Syntactic and Discourse Features in Chinese Heritage Grammars: A Case of Acquiring Features in the Chinese Sentence-Final Particle ba

Abstract

This study investigates how syntactic and discourse features of Chinese sentence-final particles (the question particle ba and the suggestion particle ba) are reconfigured in Chinese heritage grammars. It has been argued that features of the Chinese particles ba are present in English but are configured differently. An acceptability judgment task, a discourse completion task, and a translation task were adopted in this study. In total, 35 Chinese heritage speakers and 18 Chinese native speakers took part in this study. The results show that none of the heritage speaker groups had any problem in configuring the discourse feature of the suggestion particle ba and the syntactic features of the question particle ba. However, none of them could successfully reconfigure the discourse feature of the question particle ba. It seems that the effects of dominant language transfer, reduced Chinese input, and limited processing resources play roles in the reconfiguration of discourse features in heritage grammars. As compared to previous L2 studies regarding the same phenomenon, heritage speakers with more and early Chinese input seem to have advantages over L2 learners in terms of syntactic features. L2 learners are found to be slightly better than heritage speakers in terms of reconfiguring some discourse properties.

Language Interfaces in Adult Heritage Language Acquisition: A Study on Encoding of Nominal Reference in Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language

“…Meanwhile, there are studies partially confirming the predictions of the IH. For example, Yan (2020) adopted a set of instruments including the acceptability judgment task (AJT), the dialog completion task, and the translation task to investigate adult Chinese heritage speakers’ mastery of the syntactic and discourse features of the sentence final particle ba in Chinese. The results showed that while the “suggestion” discourse feature of ba imposed prolonged difficulties for the heritage speakers, which was consistent with the IH, the “question” discourse feature of ba could be eventually acquired to a nativelike level, which contradicted the IH.…”

Teaching and Learning Chinese as a Foreign or Second Language: The Educational Psychology Perspective

“…Hence, learning FSs can make communication more sophisticated and efficient (Schmitt and Carter, 2004;Tang and Taguchi, 2021). These findings led to the assumption that learning FSs can facilitate language comprehension and production (Boers et al, 2006;Lindstromberg and Boers, 2008;Yan, 2020;Saito and Liu, 2021). As such, mastering FSs can lead to the development of overall language proficiency (Weinert, 1995;Wray, 2000).…”