A Corpus-Based Study of Spatial Frames of References in Early Child Mandarin Chinese

This study examines the developmental pattern of spatial frames of reference (FoRs) in Chinese preschoolers using the naturalistic data elicited from the Beijing Early Childhood Mandarin Corpus. Altogether, 2837 static spatial sentences were identified from the corpus, and 785 of them used FoRs; thus, they were analysed using the seven-class FoRs coding system developed from the literature review. The results indicated that: (1) six classes were produced by the Beijing preschoolers, including the direct reference (DR), geomorphic reference (GR), landmark-based reference (LBR), object-centred reference (OCR), relative reference (RR), and people-centred reference (PCR). But, the absolute reference (AR) frequently used by Beijing adults was not produced by the preschoolers; (2) significant age differences were found in the utterances with reference and demonstrative sentences and were also identified in the production of OCR, PCR, and RR; (3) there were no significant gender or gender x age effects in the production of FoRs, except for the no-frame sentences; and (4) there was a stable and consistent pattern of FoRs allocation by age, and the most frequently used was OCR. All these findings indicate interactions among language, culture, and cognition.