This paper is a first attempt in the literature to trace the developmental route from nominal to pronominal reference to person of a Mandarin-English bilingual first language acquirer `J'. This progression is seen, longitudinally, in the context of the child's overall syntactic development from age 1; 07—4; 0, to move, in both languages, through three phases: (i) kinship terms and lack of self-reference (1;07—2;0); (ii) nominal reference to self and others (2 ;0—3 ;0 ;07) ; (iii) emergence of first person pronominal reference alongside other self-referential expressions (3;0;07—4;0). These and other significant parallels and differences between monolingual and bilingual L1 acquisition in Mandarin and English are documented. Mandarin is the home language spoken by both parents and other family members while English is the language of all other environments. This is different from the one-parent-one-language situation commonly investigated in bilingual L1 acquisition. J's pronominal development follows distinct routes in his two languages, including the coexistence of two self-reference names in Mandarin only with different functions which has not been reported in the literature before. Also, in contrast with monolingual mixing in (English) case-marking (Radford, 1986) J demonstrates categorical, adult-like case-marking contrasts. We show further that this bilingual child adopts an analytic (bottom-up) approach in Mandarin but a synthetic (top-down) approach in English.

Studies on bilingual first language acquisition mainly concern the formal aspects of bilingual children’s language development. In-depth studies on the development of the personal pronoun system have so far received little attention in the literature. The longitudinal study is a first attempt to trace the developmental route of personal pronouns in an unbalanced 2L1 Chinese Mandarin—English child. Pragmatic and semantic issues relating to pronoun usage are addressed in order to examine order of emergence and production patterns of personal pronouns in Mandarin and English. The results are discussed in relation to the theoretical hypotheses and are compared to monolingual data. Findings seem to support speech role hypothesis. In other words, the bilingual child has no problem with the speech role function of pronouns. Further, this study provides some exploration into the role of the weaker language in bilingual language development as well as the nature and extent of the early separation and interaction of two linguistic systems in a language environment which is fundamentally unlike the one-parent-one-language setting. The results suggest that the bilingual child has a differentiated development in his two languages: that the two languages are not developed at the same rate, nor by the same route or the same strategy. The weaker language develops smoothly and in the same pattern as L1. In addition, this bilingual child adopts complementary strategies to reach two target usages of personal pronouns despite the apparent unbalanced input and output of his two languages. The data set of the current study consists of over 65 tape-recorded sessions of naturalistic speech collected over 30 months in context-based language use either Mandarin or English, where Mandarin is the home (and ethnic community) language spoken by both parents and other family members while English is the (dominant) language of all other environments.

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Cross-linguistic influence studies usually investigate how the bilingual’s first language (L1) influences the acquisition and use of their second language (L2) within the L2 context. This study, by contrast, investigates how the bilingual’s L2 may influence their L1 within the L1 environment, specifically whether the L2 affects L1 performance in an L1 environment in Chinese (L1)-English (L2) late bilinguals, in the domain of subject realisation. Typologically, Chinese allows pronominal subjects to be optionally null under certain discourse-pragmatic conditions whereas English requires obligatory pronominal subjects under most circumstances. To examine possible L2 effects, 15 Chinese-English bilinguals (Experimental) and 15 Chinese monolinguals (Control) participated in Chinese narrative tasks. Results show that bilingual participants produce significantly lower percentages of null subjects than the control group, indicating that bilinguals prefer overt subjects over null subjects in their L1 Chinese utterances under the influence of L2 English syntactic patterns.

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This study investigates the significance of the linguistic environment’s role in accounting for the nature of wh- in situ transfer. Previous research shows structural transfer from wh- in situ languages towards non- wh- in situ languages in bilingual children, usually affecting the weaker language. Explanations variously argue in terms of dominance of the child’s language and/or structural overlap and complexity, but transfer is said to be blocked if the languages are not isomorphic. However, these explanations fail to account for cases where all the above conditions are met but transfer does not materialise. We propose to re-examine the issues focusing on wh- in situ transfer in a Mandarin-English bilingual child. Our research questions centre around whether structural conditions and the child’s dominant language sufficiently account for transfer or lack thereof and whether the (neglected) role of the environmental language is significant. Design/Methodology: From wh- in situ research we identify 10 separate configurations differing with respect to some variable(s) and examine longitudinal data from a Mandarin-English bilingual child (age 1;7–4;6) growing up in a context-bound one language–one environment situation. Data/Analysis: The data consists of 83 audio-recordings and diary entries of naturalistic productions collected over three years. The distribution of wh- questions in context in each language was analysed in all transcriptions. Findings/Conclusions: No evidence was found of wh- in situ transfer, despite the child’s Mandarin dominance and the English-Mandarin isomorphism. The environmental language (Lε) cannot be underestimated. Originality: New evidence on wh- question development in a constellation not previously considered becomes critical when compared to earlier studies and identifies a significant, and hitherto neglected, role for the environmental language in understanding the nature of transfer. Significance/Implications: The findings suggest that approaches considering internal factors (structural overlap, complexity, isomorphism), or the child’s language dominance, do not exhaustively cover the conditions that predict whether or not transfer occurs.