Chinese children's knowledge of folkbiology: an alternative explanation for animism

This study examines Chinese children’s understanding of folkbiology through their acquisition of the concept of life using the clinical interview technique employed in Piagetian experiments. The aim of the study is to identify the difference between semantic development and conceptual change in the semantic domain of ‘alive’. The subjects were thirty-six 4 to 10 year old Chinese children from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Overall, the findings indicate that the Chinese children respond more ‘animistically’ compared with English speaking children in previous studies. However, through the examination of the lexicalising process of ‘alive’ in Mandarin Chinese this paper will demonstrate that Chinese children’s acquisition of the concept of life may be guided to a large extent by semantic rather than conceptual principles