A Study on the Acquisition of Possession Constructions in Chinese Preschool Children’s Natural Utterances

Abstract

Based on the natural utterances of six Chinese-speaking preschool children, this paper examines the syntactic and semantic features of possession constructions. First of all, in terms of the syntax, there are three main types of possession constructions, including adnominal, predicative, and external possessions, as well as eight variations. Meanwhile, the older the children are, the more syntactic variations and frequencies they produce, and the more complex their syntactic structures become, following a developmental pattern from simple to complex. Secondly, in terms of semantics, the children express four main types of semantics: interpersonal, whole-part, ownership and spatiotemporal relationships, involving nine subtypes, such as social relationships, kinship and so on. The longitudinal features of the semantics have a developmental path from familiar to unfamiliar, concrete to abstract, and single to diverse. Finally, Studies have shown that children actively and gradually construct language in their interactions with adults, in a certain degree, which means that the driving force for children’s syntactic acquisition and development comes from language use.