Typical and Atypical Language Development in Cultural and Linguistic Diversity (Routledge Research in Language Education) [1 ed.] 1032169672, 9781032169675

Citation preview

TYPICAL AND ATYPICAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY

Edited by Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner

an informa business

ISBN 978-1-032-16968-2

Routledge titles are available as eBook editions in a range of digital formats

9

781032

169682

Routledge

www.routledge.com

Routledge Research in Language Education

TYPICAL AND ATYPICAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY Edited by Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner

Typical and Atypical Language Development in Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

Typical and Atypical Language Development in Cultural and Linguistic Diversity brings together state-of-the-art studies in both typical and atypical language development. Placing the topic in the context of cultural and linguistic diversity (CALD), the book offers readers serious theoretical consideration of the topic and provides implications for multilingual educational and clinical practices. The content covers a wide range of topics related to multilingual language development in CALD: typical and atypical language development in CALD, and the interface between both; the relationship between multilingual competence and academic performance in CALD; providing unbiased speech and language measures in CALD; and heritage and minority languages education in CALD. Each chapter outlines the core theoretical and practical issues and explores both theoretical and pedagogical/clinical implications in the area and possible future developments. This volume is an essential resource for all those who study, research, or are interested in multilingual development, educational linguistics, and clinical linguistics in the CALD context. Weifeng Han is a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology, Institute of Health and Well-being, Federation University, Australia. Chris Brebner is a Professor in Speech Pathology and is Pro-Vice Chancellor (Curriculum Impact) at Flinders University, Australia.

Routledge Research in Language Education

The Routledge Research in Language Education series provides a platform for established and emerging scholars to present their latest research and discuss key issues in Language Education. This series welcomes books on all areas of language teaching and learning, including but not limited to language education policy and politics, multilingualism, literacy, L1, L2 or foreign language acquisition, curriculum, classroom practice, pedagogy, teaching materials, and language teacher education and development. Books in the series are not limited to the discussion of the teaching and learning of English only. Books in the series include: Taboos and Controversial Issues in Foreign Language Education Critical Language Pedagogy in Theory, Research and Practice Edited by Christian Ludwig and Theresa Summer Dialogue in the Language Classroom Theory and Practice from a Classroom Discourse Analysis Roehl Sybing Sublating Second Language Research and Practices Contribution from the Hegelian Perspective Manfred Man-fat Wu EAL Research for the Classroom Practical and Pedagogical Implications Edited by Gavin Brooks, Jon Clenton and Simon Fraser Team Teachers in Japan Beliefs, Identities and Emotions Edited by Takaaki Hiratsuka Typical and Atypical Language Development in Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Edited by Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner For more information about the series, please visit www​.routledge​.com​/ Routledge​-Research​-in​-Language​-Education​/book​-series​/RRLE

Typical and Atypical Language Development in Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

Edited by Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-16967-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-16968-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-25119-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003251194 Typeset in Galliard by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

We would both like to dedicate this book to our families. Weifeng to his wife Lily and son Edward. Chris to her husband Phil and sons Alec and Cullen.

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Introduction

ix x xiii 1

WEIFENG HAN AND CHRIS BREBNER

1 Early bilingual acquisition: The effects of home language typology on learning English inflectional morphology9 NAN XU RATTANASONE, BENJAMIN DAVIES, AND KATHERINE DEMUTH

2 The role of lexical tones in bilingual language processing: Evidence from a typing task23 XIN WANG, BRONSON HUI, LIANG CHEN, AND JIE WANG

3 Beyond relative clauses: The development of noun-modifying clause constructions in Cantonese

40

JANE LAI, ANGEL CHAN, AND STEPHEN MATTHEWS

4 Is object relative clause comprehension particularly sensitive to quantity of language exposure in sequential bilingual children?64 MAUREEN SCHEIDNES AND LESLIE REDMOND

5 Language acquisition at the syntax–semantics interface: Definiteness restrictions in L2 French and L3 English83 ABDELKADER HERMAS

viii Contents 6 Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese by English native speakers: A perspective from syntax–pragmatics interface107 ZHUANG WU AND ZHOUYUAN QIN

7 A longitudinal exploration of the presence of a bilingual advantage in children135 SARAH VERDON

8 Associations among oral narrative language measures for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian children in their first year of school152 WENDY M. PEARCE AND KIERAN FLANAGAN

9 Grammatical profiles of Mandarin-English bilingual children at risk for developmental language disorder172 LI SHENG, MAN YANG, YAO DU, ELIZABETH PEÑA, AND LISA BEDORE

10 Bidialectal CALD learners of English: Implications on bilingual language disorders and differential diagnosis195 WEIFENG HAN AND CHRIS BREBNER

11 Heritage language status, use, and maintenance in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts211 BETH A. O’BRIEN AND INGRID A. WILLENBERG

12 The development and pilot of a dynamic assessment of word-learning skills234 WEI QIN TEOH AND CHRIS BREBNER

Index261

Figures

1.1 2.1 2.2 3.1 4.1 6.1 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2 11.1 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6

Examples of visual stimuli used during practice trials, filler trials, and test trials 15 Mandarin tones 25 Direct comparison of competitor fixations in Seg + tone versus Seg conditions 27 Classification of noun-modifying clause constructions (c.f. Matthews & Yip, 2016: 256) 42 Sample item from picture-matching task 72 Sample test picture 113 Proportion correct on the English morphosyntax subtest as a function of group and grammatical structure. *p < 0.05; ~p < 0.10 184 Proportion correct on the Mandarin morphosyntax subtest as a function of group and grammatical structure. *p < 0.05; ~p < 0.10 184 The convergent parallel design 199 An example of the test structures 201 Variables affecting heritage language acquisition and/or attrition213 An illustrative example of language learning potential 236 Familiar objects used in the DA of word-learning skills 243 The “Test–Teach–Retest” model of the DA of word-learning skills244 Teaching instructions embedded in the “Teach” phase 245 Hierarchy of mediation prompts (Identification) and scores in Stage 1 of Teach phase 256 Hierarchy of mediation prompts (TEACH Naming) and scores in Stage 3 of Teach phase 257

Tables

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 A.2a 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 A.3a

A.3b

A.3c

Singular and plural novel stimulus items 13 Means and standard deviations 16 Independent samples t-test results 18 Pearson’s correlation between proportion of correct responses and chronological age 19 Self-reported English proficiency of Mandarin–English bilinguals 29 Accuracy means and SD by participant group 31 Model summary for accuracy data 32 Mean response times (RTs in ms) 32 Model summary for response time data 32 The IHs used, the most frequent Chinese character of the segment, and the tone chosen for superimposition 39 Extracted examples of each type of gapless NMCCs 46 Age of first emergence of conventional RC-type NMCCs and gapless NMCCs in eight Cantonese-speaking children before age 3 47 Type measures of conventional RC-type NMCCs and gapless NMCCs in eight Cantonese-speaking children before age 3 47 Earliest age at which conventional RC-type NMCCs and gapless NMCCs were attested in four age groups 48 Type measures of conventional RC-type NMCCs and gapless NMCCs attested in four age groups 49 Age of first attested conventional RC-type NMCCs and gapless NMCCs in the adult child-directed speech of eight Cantonese-speaking children before age 3 in the longitudinal CANCORP corpus 62 Type measures of conventional RC-type NMCC and gapless NMCCs in the adult child-directed speech of eight Cantonese-speaking children before age 3 in the longitudinal CANCORP corpus 63 Earliest age at which conventional RC-type NMCCs and gapless NMCCs were attested in adult child-directed speech in the four age groups of the cross-sectional HKU70 corpus 63

