Selective vulnerability and dominant language transfer in the acquisition of the Chinese cleft construction by heritage speakers

Mai, Ziyin; Deng, Xiangjun

doi:10.1075/lab.16040.mai

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…As proficiency increased, they produced a higher frequency of indefinite nominals for INTRO in English but not in Mandarin. This suggests that linguistic properties involving information structure and discourse such as REs in Mandarin could be particularly vulnerable in bilingual grammars, consistent with existing patterns in other bilingual populations (e.g., Mai and Deng, 2019).…”

Section: Specific Uses Of Res In Bilingual Reference Productionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Reference production in Mandarin–English bilingual preschoolers: Linguistic, input, and cognitive factors

Zhou

Mai²,

Cai³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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Reference in extended discourse is vulnerable to delayed acquisition in early childhood. Although recent research has increasingly focused on effects of linguistic, input, and cognitive factors on reference production, these studies are limited in number and the results are mixed. The present study provides insight into bilingual reference production by investigating how production of referring expressions in the two languages of preschool bilingual children may be influenced by structural similarities and differences between the languages, frequency of referring expressions in maternal input, amount of exposure to each of the languages, and working memory capacity. Using two stories in the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN), we examined character introduction and re-introduction in oral narratives of 4–6-year-old Singaporean bilingual children acquiring Mandarin Chinese and English (n = 21), and in child-directed speech of the mothers (n = 17). The children’s language exposure, executive function, and general bilingual proficiency were also recorded or directly tested through structured interviews with the parents or standardized assessments with the children. Data collection was conducted remotely in real time over a video-conferencing platform, supplemented by on-site audio recording to ensure sound quality. Results showed prolonged development in the production of felicitous REs for first mentions and over-reliance on overt marking of definiteness in our bilingual children. Mixed modeling revealed that frequency of felicitous REs in the input predicted children’s production of felicitous REs across languages and discourse functions, with a modulating effect of working memory. Overall, our findings are consistent with previous ones in that reference production is vulnerable in early Mandarin-English bilinguals in a multilingual society. This study also presents novel evidence that structural frequency in the input interacts with working memory in shaping patterns of reference production in bilingual children.

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Section: Specific Uses Of Res In Bilingual Reference Productionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Reference production in Mandarin–English bilingual preschoolers: Linguistic, input, and cognitive factors

Zhou

Mai²,

Cai³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…Their L2 was mostly learned through formal instruction after puberty. HLers, on the one hand, can display substantial differences from L2ers in many acquisition and processing aspects across linguistic domains ( Montrul, 2016 ); on the other hand, they are also different from monolingually raised speakers of that language (“baseline”) in judging and processing complex grammatical properties of the HL (e.g., Mai and Deng, 2017 ; Polinsky and Scontras, 2020 ). For HLers, it is likely that the experience of developing both the HL and the majority language concurrently in childhood gives rise to more accurate and accessible mapping between corresponding structures in the two languages and bring advantages over L2 and monolingual baselines in L1-L2 similar structures.…”

Section: In Grammatical Acquisition and Sentence Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For L2 learners (L2ers), online reading tasks are more challenging than offline ones as explicit knowledge is less accessible by the parser in online tasks due to time pressure (e.g., Jiang, 2004 ; Andersson et al, 2019 ; Mickan and Lemhöfer, 2020 ). However, for heritage language learners (HLers), early exposure to the target language might to some extent bring about advantages over adult L2 learners in terms of sensitivity to very subtle semantic features (e.g., Mai and Deng, 2017 ; Polinsky and Scontras, 2020 ). In this study, we examine whether and to what extent positive CLI takes place in establishing and maintaining a syntax-semantic condition in the L2 and heritage Mandarin Chinese using both offline and online reading tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positive cross-linguistic influence in the representation and processing of sentence-final particle le by L2 and heritage learners of Chinese

2023

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This study investigates the representation and processing of written Chinese sentences subject to a semantic condition (i.e., “direction of change”) attached to the sentence-final particle (SFP) le in Mandarin Chinese. Three groups of bilingual speakers of Chinese and English who differ in their onset age of bilingualism and proficiency of English were studied. It was anticipated that there would be a positive cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from English due to similarities between the SFP le and the English adverb already in terms of direct semantic transfer. An acceptability judgment (AJ) task and a self-paced reading (SPR) task were conducted to elicit judgment and processing difficulty with and without semantic violations. The participants included English-dominant second language (L2) learners (n = 18) and heritage learners (n = 19) who had advanced proficiency in Chinese, as well as monolingually raised Mandarin speakers from China as a baseline control group (n = 18). The results indicated that sensitivity to violations of the semantic condition varied depending on factors such as the specific structure (noun vs. verb phrase), the task type (offline vs. online), and the type of bilingual speaker (early vs. late). Among the three groups of bilinguals, the heritage learners demonstrated a representation of the semantic condition that resembled the target language across different sentence structures, whereas the L2 learners did not. Furthermore, the heritage learners exhibited earlier sensitivity to violations during online processing compared to the baseline control group. These exceptional results can be attributed to the heritage learners’ early exposure to and positive CLI between the SFP le in Mandarin and the English adverb already.

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The Mandarin ba-construction in school-age heritage speakers and their parental input

Mai

Zhao

Yip

2021

LAB

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Recent research has identified language development in school-age heritage children as an important yet missing link between child early bilinguals and adult heritage speakers. This study investigates the Mandarin ba -construction ([(NP 1 )- ba -NP 2 -VP]) through elicited narration among heritage Mandarin children (n = 27, aged 4–14) and their parents (n = 18) in the UK. The results showed considerable similarities between the children and their parents in a number of key structural properties of the ba -construction. However, the children produced the ba -construction with reduced frequency and in a “heritage variety” with a reduced set of nominal and verbal phrases in NP 2 and VP, which is not attested in a group of age-matched Mandarin speakers in Beijing. Additionally, higher frequency of the ba -construction in the heritage children’s production is associated with greater lexical diversity, rather than higher frequency of the ba -construction, in their parental input. We lay out positive aspects of the heritage variety of the ba -construction in sustaining the heritage language in bilingual contexts and consider the different roles of structural frequency and lexical diversity in parental input in maintaining the heritage grammar in late childhood and adolescence.

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Selective vulnerability and dominant language transfer in the acquisition of the Chinese cleft construction by heritage speakers

Cited by 5 publications

References 35 publications

Reference production in Mandarin–English bilingual preschoolers: Linguistic, input, and cognitive factors

Reference production in Mandarin–English bilingual preschoolers: Linguistic, input, and cognitive factors

Positive cross-linguistic influence in the representation and processing of sentence-final particle le by L2 and heritage learners of Chinese

The Mandarin ba-construction in school-age heritage speakers and their parental input

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