The Mandarin <i>ba</i>-construction in school-age heritage speakers and their parental input

Mai, Ziyin; Zhao, Lucy; Yip, Virginia

doi:10.1075/lab.18025.mai

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Our bilingual children produced a higher frequency of demonstrative NPs (80 out of 140 nominals, 57.14%) than the 6-9-year-old typically developing Mandarin monolingual children in Sah (2018) (24 out of 276 nominals, 8.7%) for Re-INTRO. This echoed the bilingualmonolingual differences in demonstrative use between heritage Mandarin speakers and homeland speakers reported in Aalberse et al (2017) and Mai et al (2021).…”

Section: Summary Of Main Findingssupporting

confidence: 67%

“…Previous research showed over-reliance on overt markers to express definiteness in Mandarin heritage speakers due to cross-linguistic influence of English (e.g., Aalberse et al, 2017 ; Mai et al, 2021 ). If influence of English also occurs in our bilingual children, they will produce a high frequency of demonstrative NPs as older heritage Mandarin speakers in previous studies did.…”

Section: The Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, evidence for CLI has been reported in previous studies on bilingual children learning Mandarin and an article language. For example, Mai et al (2021) found that heritage Mandarin children (aged 4–14) in the United Kingdom produced significantly more demonstrative NPs in a syntactic position requiring definite or specific NPs. The authors attributed this difference to possible CLI from English, which obligatorily marks definiteness through overt markers.…”

Section: Reference Production: Linguistic Input and Cognitive Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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: Summary Of Main Findingssupporting

confidence: 67%

Section: The Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Reference Production: Linguistic Input and Cognitive Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Zhou

Mai²,

Cai³

et al. 2022

Front. Psychol.

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“…When examining quantity of input, therefore, it is also important to describe the type of input to which HSs are exposed. For a linguistic property to be acquired, after all, it is necessary that this linguistic feature is found in the input received by the HSs (Daskalaki, Blom, Chondrogianni, & Paradis, 2020;Kupisch & Rothman, 2018;Mai, Zhao, & Yip, 2022;Otheguy, 2016;Rothman, 2007). Quality of input is mediated by phonetic variation, as speaker variability can lessen the excessive effect that individual characteristics in the input might have during language acquisition (Embick, White, & Tamminga, 2020, p. 21).…”

Section: Comparing Child To Adult Heritage Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Glottalizing at word junctures: Exploring bidirectional transfer in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers

Repiso-Puigdelliura

2023

Bilingualism

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While research in heritage language phonology has found that transfer from the majority language can lead to divergent attainment in adult heritage language grammars, the extent to which language transfer develops during a heritage speaker's lifespan is understudied. To explore such cross-linguistic transfer, I examine the rate of glottalization between consonant-to-vowel sequences at word junctures produced by child and adult Spanish heritage speakers (i.e., HSs) in both languages. My results show that, in Spanish, child HSs produce greater rates of vowel-initial glottal phonation than their age-matched monolingually-raised Spanish counterparts, suggesting that the Spanish child HSs’ grammars are more permeable to transfer than those of the adult HSs. In English, child and adult HSs show similarly low rates of glottal phonation when compared to their age-matched monolingually-raised English speakers’ counterparts. The findings for English can be explained by either an account of transfer at the individual level or the community level.

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Chapter 12. Cross-linguistic influences in bilingual morphosyntactic acquisition

Chondrogianni

2023

Cross-Language Influences in Bilingual Processing and Second Language Acquisition

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The interaction between the bilingual child’s two languages, coined as Cross-linguistic influence (CLI), is a well-reported phenomenon in bilingual language development. Although CLI has long dominated bilingualism research, issues about its nature (a representational change or by-product of language co-activation), timing and duration remain less well understood. Is CLI only observed during early bilingual development, and does it fade away as children grow older? Does it lead to qualitative and quantitative differences in language development between bilinguals and monolinguals? The present chapter addresses these questions by reviewing state-of-the-art studies reporting CLI in simultaneous and sequential bilingual children’s acquisition of morphology and syntax. We also discuss how extra-linguistic factors such as age of acquisition, dominance, input quality and quantity modulate CLI.

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

Cited by 7 publications

References 37 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

Glottalizing at word junctures: Exploring bidirectional transfer in child and adult Spanish heritage speakers

Chapter 12. Cross-linguistic influences in bilingual morphosyntactic acquisition

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