Tables  xi A.3d Type measures of conventional RC-type NMCCs and gapless NMCCs attested in adult child-directed speech in the four age groups of the cross-sectional HKU70 corpus 63 4.1 General characteristics of the children in French immersion 71 4.2 Sample items from the picture-matching task 71 4.3 Mean proficiency scores 73 4.4 Descriptive statistics for picture-matching task 74 4.5 Mixed-effects logistic regression 74 4.6 Individual patterns for chance performance on the picturematching task (N = 23) 75 5.1 Definiteness restrictions across English, French, and Moroccan Arabic 90 5.2 Accuracy means by pivot NP type in French 95 5.3 Accuracy means by pivot NP type in English 99 6.1 Mandarin Chinese nominals classified according to form 109 6.2 The marking of definiteness in Mandarin Chinese 111 6.3 The number and percentage of nominal form tokens for indefinite reference 114 6.4 The number and percentage of nominal form tokens for definite reference 118 6.5 Conditions of the felicity judgment task. 121 6.6 Mean and standard derivation of the subjects’ rating of test items 122 7.1 Grade 9 NAPLAN results 143 7.2 Multiple regression analyses of Grade 9 NAPLAN results 143 8.1 Comparison of language measures across cultural groups 155 8.2 Characteristics of examiner story scripts for the two retells 159 8.3 Correlation of INC macrostructure scores with language measures162 8.4 Correlation of PPVT-4 standard scores with language measures 162 A.8a Participant WBB story retell examples 171 9.1 Descriptive information, subtest scores, and Welch’s t-test results of the at risk (AR) and typically developing (TD) groups 178 9.2 Sample English morphosyntax items with targeted response in bold 180 9.3 Sample Mandarin morphosyntax items with targeted response in bold 181 9.4 Descriptive information of the morphosyntax subtests 185 10.1 Syntactic–semantic mismatch between English and Chinese 200 10.2 Raw scores for each group 202 11.1 Parents’ ratings of English and MT proficiency of family members220 11.2 Means and standard deviations on the SMARV for English and MT 221

xii Tables 11.3 Spearman correlations of children’s MT vocabulary with quantity and quality of input 11.4 Parent beliefs about bilingualism and MT instruction 11.5 Spearman correlations of child’s age of exposure to MT with parent beliefs 11.6 Teachers’ responses to statements about literacy and bi-literacy education 11.7 Teachers’ ratings of the relevance of ideas in relation to teaching MT literacy in early childhood 12.1 Target words and paired target objects 12.2 The levels of mediation prompts provided to identify target object in Stage 1 of the “Teach” phase 12.3 Levels of mediation prompts for naming each target object in Stage 3 of the “Teach” phase 12.4 Scores obtained by pilot participants in the DA of wordlearning skills 12.5 Summary of revision made to the DA of word-learning skills after Pilot 1 12.6 Scores obtained by participants in the DA of word-learning skills (Revised)

222 223 224 225 225 242 247 250 252 253 255

Contributors

Lisa Bedore is Chair and a Professor at the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Temple University, USA. Chris Brebner is Pro-Vice Chancellor (Curriculum Impact) and a Professor in Speech Pathology at Flinders University, Australia Angel Chan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. Liang Chen is an Associate Professor of Communication Sciences and Special Education at the University of Georgia, USA. Benjamin Davies is an Honorary Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, Australia. Katherine Demuth is a Distinguished Professor at the Department of Linguistics and the Director of the Centre for Language Sciences at Macquarie University, Australia. Yao Du is a Clinical Assistant Professor for the MS programme in SpeechLanguage Pathology at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, USA. Kieran Flanagan is a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology at the Australian Catholic University. Weifeng Han is a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology at Federation University, Australia. Abdelkader Hermas is a Professor of Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition in Morocco. Bronson Hui is an Assistant Professor of Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. Jane Lai is an early career researcher and a recent PhD graduate from the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong.

xiv Contributors Stephen Matthews is a Professor at the Department of Linguistics, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Beth A. O’Brien is a Principal Research Scientist and the Head of Early and Middle Childhood Research at the Centre for Research in Child Development at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Wendy Pearce is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Catholic University. Elizabeth D. Peña is a Professor at the School of Education, University of California, Irvine, USA. Zhouyuan Qin is an undergraduate of the Faculty of English Language and Culture at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China. Nan Xu Rattanasone is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Linguistics, and a member of the Centre for Language Sciences and Multilingual Research Centre, at Macquarie University, Australia. Leslie Redmond is the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs at the Faculty of Education at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Maureen Scheidnes is an Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Modern, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Li Sheng is a Professor of Speech Therapy at the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Wei Qin Teoh is a Principal Speech Therapist at the Department of Child Development, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital Singapore. Sarah Verdon is an Associate Professor in Speech Pathology at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Jie Wang is a Lecturer at Shandong Jiaotong University, China. Xin Wang is a Senior Lecturer of Linguistics at Macquarie University, Australia. Ingrid A. Willenberg is a freelance Research Consultant in the area of Social Science and Education and a Specialist in Child Language and Literacy Development. Zhuang Wu is a Professor in Language Acquisition at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China. Man Yang holds a PhD in Special Education from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and she currently works for the California State Department as a Research Data Specialist.

Introduction Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner

The last 30 years have seen an increase in the number of bilingual and multilingual speakers worldwide. Today, over half of the world’s population speaks two or more languages and the number is on the rise (Grosjean, 2021). This increase in cultural and linguistic diversity (CALD) is seen as one of the most critical factors in both typical and atypical language development in the modern world (Galante, 2016). Therefore, research is called for to underpin second language (L2) teaching, learning, assessment, and intervention with multilingual populations to ensure there is the best evidence available for language researchers and practitioners in the multilingual and multicultural context (Verdon et al., 2016). For example, in bilingual language disorder (LD) studies, it is important to understand that some underperformance in L2 can be due to true LD, whilst at other times it is due to language difference caused by the linguistic incongruence between L1 (i.e., the first language) and L2 (Gn et al., 2014; Teoh et al., 2012). Especially important is to consider variables such as multiple L1 knowledge including L1 multidialectism (Phạm & McLeod, 2016). Therefore, while typical and atypical multilingual language development are fundamentally different, there may be a similar level of performance, such as similar lexical (Shivabasappa et al., 2018) and phonological awareness (Buil-Legaz et al., 2016) in L2. As a consequence, monolingual measures are not appropriate for multilingual assessment (Blumenfeld et al., 2016). It is a human right of multilingual speakers that they are able to communicate in their multiple languages (Cruz-Ferreira, 2018; De Luca, 2018; Farrugia-Bernard, 2018; Gallagher et al., 2018; Simon-Cereijido, 2018). Therefore, there is an urgent need for a better understanding of the dialectal backgrounds among heritage and minority language users including normative data sampling (Chard, 2019), especially considering the interface between typical and atypical multilingual development (Han et al., 2016). In that context, the idea for this book was formed. Typical and Atypical Language Development in Cultural and Linguistic Diversity is a comprehensive and critical collection of studies that highlight key theories and practical considerations for language development and disorder in CALD. Demonstrating the patterns of both first and second/multiple language development and the DOI: 10.4324/9781003251194-1

2  Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner interface between typical and atypical multilingual development in CALD, the book focuses on providing not only theoretical but also educational and clinical implications to language researchers, language teachers, and language clinicians. The book includes 12 individual topics based on frontier studies led by experienced researchers in the CALD context. The first half of the book, i.e., Chapters 1–6, focuses on the theories of typical and atypical language development in CALD, and the second half, i.e., Chapters 7–12, focuses on the educational and clinical implications of typical and atypical language development in CALD. Each chapter represents the latest development of the topic and follows a structure of an overview of the theoretical underpinnings, a comprehensive literature review, a critical appraisal of current theories and practices, the quantitative and/or qualitative study, and a discussion that includes theoretical/clinical implications. We hope our volume is of interest to researchers, language educators and clinicians, and postgraduate students with an interest in typical and atypical language development and disorder. CHAPTER 1: Early bilingual acquisition: the effects of home language typology on learning English inflectional morphology; Nan XU RATTANASONE, Benjamin DAVIES, and Katherine DEMUTH Xu Rattanasone and colleagues investigated early bilingual acquisition of inflectional morphology. Monolingual English preschoolers are expected to show high performance in tests of English plural inflections as they have already acquired a range of linguistic structures, including plural inflections and syntactic dependencies such as subject–verb agreement. However, little was known as to whether bilingual speakers of a language with limited morphological inflections, e.g., Chinese, will show the same high performance as monolingual speakers. The authors compared the acquisition of English plural morphology and subject–verb agreement by English monolingual speakers with that of Chinese–English speakers and bilingual speakers of a home language with inflectional morphology. By testing children’s comprehension of grammatical number, the study examined if and how the pattern of morphological acquisition differs. It was found that Chinese-speaking children were at chance for all conditions except plural agreement, where they were significantly above chance. An important finding is that home language diversity may play a significant role even during very early language development in determining the course of bilingual acquisition. The authors then propose that future studies conducted across countries/contexts are essential to help shed light on the effect of the linguistic environment on bilingual language development and for informing the generalizability of past studies. CHAPTER 2: The role of lexical tones in bilingual language processing: evidence from a typing task; Xin WANG, Bronson HUI, Liang CHEN, and Jie WANG

