The transition from nominal to pronominal person reference in the early language of a Mandarin-English bilingual child

Qi, Ruying; Biase, Bruno Di; Campbell, Stuart J.

doi:10.1177/13670069060100030301

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…These general tendencies constitute universal discourse pragmatic principles governing the differentiated use of referring expressions in discourse in languages across the world. However, English and Chinese each present some language-specific properties that are related to how different systems map both grammatical and discourse functions onto forms of referring expressions (Chen and Pan 2009; Hickmann, 2003; Qi, 2010; Qi et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The production of referring expressions in oral narratives of Chinese–English bilingual speakers and monolingual peers

Chen

Jianghua

2012

Child Language Teaching and Therapy

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This study evaluates the extent to which the production of referring expressions such as noun phrases and pronouns to fulfill various discourse functions in narratives of Chinese–English bilingual children matches that of their monolingual peers in each of the two languages. Spoken narratives in English and Chinese were elicited from 30 9-year-old participants from each of the three groups: Chinese–English bilinguals and their monolingual peers in each of the two languages using the wordless picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Narrative analysis focused on the referring expressions that are used to introduce, re-introduce, and maintain reference to story characters in the narratives. Results show that (1) monolingual Chinese and English speakers differed significantly in the preferred referring expressions for the discourse functions; (2) the Chinese–English bilinguals differed from their monolingual peers in the distribution of referring expressions for referent introduction in English and re-introduction in Chinese; and (3) bilinguals resembled their monolingual peers in their differentiated use of referring expressions for referent maintenance in each of the two languages. These results suggest that the patterns of production of referring expressions in discourse by bilingual speakers may be unique, and fall in between those by their monolingual peers in each of the languages.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The production of referring expressions in oral narratives of Chinese–English bilingual speakers and monolingual peers

Chen

Jianghua

2012

Child Language Teaching and Therapy

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“…Hence, the obvious limitation of this study is the lack of generalisability of the findings as it is based solely on the experiences and performance of one bilingual informant. However, research in general is cumulative and the increasing number of case studies provides the opportunity to compare and verify the findings with one another (Qi, 2011;Qi, Di Biase & Campbell 2006). Indeed, most classic studies that have advanced the understanding of bilingualism have been case studies of individuals in increasingly different linguistic constellations (De Houwer, 1990;Leopold, 1939;Ronjat, 1913, among others).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Case Study on the Acquisition of Plurality in a Bilingual Malay-English Context-bound Child

Salleh

Kawaguchi

Biase

2019

GEMA

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The early development of simultaneous bilinguals has been at the core of heated controversy since the mid-seventies. The Unitary Language System Hypothesis by Volterra and Taeschner saw early development as a single language system gradually diverging into two systems. On the contrary, Meisel (1989), De Houwer (1990) and Paradis and Genesee (1996) suggested the early separation of two linguistic systems. Neither position, however, considered language environmental conditions constraining development as key variables. This paper aims to show that the predominant environmental languages to which the Malay-English bilingual child in the current study was alternately exposed might have played an important role in shaping the child's acquisition of plurality in each language. Throughout the period of investigation (from age 3;4 to 3;10 and at 4;8) the child's interactions were regularly audio and video recorded. The current study focuses on the development of plural marking in a simultaneous Malay-English bilingual child. Interestingly, at a point when English was environmentally predominant, the child would occasionally use the English plural suffix-s on Malay nouns. After moving back to Malaysia, the child used reduplication to mark plurals in both languages. The findings of this study indicate that the predominant linguistic environment in which the child grows and develops plays an important role in shaping the child's language production.

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“…J's input conditions would be called a situation-bound language exposure, with one language (Mandarin) mainly at home and another (English) mainly in the community. J's exposure conditions are the most common situation among immigrant communities, which are different from the commonly practiced one-parent and one-language principle among 2L1 bilinguals (see further Qi et al, 2006). J was born in an Australian hospital and received English input from the first day.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Pronoun acquisition in a Mandarin— English bilingual child

2010

International Journal of Bilingualism

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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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The transition from nominal to pronominal person reference in the early language of a Mandarin-English bilingual child

Cited by 7 publications

References 32 publications

The production of referring expressions in oral narratives of Chinese–English bilingual speakers and monolingual peers

The production of referring expressions in oral narratives of Chinese–English bilingual speakers and monolingual peers

A Case Study on the Acquisition of Plurality in a Bilingual Malay-English Context-bound Child

Pronoun acquisition in a Mandarin— English bilingual child

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