Talking about Past Events in Conversation: An Analysis of Mandarin Mother-Child and Adult-Adult Discourse

漢語母子對話和成人對話中的過去事件

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。

This study explored three-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's 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's emerging abilities to express temporal relations also shaped the mothers' speech in conversation. It was also found that in the children's 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.