Introduction  3 Chapter 2 reports that Mandarin–English bilinguals implicitly accessed their L1 Mandarin knowledge when auditorily exposed to English words. This crosslanguage lexical activation/competition was sensitive to lexical tones. In two auditory lexical decision tasks in English, Wang and her colleagues show that Mandarin–English bilinguals responded to interlingual homophones (IHs) slower than control distractors. In contrast, the bilingual participants in their study were expected to respond slower to the IHs due to cross-language competition driven by both segments and tones relevant to the Mandarin lexicon. Although a more accurate analysis could be done factoring in the degree of “naturalness” of spoken stimuli, the findings were significant as they corroborate previous studies in speech perception and spoken word recognition by adding evidence that more accurately measures participants’ lexical activation. CHAPTER 3: Beyond relative clauses: the development of noun-modifying clause constructions in Cantonese; Jane LAI, Angel CHAN, and Stephen MATTHEWS In their chapter, Lai and her colleagues point out that while the acquisition of relative clauses (RC) has been investigated extensively in English and other European languages, little is known of the characteristics of the conventional RC-type and gapless noun-modifying clause constructions (NMCCs) produced by Cantonese-speaking children. As one of the first studies to systematically investigate the production of gapless NMCCs in Chinese-speaking children’s naturalistic speech, one main contribution of the study was to confirm that object-RCs, as compared to subject-RCs, emerged earlier in child Mandarin and Cantonese development. This might be explained by experience-based properties such as input frequency and word-order overlap between SVO main clause and object-RCs. The study also confirmed that the attested conventional RC-type NMCCs aligned with cross-linguistic findings that early conventional RCs are restricted in both function and form. This study has important implications for Cantonese–English bilingual language development and disorder. CHAPTER 4: Is object relative clause comprehension particularly sensitive to quantity of language exposure in sequential bilingual children?; Maureen SCHEIDNES and Leslie REDMOND Also investigating child acquisition of relative clauses (RCs), Scheidnes and Redmond’s chapter investigates the impact of exposure, frequency or proficiency on the comprehension of object-RCs among bilingual children in addition to what is known about the subject–object asymmetries in the acquisition of relative clauses. Specifically, the authors explored whether EnglishFrench children should be expected to have stronger or weaker object-RC performance in the L2 compared to the L1 in the context of overlapping word order. The findings were that bilinguals’ object-RC performance in one

4  Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner language predicts their object-RC performance in the other, and that most bilingual participants were either at, or above, chance in both languages. This study provides evidence that sequential bilinguals have access to narrow syntactic computations as simultaneous bilinguals do. Scheidnes and Redmond’s research has an important implication for speech and language therapists as to what type/s of tasks are more efficient in differentially diagnosing language disorders in bilingual children. CHAPTER 5: 1. Language acquisition at the syntax-semantics interface: definiteness restrictions in L2 French and L3 English; Abdelkader HERMAS Article systems are challenging in non-native language acquisition. Hermas’ chapter deals with the definiteness effect in existential sentences (DE) in the interlanguage of adult Arabic speakers who are advanced in L2 French or L3 English. The source (Arabic) and target (French and English) languages of the learners all have an article system but are different from each other. Hermas found only strong quantifiers in L3, not in L2, that posed difficulties for the multilingual participants, while all participants showed nativelike performance on existentials that respect definiteness restrictions in corresponding languages. The findings confirmed that DE violation is equally acquirable as DE observance. This study provides evidence that aspects at the syntax–semantics interface are acquirable in non-native language acquisition. CHAPTER 6: Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese by English native speakers: a perspective from syntax-pragmatics interface; Zhuang WU and Zhouyuan QIN Wu and Qin also investigated bilingual acquisition of the definiteness marking. They examined how Mandarin L2 learners and native speakers of Mandarin use lexical and syntactic devices to mark definiteness. The results showed that learners of L2 Mandarin Chinese used significantly more quasi-indefinite article phrases, which accounted for 14.2% of the total definite nominals produced. However, such a quasi-indefinite nominal form was not used by the Mandarin native participants. Wu and Qin’s study showed that, while aspects at the syntax–semantics interface might be acquirable in L2 acquisition, L2 learners had different route and stages of acquisition as compared to native speakers. CHAPTER 7: A longitudinal exploration of the presence of a bilingual advantage in children; Sarah VERDON In her chapter Verdon provides a longitudinal exploration of the presence of a bilingual advantage in children by presenting new data on academic advantage for bilingual Australian children. The findings indicate that bilingual children in Australia performed significantly better than monolingual children on four

Introduction  5 out of the five NAPLAN subtests in numeracy, grammar, spelling, and writing, but not in reading. While it is difficult to conclusively predict a child’s academic outcomes based on their bilingual status alone, the findings presented in this chapter at the very least show there is no detrimental effect. Verdon further points out, in addition to typically developing children, it is also worth investigating to see if a bilingual advantage also exist for children with communication needs. CHAPTER 8: Associations among oral narrative language measures for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian children in their first year of school; Wendy M PEARCE and Kieran FLANAGAN In the context of language therapy, Pearce and Flanagan’s study aimed to investigate the use of storytelling as a means of culturally responsive language assessment practice. The authors found that storytelling skills are strongly positioned as a sound method of language assessment for First Nations people in Australia, and analysis of story macrostructure and comprehension was most appropriate for the samples obtained. They further propose that the assessment of storytelling might have a direct application for informing literacy and academic outcomes. The research findings support the need for the development of responsive language therapy services for Australia’s First Nations children. CHAPTER 9: Grammatical profiles of Mandarin–English bilingual children at risk for developmental language disorder; Li SHENG, Man YANG, Yao DU, Elizabeth PEÑA, and Lisa BEDORE Sheng and colleagues’ study aimed to delineate the grammatical profiles of Mandarin–English bilingual children with and without risk for developmental language disorder (DLD) and identify potential markers of impairment. Different trajectories of English morphological development are reported in Chinese–English bilinguals relative to English monolinguals and relative to bilinguals whose L1 marks verb tenses. It was found that Mandarin–English bilingual children showed more restricted use of classifiers and lower accuracy of relative clause production than Mandarin monolinguals. Their study corroborated previous findings that the production of relative clauses and questions that required subject–verb inversion could reliably separate the typically developing population from atypically developing groups, who commonly have problems producing sentences that involve syntactic movement or contain multiple clauses that are part of the DLD phenotype. This study has direct implications for the assessment and diagnosis of bilingual DLD. CHAPTER 10: Bidialectal CALD learners of English: implications on bilingual language disorders and differential diagnosis; Weifeng HAN and Chris BREBNER

