4.1.1 Color Terms 10

4.1.2 Time phrases 11

4.1.3 Number of Places 12

4.1.4 Number words 12

4.1.5 Repetition of words and sentences 13

4.1.6 Description of characters 14

4.2 Research results and children psychology 15

5 Conclusion 17

5.1 Research Implication 17

5.2 Limitation and Suggestions for further study 18

1 Introduction

“Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there was an old man and an old wowan, and they had one son, and they lived in a great forest…” (Jacobs, 1890) Children’s literature makes a unique and wonderful spiritual world not only for children. Fairy tale, as a kind of children literature, helps to improve children’s imaginative and reading ability. They are combined with narrative methods of contemporary literature to form the conception about the world and broaden their horizon. Meanwhile, fairy tales develop children’s language skills and logical thinking. As Kready (1916) points out, fairy tales strengthen children’s power of emotion, develop the ability of imagination, train the memory and exercise the reason. They play a significant role in children’s early education.

The study on fairy tales is very important. When researchers study literature, they take the perspective from linguistics, comparison or translation. These research methods are limited to some extent, for the results of researches are easily influenced by researchers’ subjective sensation. More scientific and rigorous method is needed to do the research. This research will study the characteristics of fairy tales from the perspective of cognitive representatively category by using statistic method.

1.1 The aim of the thesis

In this thesis, scientific corpus analysis method and statistical method are used for this research. There are three main aims of this thesis.

Firstly, through analysis and comparison, the study wants to find out the main similarities and differences of these two fairy tales, especially those differences. How things in different can achieve the same literature effects.

Secondly, from those similarities and differences, the study wants to generalize the main language characteristics of fairy tales.

Thirdly, from fairy tales’ language characteristics the study will give some solutions for later fairy tale creation. Moreover, combined with children’s language learning psychology, the study may raise some suggestions on children’s early education.

That is, the following three questions will be answered in this thesis:

1) What are the similarities and differences between these two fairy tales? 

2) From those similarities and differences, what are the main language characteristics of fairy tales?

3) What are the implications from the survey results for later fairy tales creation and children’s education?

1.2 The Organization of the thesis

The thesis roughly consists of five parts. 

The first part presents a brief introduction of the thesis. This part provides a general view of the significance, objectives and organization of the thesis. 

Part two is literature review. In this part, the thesis talks about the definition about fairy tales, and review the previous researches related to fairy tales. Meanwhile, it review some researches to explain why fairy tales contribute to children’s language learning.