbs. However, the research evidence emerging i n the early 1990s, w h i c h is based o n a variety of languages, argues strongl y against this claim. The argument is borne out by the research finding s o f this project — which show that functiona l categories such as aspect ma r k e r s , classifiers, mo d a l auxiliaries, and sentence final particles are established between the ages of 1 3/4 and A n I m p o r t a n t A r ea o f S t udy A n accurate p r o f i le of early c h i l d language as provided b y research of this k i nd is important fo r practical issues such as policies for language in education. At the global level, research on early child language is as relevant to policy makers, educational administrators, and teachers as it is to language researchers. And , as Dr. Lee puts it, to the extent that we have come closer to grasping the reality of early child language, we have certainly advanced our understanding of the human mind. • Dr. Thomas Lee Dr. Thomas Hun-tak Lee has been teaching in the Department of English since 1987. He obtained his Ph.D. in linguistics from UCLA, and has been Nuffield research fellow at the University of York and visiting scientist at MIT. His main research interest lies in the comparative study of logical form properties of the Chinese language, and the acquisition of these properties by young children. He is currently a member of the editorial boards of Journal of East Asian Linguistics, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Linguistics Abroad, and International Review of Chinese Linguistics. Dr. Thomas Lee (right 2) and the rest of the research team More than Just Babble 21