6  Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner Han and Brebner investigated bidialectal/bilingual acquisition at the syntax– semantics interface from a linguistic typological perspective. They reported that L1 bidialectal learners entered the L2 acquisition with enhanced sensitivity at the syntax–semantics interface. The results of their study showed that speech-language pathologists need to consider interfaces such as the syntax– semantics interface for the assessment of bilingual children’s language. The study demonstrates that syntax–semantics mismatch due to word-order differences between L1 and L2 was less challenging to these learners. Han and Brebner’s study highlights implications for speech-language pathologists in terms of differential diagnosis and separating language differences from disorders for multilingual/multicultural clients. Furthermore, it shows that controlling for L1 bidialectism is important in second language acquisition studies and while providing speech pathology services to bilingual clients. CHAPTER 11: Heritage language status, use, and maintenance in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts; Beth A. O’BRIEN and Ingrid A. WILLENBERG O’Brien and Willenberg’s chapter outlines the role of heritage languages in Singaporean society and how they are maintained and used by the local population. They drew on data gathered in the multilingual context of Singapore as a case in point. It was found that heritage language schools are one effective strategy commonly used by families for maintaining heritage languages. They also found that delayed exposure to the dominant societal language may lead to stronger heritage language proficiency over the years. The researchers strongly advocated that more focused studies in these unique multilingual contexts are urgently needed, as they will add to the understanding of the most relevant factors that apply across contexts, such as language input and exposure and heritage language instructions, etc. CHAPTER 12: The development and pilot of a dynamic assessment of word learning skills; Wei Qin TEOH and Chris BREBNER Teoh and Brebner’s chapter outlines the development and pilot of a dynamic assessment (DA) of word-learning skills to determine if the DA could be used to support the identification of language disorder in English–Mandarin bilingual preschool children in Singapore. A small-scale pilot study in two phases with participants with typical and atypical language development demonstrated that the key components of the DA could be administered as intended and it was a feasible assessment measure. The two phases allowed for review and revision of the stimuli, teaching instructions, and scoring. The study results indicated that this DA of word-learning skills is a promising alternative assessment approach to identify language learning ability in bilingual preschool children in Singapore.

Introduction  7 Reference list Blumenfeld, H., Bobb, S. C., & Marian, V. (2016, 2016/03/03). The role of language proficiency, cognate status and word frequency in the assessment of Spanish–English bilinguals’ verbal fluency. International Journal of SpeechLanguage Pathology, 18(2), 190–201. https://doi​.org​/10​.3109​/17549507​.2015​ .1081288 Buil-Legaz, L., Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., & Adrover-Roig, D. (2016, 2016/09/02). Longitudinal trajectories of the representation and access to phonological information in bilingual children with specific language impairment. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 18(5), 473–482. https://doi​.org​/10​.3109​ /17549507​.2015​.1126638 Chard, J. A. (2019). Mandarin Assessment in Chinese-English Bilingual Preschoolers. New York: City University of New York. Cruz-Ferreira, M. (2018, 2018/01/02). Assessment of communication abilities in multilingual children: Language rights or human rights? International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 166–169. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/17549507​ .2018​.1392607 De Luca, C. (2018, 2018/01/02). Mother tongue as a universal human right. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 161–165. https://doi​ .org​/10​.1080​/17549507​.2017​.1392606 Farrugia-Bernard, A. M. (2018, 2018/01/02). Speech-language pathologists as determiners of the human right to diversity in communication for school children in the US. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 170–173. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/17549507​.2018​.1406002 Galante, A. (2016). Linguistic and cultural diversity in language education through plurilingualism: linking the theory into practice. In T. P. & A. T. (Eds.), Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education (pp. 1–17). Springer. Gallagher, A. L., Tancredi, H., & Graham, L. J. (2018, 2018/01/02). Advancing the human rights of children with communication needs in school. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 128–132. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​ /17549507​.2018​.1395478 Gn, L. E., Brebner, C., & McCormack, P. (2014, May–Jun). A preliminary report on the English phonology of typically developing English-Mandarin bilingual preschool Singaporean children. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 49(3), 317–332. http://www​.ncbi​.nlm​.nih​.gov​/pubmed​/24443931 Grosjean, F. (2021). The extent of Bilingualism. In F. Grosjean (Ed.), Life as a Bilingual: Knowing and Using Two or More Languages (pp. 27–39). Cambridge University Press. https://doi​.org​/10​.1017​/9781108975490​.003 Han, W., Brebner, C., & McAllister, S. (2016). Redefining ‘Chinese’ L1 in SLPConsiderations for the assessment of Chinese bilingual-bidialectal language skills. International Journal of Speech‐Language Pathology, 18(2), 135–146. https://doi​ .org​/10​.3109​/17549507​.2015​.1081285 https://onlinelibrary​.wiley​.com​/doi​/pdf​/10​.1111​/1460​-6984​.12075 Phạm, B., & McLeod, S. (2016, 2016/03/03). Consonants, vowels and tones across Vietnamese dialects. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 18(2), 122–134. https://doi​.org​/10​.3109​/17549507​.2015​.1101162 Shivabasappa, P., Peña, E. D., & Bedore, L. M. (2018, 2018/12/28). Core vocabulary in the narratives of bilingual children with and without language impairment.

8  Weifeng Han and Chris Brebner International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(7), 790–801. https://doi​ .org​/10​.1080​/17549507​.2017​.1374462 Simon-Cereijido, G. (2018, 2018/01/02). Bilingualism, a human right in times of anxiety: Lessons from California. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 157–160. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/17549507​.2018​.1392610 Teoh, W. Q., Brebner, C., & McCormack, P. (2012, Jun). Assessing the language skills of children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds: The expressive vocabulary performance of Singaporean English-Mandarin bilingual pre-schoolers. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 14(3), 281–291. http://www​ .ncbi​.nlm​.nih​.gov​/pubmed​/22335605 Verdon, S., Blake, H. L., Hopf, S. C., Phạm, B., & McLeod, S. (2016). Cultural and linguistic diversity in speech-language pathology. International Journal of SpeechLanguage Pathology, 18(2), 109–110. https://doi​.org​/10​.3109​/17549507​.2015​ .1122838

1

Early bilingual acquisition The effects of home language typology on learning English inflectional morphology1 Nan Xu Rattanasone, Benjamin Davies, and Katherine Demuth

Introduction1 Monolingual English-speaking preschoolers have acquired a range of linguistic structures, including plural inflections (e.g., wombats) and syntactic dependencies such as subject–verb (SV) agreement (e.g., the wombats are digging). However, much less is known about the grammatical abilities of emerging bilingual preschoolers, especially those speaking home languages that lack inflectional morphology, such as Chinese. Understanding the patterns of early language development is critical for identifying typical versus atypical development, especially for early identification and intervention for those with a language delay, such as developmental language disorder (DLD). The plural is an early-acquired linguistic structure in English that is now fairly well understood in monolingual development. As such, difficulties with the plural may provide early evidence of atypical language development, making it an ideal place to examine the course of typical language acquisition in bilingual preschoolers. To this end, we examined the acquisition of English plural morphology and subject–verb agreement by monolinguals, Chinese-speaking preschoolers, and bilingual preschoolers speaking a home language with inflectional morphology. The results will help establish the patterns of English grammatical acquisition for Chinese-speaking preschoolers compared to monolinguals and linguistically diverse bilinguals. Number marking in English

In English, number information can occur both at the word and the sentence level. At the word level, plurals are marked by attaching inflectional morphemes to the end of nouns. There are three surface forms – or allomorphs – of the plural. The most frequently occurring are the segmental plural allomorphs /s/ and /z/, which attach to nouns ending with voiceless stops (e.g., wombat+/s/) and vowels/voiced consonants (e.g., koala+/z/,

1  We thank the late Tamara Schembri for assistance in programming the iPad experiment. DOI: 10.4324/9781003251194-2

10  Nan Xu Rattanasone et al. possum+/z/), respectively. The syllabic plural allomorph /əz/ occurs much less frequently and attaches to nouns ending in fricatives or affricates (e.g., antechinus+/əz/). Verbs, such as the copula “to be”, also carry number information and agree with the subject noun (e.g., where are the antechinuses?). These redundancies in number marking could potentially be helpful for learning English plural morphology. For example, the copula (i.e., are) could help children comprehend the number condition of unfamiliar words such as antechinuses (composed of a stem antechinus and the syllabic plural allomorph /əz/). Furthermore, agreement is sometimes the only way to determine the number condition of irregular plurals (e.g., where is/are the jellyfish). Monolingual acquisition of plurals

