王 蕾

（女，2015级博士，专业：语言学及应用语言学，研究方向：儿童语言获得，导师：胡建华）

　　摘 要

　　本论文研究前语言阶段婴儿指向以及指向与句法能力之间的关系。论文指出，婴儿在会说话之前，通过（表达情感、态度的）发声和指向进行沟通，而前语言阶段的指向和发声为语言阶段句法结构的发展提供了基础。论文论证，发声和指向对应于句法结构的语力层和实词层。婴儿的发声关联主观世界，而指向则关联客观世界。

　　本项研究基于儿童长期跟踪数据，通过对三名北京婴儿的前语言数据长期跟踪调查，建立了多模态数据库。通过对三名儿童从食指指向首现到进入独词阶段的跟踪数据的观察和分析，论文发现：①儿童早在3-6月间就能够无意识的伸出食指，但是能够表达儿童主观意图、具有沟通功能的食指指向则在9-10个月才出现；②儿童在1岁6个月前，先是通过发声、互动等方式建立和看护者的共同关注，然后再做出指向的动作；但在18个月后，有一个重大的改变是儿童有一个“预先”的注视，也就是先确定和看护者在共同关注框架下后，再做出指向，这反应出儿童心理上理解互动者是和自己一样（的施为者），能够理解施事动作的关系。③同时我们观察到，较早运用食指指向的婴儿较早进入独词阶段。WRN、JJY和ZMH每分钟分别产出0.36、0.59和0.42个指向动作，食指指向产出频率最高的JJY最快地从独词阶段进入双词阶段。

　　论文重点考察了语料库中前语言阶段指向的结构特征。论文指出，语前阶段的指向对应的是一个指向客观世界VP结构，承载了命题内容，是一个类似“独词句”的整体行为。儿童独词前的指向符合McNeill（1970）和Dore（1974）关于独词的假说，既有内在的结构，又是儿童“初期命题”的表达。

　　以往文献中关注的都是一个指向动作与一种言语行为之间的关系，并没有注意婴儿指向和手势是如何分解并组配的，也没有关注指向和手势与句法结构之间的关系。我们就语料库中出现的这种模式进行了描述和分析：例如，WRN在11;8时，以指向表征所指物体，以把握姿势的手型表示对所指物体的具体把握方式，然后通过把握手型的模拟反转动作来表示对所指物体做怎样的具体处理。论文指出并论证，婴儿对指向进行分解并以不同手型和动作来表征所指的物体，说明婴儿在前语言阶段，虽然不会说话，但已经具有了句法心灵。儿童指向的进一步复杂化和精细化，就是在指向中把动作和动作对象进行分离，把动作和动作方式进行分离，然后对分离的手势进行组配，从而形成对应于VP结构的指向。值得指出的是，婴儿在做出以上连续性手势时，还伴随着发声。论文论证，婴儿把发声与具有VP结构性质的指向手势进行组合，是以非言语形式来构建对应于句法结构的表征。本研究证明，婴儿在会说话之前，其分解性指向手势的组配行为，足以说明他们在前语言阶段就已经具有句法心灵，具有内在的句法能力。

　　关键词：指向；发声；互动；前语言阶段；句法心灵；语力层；实词层

　　Abstract

　　This thesis invstigates the development and syntactic nature of infants' pointing ability in the prelinguistic stage. Before a baby can speak, he conveys information through vocalization and pointing in a way similar to syntactic combination. It is argued in the thesis that vocalization and pointing constitute the basis for the development of syntax in early infants. While pointing plays an important role in the development of VP, vocalization is closely associated with the emergence of CP.

　　This research is based on developmental data. In this study, a multi-modal corpus is built up on the basis of longitudinal video-recorded data of three Beijing babies. It is found in the data that WRN, an infant subject in our research project, at the age of 11 months has not only many “holophrastic” pointing behavior, but also a combination of a set of different guestures. It is shown that although the prelinguistic infants cannot speak, they have a syntactic mind and are thus able to convey information through a combination of pointing with guestures, exhibiting a behavior very much similar to the process of structure-building in speech. Infants can use not only pointing to direct the adult’s attention to an object, but also different guestures to represent the object as well as a combination of pointing with guestures to represent the way how to deal with the object. It is worth pointing out that when babies make the above continuous gestures, they are also accompanied by vocalizations. The thesis claims that the infant’s combination of vocalization with pointing constitutes the basis to develop syntactic structures in speech, which is an externalization of their internal knowledge of language.

　　As mentioned in the literature, infants’ prelinguistic pointing mainly has two functions: one is imperative and the other is declarative. Tomasello (2008) further distinguishes expression statements and informative statements. These studies focused on the relationship between pointing action and speech act, but paid less attention to the relationship between pointing and the representation of syntactic structures by infants. Our research shows that before infants can speak, they already have a syntactic mind, which not only makes them think syntactically, but also regulates the way they “talk” to adults by externalizing their syntactic competence through a process of combination of pointing with vocalization.

　　Keywords：pointing; vocalization; interaction; prelinguistic stage; syntactic mind; CP; VP