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The acquisition of Cantonese classifiers by preschool children in Hong Kong*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2007

SHEK KAM TSE ,
HUI LI  and
SHING ON LEUNG
SHEK KAM TSE
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
HUI LI*
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
SHING ON LEUNG
Affiliation:
The University of Macau
*
Address for correspondence: Dr Hui Li, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. e-mail: huili@hkucc.hku.hk.
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Abstract

The Cantonese language has a complex classifier system and young learners need to pay attention to both the semantics and syntax of classifiers. This study investigated the repertoire of classifiers produced by 492 Cantonese-speaking preschoolers in three age groups (3;0, 4;0 and 5;0). Spontaneous utterances produced in 30-minute toy-play contexts were collected and transcribed. Analyses identified a productive repertoire of 73 classifiers in the utterances, which could be appropriately classified into the typology proposed in the present study. An age-related increase in the number of classifier types per child as well as the repertoire size of each group was found. 個 go3 (CL) was widely used as the general classifier by the young children. It was also discovered that the three-year-olds were already showing signs of grasping the basic syntax of classifiers. Cognitive, linguistic and contextual influences presumed to shape the evidence are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , August 2007 , pp. 495 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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