The plural is one of the first inflectional morphemes acquired by Englishspeaking children (Brown, 1973; de Villiers & de Villiers, 1973). Children comprehend the plural allomorph /s/ by 24 months and /z/ by 36 months, demonstrating that they can associate novel words like teps and mubs with novel plural pictures (Davies et al., 2017; 2020; Kouider et al., 2006). This shows that they can generalise their knowledge of plural inflectional morphology from real words to novel word forms. By 36 months, they also show comprehension of the much less frequent syllabic plural allomorph /əz/, as in kosses (Davies et al., 2020). At 2 years, monolinguals also show emerging comprehension of plural SV number agreement for both real and novel words, e.g., where are the cookies or there are some blickets (Davies et al., 2019; Kouider et al., 2006; Lukyanenko & Fisher, 2016). However, comprehension of the singular number agreement appears a bit later, around 3 years (e.g., where is the tizz) (Davies et al., 2019; Kouider et al., 2006). This could be a feature of English, perhaps indicating that zero-marked singulars are underspecified and do not necessarily carry number information. In sum, studies of English show a clear acquisition pattern, where plural number agreement and the segmental plural allomorphs /s/ and /z/ are acquired at around 2 years, then the less frequently occurring syllabic /əz/ form and singular inflectional number agreement at 3 years. Bilingual acquisition of the plural

There have been very few large studies examining bilingual preschoolers’ acquisition of the English plural. One study with older school-aged children speaking Chinese Mandarin (without inflectional grammar) and Spanish (with inflectional grammar) found that, even though both groups showed similar patterns of English acquisition (including grammatical inflections), the Mandarinspeaking children performed consistently below their Spanish-speaking peers (Dulay & Burt, 1974). This suggests that school-aged children may transfer linguistic knowledge from their home language to English. For example, Spanish, like English, marks plurals with inflectional morphemes attaching to the ends of words (e.g., gato+/s/: “cats”; reloj+/es/: “watches”). Children

Early bilingual acquisition  11 acquiring Spanish also comprehend novel plurals around the same time as their English-acquiring counterparts, from 2 years of age (Arias-Trejo, 2014). In contrast, Mandarin marks plurals with a numeral, a classifier and/or a quantifier (e.g., 两只树熊 (liangzhi shuxong): “two classifier koala”; or 很多树熊 (henduo shuxong): “many koala”). Like Mandarin, the larger Chinese family of languages is isolating, without inflectional grammar. Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that recent studies of Chinese-speaking children, including those speaking Mandarin, have shown persistent low levels of performance on English inflectional morphology (plurals and tense morphemes), even after 5–6 years of English immersion (Jia, 2003; Jia & Fuse, 2007; Paradis, Tulpar, & Arppe, 2016). However, these school-aged children are learning English as an L2 at school. Bilingual preschoolers, on the other hand, are more akin to simultaneous bilinguals, learning the community language as toddlers in childcare centres. A few studies appear to echo the findings for school-aged children, where Mandarin-speaking preschoolers show an emerging awareness of English plural forms by 3–4 years, though their use of plurals is not yet productive (Xu Rattanasone & Demuth, 2022). That is, although they can produce both singulars and plurals in a sentence repetition task, they cannot generate the appropriate plural forms in an elicited production task (Xu Rattanasone & Demuth, 2022). Similarly, although Chinese-speaking preschoolers cannot comprehend the grammatical number condition of novel words, monolinguals and bilingual preschoolers speaking a home language with inflectional morphology can (Xu Rattanasone et al., 2016), and those who have been in childcare longer performed better (language experience effect), yet no such effect was found for Chinese-speaking preschoolers (Xu Rattanasone et al., 2016). However, studies to date have yet to systematically compared the pattern of acquisition between Chinese-speaking preschoolers with their monolingual and other bilingual peers. The current study

In this study, we examined three groups of preschoolers: 1) Chinese-speaking bilinguals without inflectional morphology in the home language, 2) bilinguals speaking home languages with inflectional morphology, and 3) English monolinguals. We also tested children’s comprehension of grammatical number to examine if and how the pattern of acquisition differs for Chinese-speaking children and their monolingual and bilingual peers. In Australia, many bilingual children speak a home language other than English and are learning English as the community language in childcare centres. There are different levels of government support in childcare for children up to 4 years. In suburbs with high migrant populations, childcare centres may employ one or more staff who are L2 speakers of English from linguistically diverse home language backgrounds. Therefore, the linguistic environment of childcare centres can also be diverse.

12  Nan Xu Rattanasone et al. Based on the previous literature examining monolingual and bilingual language development, we therefore make the following predictions: • Prediction one: (1) Chinese-speaking preschoolers might show emerging knowledge of some English plural forms (e.g., the high-frequency segmental allomorphs) and may demonstrate better comprehension when number is also marked on the verb (i.e., SV agreement); (2) bilinguals speaking a home language with inflectional grammar will show knowledge of all plural allomorphs; and (3) monolinguals should show knowledge of both plural inflectional allomorphs and agreement for both the singular and plural. • Prediction two: Chinese-speaking preschoolers’ performance might not show correlations with age or length of time at childcare, possibly due to lack of English input at home and/or childcare. However, the performance of bilinguals speaking a home language with inflectional grammar should show improvement with age and length of time at childcare (developmental and language-learning effects), similar to that of their monolingual peers. Methods Participants

This study was carried out following the Macquarie University Human Research Ethics Committee approval (ref no. 5201400780), with written informed consent from all parents. All participants were recruited from 27 childcare centres (like daycares in the US) around the Northern and Eastern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. None reported any history of diagnosed hearing loss (including prolonged ear infection) or language difficulties. Participants included 20 bilingual preschoolers speaking only Chinese at home with a mean age of 4;2 years (range: 3;4–4;9; 12 girls). The average age at which they began attending an English-speaking childcare centre was 1;7, and they had been attending childcare for an average of 31 months, 29 hours per week. All parents were born in mainland China except for two who were born in Malaysia but spoke Mandarin or Fujian Chinese as their native language. Of the parents who were primary carers, 12 had an undergraduate degree and 8 had a postgraduate degree. Data from 5 additional children were excluded from the analyses, 1 for experimental error, and 4 for scoring less than 60% (3 out of 5) on the practice trials using real words. This ensured that all the children included in the analysis understood the task. An additional 28 bilingual preschoolers speaking a home language with inflectional grammar (mean age of 4;0 years (range: 3;0–4;10; 14 girls)) were also recruited. The average age at which they began attending an Englishspeaking childcare was 1;5, and on average they had been attending childcare for 30 months, 31 hours per week. All parents had grown up in non-English-speaking countries: Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Lithuania, Philippines, Poland, Sri Lanka, UAE, and Uzbekistan. Of the parents who were primary carers, one had completed

Early bilingual acquisition  13 vocational training, 18 had undergraduate degrees and 9 had postgraduate degrees. Finally, 95 monolingual Australian English-speaking preschoolers (who spoke only English at home) with a mean age of 4;0 years (3;0–4;11; 50 girls) were also recruited. The average age at which they began attending childcare was 1;4, and on average they had been attending childcare for 32 months, 28 hours per week. All parents had grown up in English-dominant-speaking countries: Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, Canada, and South Africa (English only). Of the parents who were primary carers, 5 had completed high school, 17 had vocational training, 47 had undergraduate degrees and 26 had postgraduate degrees. Data from 5 additional children were excluded from the analyses, 1 due to experimental error, and 4 for scoring less than 60% (3 out of 5) on the practice trials using real words. This ensured that all children included in the analysis understood the task. Stimuli Auditory stimuli

The auditory stimuli were recorded using Cool Edit Pro 2.0 and were produced by a female native Australian–English speaker in a sound-attenuated room. Stimuli were recorded as complete utterances with carrier phrases. For the test trials, 30 novel words were used, each recorded in both singular and plural/inflected form (for a total of 60 recorded novel items, see Table 1.1). Of these novel words, 12 were inflected in the segmental plural condition (half with /s/, half with /z/), 12 in the syllabic plural condition (half with stems ending in /s/ and half in /z/), and 6 in the SV agreement condition.

