Chapter One Literature Review
This chapter aims to give a general review of relevant studies on formulaic sequences in language acquisition. A clear understanding of existing researches is the premise to do empirical research. The present study discusses it from first language and second language respectively.
1.1 Formulaic Sequences in First Language Acquisition
There are relevant researches on first language acquisition proposes found that children follow a 'formula-pattern-rule' route while learning their mother tongue (Pawley and Syder, 1983; Peters,1983). Peters (1983) makes a track of language output development for children who are seven mouths old from babbling to speech. Peters discovered that they generate language under outside input and then verify and adjust it constantly according to situations under the situation that they don’t possess systematic grammar. Finally they form a set of construction rules and can use it creatively after constant repetition and practice. According to Altenberg (1998)’s calculation, as high as 80% natural language of native speakers is consisted of chunks between words and fixed phrases and it is the necessary road for all learners to go through the process of using large quantities of FSs while learning language. Not only children but also adults use a large number of FSs in social contexts. The famous linguist Anderson (1993) put forward the verb-island hypothesis in early period of first language development from the phenomenon of limited early language based on his daughter’s language production in childhood. He made his investigation by researching children’s language production before three years olds; he recorded child’s interaction with her mother for six weeks, normally one hour a day. Child’s production within a fixed period was compared with his output, which based on following questions: was the utterance said before? Was the utterance’ s criteria the frequent schema? Was this utterance generated on the basement of previous mastered language? The investigation consequence shows that 78% of child’s utterances have same form with the utterance said before, which is absent of creativity. Only the rest 12% made minor change. Anderson got his discovery that children’s most creative utterances were founded upon previous repeated utterances, the creative extent is limited.
.......，英语论文，英语毕业论文 |
