TALKING ABOUT PAST EVENTS IN CONVERSATION: AN ANALYSIS OF MANDARIN MOTHER-CHILD AND ADULT-ADULT DISCOURSE

Abstract

This study explored three-year-old Mandarin-speaking children abilities to talk about past events, focusing on how past reference was maintained in mother-child conversation. For comparison, adult-adult conversation was also examined. The analysis showed that while the children relied heavily on maternal scaffolding when referring to the past, the children emerging abilities to express temporal relations also shaped the mothers’ speech in conversation. It was also found that in the children still-primitive narratives, temporality was marked mostly for local considerations rather than for an attempt to organize global structures of discourse. In contrast, in the adult-adult discourse, the analysis demonstrated how temporal and aspectual markers contributed to a greater temporal complexity.

本研究探討說漢語的三歲幼童提及過去事件的能力。研究重點在於過去時間的指涉在母子對話中的延續。同時，成人間的對話也加以分析以做比較。結果顯示雖然幼兒十分依靠母親的鷹架結構來談及過去，幼兒表達時間關係的能力也對母親的言語有所影響。另外，在幼兒簡單的敘述中，時間的表達大多只是為了局部的考量而非對總體結構加以組織。相對的，在成人的對話中，時間標記的使用增進了敘述中時間結構的複雜度。