Table 1.1 Singular and plural novel stimulus items Segmental Allomorph Trials

Syllabic Allomorph Trials

(/s/ & /z/)

(/əz/)

singular plural dup /dɐp/ dups /dɐps/ bip /bɪp/ bips /bɪps/ tep /tep/ teps /teps/ mup /mɐp/ mups /mɐps/ noop /nʊp/ noops /nʊps/ gop /gɔp/ gops /gɔps/ pab /pæb/ pabs /pæbz/ tib /tɪb/ tibs /tɪbz/ geb /geb/ gebs /gebz/ mub /mɐb/ mubs /mɐbz/ koob /kʊb/ koobs /kʊbz/ tob /tɔb/ tobs /tɔbz/

singular koss /kɔs/ nass /næs/ poss /pɔs/ dass /dæs/ bess /bes/ giss /gɪs/ niz /nɪz/ kez /kez/ moz /mɔz/ tiz /tɪz/ doz /dɔz/ paz /pæz/

plural kosses /kɔsəz/ nasses /næsəz/ posses /pɔsəz/ dasses /dæsəz/ besses /besəz/ gisses /gɪsəz/ nizzes /nɪzəz/ kezzes /kezəz/ mozzes /mɔzəz/ tizzes /tɪzəz/ dozzes /dɔzəz/ pazzes /pæzəz/

SV Agreement Trials (“Where is/are the…”) singular tup /tɐp/ doop /dʊp/ gip /gɪp/ mep /mep/ dap /dæp/ nop /nɔp/

plural tups /tɐps/ doops /dʊps/ gips /gɪps/ meps /meps/ daps /dæps/ nops /nɔps/

 

 

14  Nan Xu Rattanasone et al. Each child was only presented with each novel word once, as either singular or plural, counterbalanced across participants. The novel words had onset stops that are early acquired by English-speaking children: /n/, /d/, /t/, /b/, /p/, /g/, and /k/ (Smit et al., 1990). Vowels were all short Australian-English vowels: /æ/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /ɐ/, and /ɔ/ (Harrington, Cox & Evans, 1997). In addition to the novel words, 11 real words were also recorded: bat(s), crab(s), mop(s), and pig(s) for the segmental plural block, horse(s), rose(s), and bus(es) for the syllabic plural block, and box, fox, clocks, and ducks for the SV agreement block. The training block contained five trials with singular target words: dog, bird, cat, nug, and mib. For each test block, the target words were spliced onto one carrier phrase. To ensure minimal acoustic differences across the auditory stimuli, splicing was conducted using Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2015). Visual stimuli

The visual stimuli were 60 novel objects and cartoon animals. The novel animals were depicted with happy faces and closed eyes and did not resemble anything real or fictional. The filler trials had 22 real objects/animals: box, shirt, duck, frog, clock, hat, cow, fox, bat, bug, pig, snake, mop, cake, crab, rat, bus, house, rose, tree, horse, and bear. These known trials were included to maintain children’s interest and were not analysed. Visual stimuli were constructed with a single novel animal/object (singular) on one side and a different group of five novel animals/objects on the other side (plural). The training trials consisted of single animals, two of which were novel. See Figure 1.1 for examples of each trial type. Design

A mixed design was used with group as the between-subjects factor. The within-subjects factors were the number condition (singular vs. plural), plural allomorph type (segmental /s, z/ vs. syllabic /əz/), and SV agreement (is/are). The experiment was implemented using a 2AFC paradigm delivered on an iPad, with chance at 50%. For each test trial, two pictures of novel objects were displayed side by side, one of a single object X (singular) and the other of a different set of five objects Y (plural). After 2 seconds, an auditory prompt played requesting participants to either “Touch the [target word]” in the singular/plural condition, or “Where is/are the [target word]” in the SV agreement condition. The target novel nouns contained either a singular CVC phonological form (e.g., “dup”) or a plural inflected form CVCs/CVCz/ CVCəz (e.g., “teps/degs/kosses”). Procedure

The children were tested in a quiet area of their childcare centre, at a childsized table and chairs. All children wore headphones, helping them to focus on the task and minimised environmental noise. The iPad was placed directly in front of the child. To ensure that the relevant plural morpheme could be

Early bilingual acquisition  15

Figure 1.1  Examples of visual stimuli used during practice trials, filler trials, and test trials.

heard, children were first played an /s/ and a /əz/ segment extracted from the stimuli. If children indicated they could hear both segments by repeating each sound, the experiment proceeded; if not, the volume was adjusted until correct responses were provided. The initial five trials contained the Practice Block, which tested children’s understanding of the forced-choice paradigm. The practice trials presented children with two pictures side by side, both depicting a single animal: dog versus cat, cow versus bird. After the pictures had been displayed for 2 seconds, an auditory prompt told the children to “touch the dog”, and with a new picture display, “touch the bird”. The next practice trial presented a cat next to novel animal X, and the child heard “touch the cat”. The fourth and fifth practice trials presented children with a dog versus novel animal X, and then a bird versus novel animal Y, with the auditory stimuli “touch the nug” and “touch the mib”, respectively. Upon touching a picture, an audible chirrup would play, and the chosen picture would flash for 1.5 seconds. This happened regardless of whether the child chose the target or the distractor.

16  Nan Xu Rattanasone et al. During the practice trials, the experimenter gave the child unconditional positive verbal encouragement. The rest of the trials consisted of three test blocks (segmental, syllabic, and SV agreement) presented in counterbalanced order across all children to avoid any effects of presentation order on performance. The segmental plural test block consisted of 16 trials (12 novel and 4 real), the syllabic plural test block consisted of 15 trials (12 novel and 3 real) the SV agreement block consisted of 10 trials (6 novel and 4 real). The known trials kept children on task and were not analysed. Pseudo-randomisations for the order of trials were also created within each block so that each object/animal was depicted only once as a plural target, once as a plural distractor, once as a singular target, and once as a singular distractor. Pictures were yoked so that across the four versions no two objects/animals were displayed together in more than one trial, and no auditory stimulus item was presented with any object/animal more than once, regardless of being a target or distractor. Results To test the first prediction, we expect Chinese-speaking preschoolers would comprehend the more frequently occurring segmental plural allomorphs (/s/ & /z/) and plural SV agreement (above chance), but perhaps not the less frequent syllabic form (/əz/) and singular agreement (at 50% chance) (see Table 1.2 for means and standard deviations). In contrast, the bilingual children

Table 1.2 Means and standard deviations  

Tests

Number

N

Mean (% correct)

Std. Deviation

L1 Chinese         L1 Other         L1 English        

Agreement

Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural

21 21 21 21 21 21 28 28 28 28 28 28 94 94 94 94 94 94

60 67 54 58 54 60 50 67 55 61 55 70 68 77 69 74 64 76

34 33 27 32 25 32 29 31 21 24 29 19 31 33 28 28 28 27

Segmental Syllabic Agreement Segmental Syllabic Agreement Segmental Syllabic  

Early bilingual acquisition  17 speaking inflectional home languages might perform above chance on all plural conditions, whereas monolinguals would comprehend all number conditions, including singulars, and perform above chance on all conditions. Finally, we predicted that all bilinguals would perform at chance for singulars – since these are later acquired in monolinguals. With alpha set at 0.05, a one-sample t-test against chance (0.5) was conducted for each group by Test and Number condition (see Table 1.3 for results). The results show that, as predicted, the Chinese-speaking children were at chance for all conditions except plural agreement, where they were significantly above chance. The other bilingual children performed significantly above chance on all plurals but were at chance for all singular conditions. As expected, the monolingual children performed significantly above chance on all conditions including the singulars. Also as predicted, overall bilingual performance was better on the plural, not yet showing understanding of the singular. To test the second prediction, that Chinese-speaking preschoolers’ performance might not show correlations with age or length of time at childcare, whereas both other bilinguals and monolinguals should, Pearson’s correlations were conducted. We also examined performance as a function of the age at which children began childcare and the number of hours per week at childcare (English exposure). The analysis detected significant positive correlations between performance and chronological age for both Other bilingual children speaking a home language with inflectional grammar and English-speaking monolinguals, but not for Chinese-speaking bilinguals (see Table 1.4). Discussion Consistent with our predictions, the results show that Chinese-speaking preschoolers only showed emerging understanding for plurals and performed above chance for only plural agreement while those speaking a home language with inflectional grammar showed understanding for all plurals. As expected, monolinguals had acquired all structures tested including the singulars. In addition, while English-speaking monolinguals and bilinguals speaking a home language with inflections both showed a developmental effect, with better performance with age, there was no developmental effect detected for Chinese-speaking preschoolers. Regarding patterns of acquisition, plural number agreement was the only condition acquired by all preschoolers. Although this was only tested using copula SV agreement, the results suggest that redundancies in marking grammatical number information at both the word and sentence levels may assist with processing and learning English number information, as previously suggested for monolinguals (Kouider, et al., 2006; Lukyanenko & Fisher, 2016). Second, overt number marking using inflectional morphology appears to be acquired by bilingual children speaking a home language with inflections, showing a benefit from similar structures from their home languages. Finally,

