本研究採用與Braine（1976）類似的方法，分析七位習國語幼兒在自然狀態下，於第一階段內（平均發言長度>1，<1.75）所產生語句（主要為雙詞）字序上的規律性 ，藉此探討幼兒最初期語法規則所包含範圍及抽象程度。所得結果與Braine分析習其他語言（英語、芬蘭語、瑞典語、西伯來語等）幼兒初期語法規則所下結論一致。幼兒最初語法規則是以字詞間特定語意關係為基礎的。此語意關係所包含範圍比一般格式語法（case grammar）所假設的基本單位（如主事格、受事格、處所格等）還要窄。因此以根據變形語法（transformational grammar）或其他成人語法所導出概念來描述幼兒的句型規則是不恰當的。除此之外，本研究中許多現象似乎指出幼兒根據某特定已習得句組所包含種種性質，會導出不只一種強弱不等的概化傾向。此可能性與近年來不少學者指出自然界各類別間往往互相重必，歸劃成員時有典範性（prototypicality）程度上的差別（例Rosch，1975），以及語法方面，各語法類別（grammatical categories）適用句型也往往不能截然劃分（例Ross，1974a）等現象有相通之處。

　　　　　With methods similar to Braine-(1976), this stud/examined the earliest grammatical rules in toddlers acquiring Mandarin Chinese. Our data comes from a one year longitudinal study of 8 toddlers' conversations in naturistic environments. At the beginning of the study, half the subjects were about I year old and the other half of the subjects were about 1 1/2 yearold. This study analyzed all these children's utterances produced when its mean length of utterance was beyond I, but not longer than 1.75, the landmark delinented by Brown (1970) as stage 1. The results support Braine's claim that earliest grammatical rules are based on often quite specific semantic relationships among components. Both formal categories postulated in transformational grammar and the semantic categories typically proposed in case grammars are too abstract to characterize the beginning grammar of young children. In addition, all our subjects showed some tendency to generalize the word order rule underlying the "actor + action" pattern toward describing relationships other than those between real actors and concrete actions. This phenomenon suggestes that based on a particular set of examples' young children will develop generalization tendencies along more than one dimensions with varying strength. How this hypothesis may relate to issues such as proto type in concept formation (e. g. Rosch, 1975) as well as noncategorical grammar (e. g. Ross 1974) isfurther discussed in the paper.