| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 105 === The present empirical study aims at investigating children’s interpretations of Chinese frequency adverbs. Two phases were designed to elicit the child subjects’ interpretations. In Phase 1, the children’s interpretations of frequency adverbs were obtained from the identification and the ordering tasks. Similarly, in Phase 2, the children’s acceptability of various kinds of event types was investigated by the acceptability task. A comparison between a context-free task and a context-provided task was also explored in this phase. Age differences were examined in the both phases. A total of eighty children studying in an elementary school in New Taipei City were recruited and further divided into four experimental groups according to their grades (i.e., the kindergartners, Grades 2, 4 and 6). Moreover, twenty adults were recruited as the control group.
The results indicated an age-related pattern in the acquisition of Chinese frequency adverbs. It was found that Grade 4 was able to interpret atypical frequency adverbs. However, even Grade 6 had not yet acquired adult-like interpretations of typical frequency adverbs. Therefore, typical frequency adverbs were more challenging for the subjects to interpret than atypical ones because typical frequency adverbs were vaguer in meaning than atypical ones. As for the events modified by frequency adverbs, it was found that telic events were more acceptable than atelic ones. All the groups, except for the kindergartners, accepted frequency adverbs when they were used to modify telic events in a higher degree than those used to modify atelic events. Moreover, the subtypes of telic events displayed a similar degree of acceptability when they were modified by frequency adverbs for the older children (Grades 4 and 6) and the control group but not for the younger children (the kindergartners and Grade 2). Because Grade 4 was able to interpret atypical frequency adverbs, differentiate telic from atelic events and accept frequency adverbs when they were used to modify the subtypes of telic events in a similar degree, it was concluded that Grade 4 was a critical period for the acquisition of Chinese frequency adverbs. Finally, it was found that contextual clues showed a negative effect on the interpretations of frequency adverbs. The subjects generally gave lower acceptability ratings to the context-provided task than the context-fee task.
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