L1 English

L1 Other

Agreement

L1 Chinese

Syllabic

Segmental

Agreement

Syllabic

Segmental

Agreement

Syllabic

Segmental

Tests

Group

Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural

Number

Table 1.3 Independent samples t-test results

1.377 2.291 0.665 1.141 0.721 1.465 -0.001 2.806 1.361 2.536 0.871 5.512 5.830 7.880 6.383 8.396 4.795 9.258

t 20 20 20 20 20 20 27 27 27 27 27 27 93 93 93 93 93 93

df 0.092 0.016 0.257 0.134 0.240 0.079 0.500 0.005 0.092 0.009 0.196 0.05, r = –0.10) and so was their performance on weak and strong quantifiers (z = –1.41, p > 0.05, r = –0.26). Comparatively, they were less accurate at rejecting ungrammatical definite singulars compared to their acceptances of the grammatical indefinite variants (z = –2.39, p < 0.05, r = –0.39) and illicit definite plurals compared to licit bare equivalents (z = –2.41, p < 0.05, r = –0.40). Discussion In light of the statistical analysis, we reconsider the performance of the participants and revisit the learning predictions of the study. We start with French. The DE in L2 French interlanguage Control anaphoric conditions

We included two conditions on (in)-definite anaphoric singulars to ensure that the learners had acquired the feature of [±definiteness] before embarking on more challenging aspects of article use. In addition, the tokens provide cases where definite nouns are grammatical and so show that the participants are not biased towards excluding all definite expressions (illicit in existentials). The statistical analysis showed that the L2ers acquired the definiteness–indefiniteness contrast to a nativelike degree, reaching ceiling scores like the native controls (see Table 5.2). This confirms previous attainment of advanced L2ers with an identical language profile in (Hermas, 2020c). Let us examine the test conditions involving the DE.

Language acquisition at the syntax–semantics interface  97 Grammatical and ungrammatical existentials

Between-group comparisons show that the L2ers did acquire the DE-constrained existential constructions, with the exception of list readings where the semantic constraint is suspended. The L2 participants were nativelike on grammatical existentials with indefinite singular and mass pivots. This is further evidenced by their rejection, like the native speakers, of ungrammatical existentials with definite nouns. Though the two groups differed significantly on the indefinite plural and weak quantifier conditions, this does not mean the L2ers failed their learning. Rather, the native speakers attained top accuracy scores compared to the learners’ excellent figures (97.66% vs. 85.5% on indefinite plurals and 100% vs. 88.83% on weak quantifiers, respectively). We further corroborate this interpretation by the L2ers’ rejection of ungrammatical definite plurals (76.66%) and strong quantifiers (83.33%), scores not significantly different from the French native speakers. Another finding from the experiment was that existentials with proper name pivots stand out as a problematic construction for the native speakers, not the learners. The L2ers were significantly more accurate than the controls (82.16% vs. 59.5%). To account for this unexpected result, we looked into the individual scores of the French native speakers and task items. The performance of the French group (14 participants) is due to two participants who “wrongly” accepted five of the six illicit tokens and two others who accepted four. The score of the four informants had the effect of dropping the group score. Three additional informants had scored just on the mid-range. On the whole, half of the native speakers performed below the average. This led us to scan the items and two were mostly judged mistakenly acceptable: item 5 and 29 in task B. A: Tous les enfants sont sur le terrain en train de jouer au soccer. B: Mais regarde, un enfant est sans son maillot du club. *Il y a Gabriel sans le maillot du club. (vs. √ Gabriel était là sans le maillot du club.) A: Sur un bateau de croisière, tous les touristes ont passé de bons moments sauf quelques-uns. B: *C’est vrai. Il y avait Lucie et Marc malades sur le bateau.7 How can we explain this? Beyssade (2004) presents an account of existentials that rules in proper names. Since the post-verbal noun is new in discourse, it may be used in an existential sentence even if it is definite. It is definite because it is “salient” or “active” in the extralinguistic context. Furthermore, Kayne (2019) proposes an account of the DE suspension in list readings which gives us a clue into licit existentials with proper names as well. We hypothesise that the French native speakers overwhelmingly accepted these two items if they interpreted proper names to be embedded within hidden indefinites and so understood as: • … Il y a quelqu’un sans le maillot du club, (notamment) Gabriel. “There’s somebody without the team’s shirt, (namely) Gabriel”.

98  Abdelkader Hermas • … Il y avait quelques passagers malades sur le bateau, (notamment) Lucie et Marc. “There were some passengers on boat who were sick, (namely) Lucie and Mark”. The two accounts may jointly explain why the four French informants tended to accept existentials with proper names compared to the L2ers who observed the standard norm. Finally, the study includes a condition where the application of the DE is suspended – list readings. The L2ers’ accuracy (65.5%) was significantly much lower than the native speakers (92.83%), an outcome we attribute to the effect of overgeneralisation. The L2ers apply the restriction across the board to all definite expressions including those featuring list readings. The DE in L3 English interlanguage Control anaphoric conditions

The advanced L3ers of English converged with the native speakers of English on the definiteness and number contrast of anaphors, indefinite/definite singular and definite plural. Both groups obtained very accurate scores (Table 5.3). This aligns with the findings in Hermas (2018, 2020b) which demonstrate that Arabic-speaking L3ers eventually acquire the definiteness and specificity contrasts of the English article system. Let us turn to their performance on the more subtle phenomenon of the definiteness restriction in existential sentences. Grammatical and ungrammatical existentials

The L3ers attained nativelike accuracy on the grammatical conditions observing the definiteness restriction on the noun in the postverbal position in existentials, namely, indefinite singulars, bare plurals, bare mass nouns, and weak quantifiers. More importantly, they were nativelike in rejecting the ungrammatical counterparts of these constructions; namely, definite singulars/plurals and definite mass nouns. The L3ers’ performance on existentials with proper name was statistically similar to the English speakers. However, two constructions persist as missing blocks of advanced L3 knowledge. The first is existentials with strong quantifiers where the L3ers obtained 73% accuracy. Seven of the twenty-four informants (nearly one-third of the group) scored less than 8%. As for item analysis, two with the postverbal subjects each and most were most problematic (accuracy of 50%): • Tom invited his friends to a birthday dinner. *There was every friend at the party. • An investigation into a fight at the end of a football game revealed that: *There were most players in the locker room.

EngNS 4 L3ers 3.96

4 3.96

4 3.96

6 5.92

6 5.71

Bare pl.

Indef. sing.

Def. pl.

Indef. sing.

Def. sing.

√DE Respected

√Anaphor Controls

Table 5.3 Accuracy means by pivot NP type in English

6 5.71

Weak quant. 5.46 5.71

Bare mass 4.77 5.46

Def. sing. 4.62 5.08

5.23 5.50

Def. pl. Def. mass

*DE Violated

5.85 4.38

Strong quant.

