Introduction

The concept of time is one of the fundamental domains in human cognition, and is central in human language. Thus, in child language acquisition, it is crucial for children to acquire the ability to refer to time. Referring to time involves complex cognitive, linguistic, and conversational skills. Cognitively, children need to develop the concept of time, including temporal relations and aspectual perspectives. Linguistically, children need to acquire the language-specific devices for encoding time. Conversationally, they need to be able to assess their interlocutors' perspectives and organize temporality in discourse.

Researchers of the acquisition of Mandarin temporality have adopted two different approaches. One approach focuses on how children acquire linguistic forms of temporality, such as grammatical aspect markers and temporal adverbs. Studies have been conducted to investigate the emergence and development of these temporal markers and the relationship between grammatical aspect marking and inherent lexical aspect. This approach is similar to what Bardovi-Harlig (2000) called a “form-oriented” approach. The other approach, on the other hand, focuses on how the concept of time is manifested in children's talk, with or without explicit linguistic forms. In other words, children's “time talk” (Smith, 1980) is investigated by examining all means of temporal expressions, including morphological, semantic, and pragmatic resources. Therefore, this second approach represents a broader perspective, and can be considered as “meaning-oriented” (Bardovi-Harlig, 2000) or “concept-oriented” (von Stutterheim & Klein, 1987).

The form-oriented approach

The acquisition of grammatical aspect markers

Mandarin has been widely recognized as a language without tense.