4.77 3.67

proper names

4.54 2.92

List

√DE Suspended

Language acquisition at the syntax–semantics interface  99

100  Abdelkader Hermas The second construction where the L3ers’ accuracy was poor is the reading list condition, where the DE is suspended. Like advanced L2 French (65.5%), the L3ers obtained 48.66% accuracy, with half of the participants scoring less than 8%. The item below was notably challenging for learner and native speaker groups who corrected it using an indefinite noun8: • A: I am very thirsty. I need something to drink. • B: There’s the bottle of juice. It’s in the fridge. We anticipated the learners’ failure on list existentials because the construction is an exception to what they may have inferred about definiteness restrictions on the basis of classroom data. List readings are optimal priming constructions for misled overgeneralisation. Learning predictions revisited The statistical analysis and ensued discussion highlighted significant differences and similarities between the learners and the native speakers. The acquisition outcome is a patchwork of a majority of acquired and a few deviant existential constructions for the two adult interlanguages. Therefore, the L2 and L3 knowledge is not monolithic at the advanced stage of learning. For the first prediction related to L2 French, as predicted, the performance of the L2ers was nativelike on all grammatical and ungrammatical conditions. This includes five out of nine existential conditions where L1 MA differs from L2 French, namely illicit definite plurals (76.66%), licit indefinite plurals (85.5%), licit indefinite mass nouns (92.16%), illicit strong quantifiers (83.33%), and illicit proper names (82.16%). Clearly, crosslinguistic differences between the two languages did not bear negatively on the learners’ performance. Paradoxically, the similarity between them on list existentials where the DE is suspended did not have a facilitative effect on the acquisition of the construction. Therefore, the prediction for L2 French in the third research prediction was also confirmed. List existentials (65.5%) were still lagging behind in the acquisition process due to overgeneralisation. However, we do not claim they are unacquirable. The group result masks individual achievements showing that, out of 15 L2ers, 4 participants scored 100% accuracy, 1 participant reached 83.33%, and 4 reached 66.66%. Therefore, list readings are learnable, though difficult. Regarding the second learning prediction about the outcome of L3 English acquisition, the L3ers were nativelike on the grammatical conditions. They also converged with the English speakers on three of five ungrammatical conditions. Crosslinguistic differences were surmountable (five differences out of nine tested conditions). They were on the right track in the acquisition of strong quantifiers (73%). Therefore, the second prediction is confirmed,

Language acquisition at the syntax–semantics interface  101 too. Yet, the L3ers’ knowledge was incomplete since they were still grappling with list readings; they obtained an accuracy rate below the average (48.66%) compared to the native speakers (75.66%). The third research question (overgeneralisation) is again confirmed in L3 English. Yet, we claim list reading existentials are eventually acquirable. Individual participant analysis showed that 7 out of 24 L3ers got more than 66.66% accuracy. Finally, concerning the fourth prediction, both the L2/3ers managed to learn grammatical existentials to a nativelike degree where the DE was respected and ungrammatical counterparts that violated the restriction. One exception is illicit existentials with strong quantifiers where the L3ers faced minor difficulty. The learners’ attainment is remarkable considering that the classroom and non-native French/English-speaking teachers were their main source of input. Both learning groups faced much more difficulty with existential lists where the DE was suspended. Therefore, the pattern of learning was similar among the non-native groups: they were equally nativelike on grammatical and ungrammatical DE existentials with less success on English strong quantifiers and more failure on “exceptional” list readings. This partially disconfirms the fourth research prediction; the pivot nominal form does not entail differential acquisition in advanced L2/L3 interlanguage, list readings excepted. The findings of the study align with the conclusions of previous research, especially ultimate nativelike acquisition of the DE. It does not matter whether the learner’s L1 has an article system or not (Mandarin, Russian, Japanese, Turkish, or German). Nor is it crucial that the source and target languages match or differ. Just as the present study confirms that DE violation is equally acquirable as DE observance, previous studies found out a similar outcome (e.g., Belikova et al., 2010; White et al., 2012). Moreover, the study confirms the positive role of advanced L2/L3 proficiency that helped them override non-facilitative L1 influence on the interlanguage as in Sekigami (2016) and Kupisch (2016). A more surprising finding here is the absence of facilitative transfer even in case where the three languages match, namely, existential list readings. Apparently, overgeneralisation as a learning strategy overturns potential facilitative transfer when semantico-pragmatic knowledge is at play. In sum, the empirical data confirm that Arabic-speaking adults learning an L2 or L3 can successfully acquire the DE. Following the linguistic analysis above, the DE is a language-specific semantic restriction active in French and English. It is not a universal constraint applied uniformly and so would be readily transferred across languages. Nevertheless, the fact that it is languagespecific does not entail it is not acquirable, which highlights the achievement of the adult learners. Therefore, aspects at the syntax-semantics interface do not pose any learnability problem in non-native language acquisition. White (2008) and White et al. (2012) commented on the successful outcome in the acquisition of the DE and attributed it to two potential factors: frequency of existential constructions (Robert Bley-Vroman, p.c.) and classroom instruction (Boping Yuan, p. c.). As regards frequency, White (2008)

102  Abdelkader Hermas checked the British National Corpus and found that sentences with “There is a…” are almost ten times as frequent as those with “There is the…” expressing lists and deictic there (15,306 cases vs. 1558) and sentences with weak quantifiers “There are some…” (1572 cases) are as infrequent as “There is the…”. Therefore, if we put aside ungrammatical existentials, even the variety of grammatical equivalents remain under-represented in the input and so the learners’ performance on the DE does not reflect the input they may receive. Nor does it reflect the acquisition of the variety of grammatical existentials, except those with indefinite count nouns. Furthermore, if this is the case of L2 English in a second language setting, the input is even impoverished in a foreign language context where the language is an L3 and the teacher is a non-native speaker of the language. As for instruction, in the Moroccan ELT coursebooks, affirmative, negative, and interrogative existentials with indefinite singulars, bare plurals, mass nouns, and weak quantifiers are among the early grammar lessons explicitly taught to L3 English beginners. The same is true of French language teaching. Though the teaching is partly deductive, learners are not alerted to cases of DE violation or suspension. Note that the absence of a construction in the input is not evidence of its ungrammaticality. Therefore, our experiment included a variety of ungrammatical existentials (definite singulars and plurals, definite mass nouns, proper names, and strong quantifiers) as well as list readings (exempted from the rule). The results of the L2/L3ers demonstrated their cognitive achievement in transcending limited classroom input and building knowledge that handled comparable ungrammatical constructions they were not exposed to before. Clearly, Yuan’s and Bley-Vroman’s conjectures (frequency and instruction) explain neither the learners’ acceptance of grammatical existential nor their rejection of ungrammatical equivalents. Conclusion This chapter considered whether the semantic constraint of the DE in existential sentences constitutes a learnability problem in adult language acquisition. The learning outcome in L2 French and L3 English showed that the DE was easier to learn compared to other aspects of the article system such as specificity or genericity. The data showed that the differences and similarities between the source and target languages do not determine the learning outcome. A number of issues emerge: (1) the study confirmed that DE violation was equally acquirable as DE compliance, which we did not attribute to classroom instruction or input frequency; (2) proficiency was a decisive factor that overrode any adverse effect of non-facilitative transfer and none of the crosslinguistic differences (five out nine tested conditions) persisted in the advanced stage of L2/L3 interlanguages; and (3) a striking finding was that overgeneralisation reversed the potential facilitative influence regarding the acquisition of existential list readings. Here, the DE was neither respected nor violated, but suspended in Arabic, French, and English. Yet, it was the only

Language acquisition at the syntax–semantics interface  103 construction that the learners failed to acquire. In either success or failure, L2 and L3 acquisition processes converge at the end state. Notes 1 In French affirmative existentials, the pivot of a mass noun has two constituents: de related to genitive case and the definite article le/la/les, which combine as partitive articles du, de l’, de la, des (i). In negative existentials, however, the two articles behave differently: genitive de is obligatory, but the definite article le/la/les cannot be present under negation (cf. Guardiano & Koopman, 2018). For simplicity and test length, we test only affirmative existentials. (i)  il y a de l’eau dans le lac. (ii)  Il n’y a pas d’eau dans le lac. 2 The presence of a locative (there/y) is the reason why existential sentences are arguably discussed together with locative constructions. However, unlike existentials, predicate locative in English can be used with a definite or indefinite subject: (i)  A teacher is in the classroom. (ii)  The teacher is in the classroom. 3 http://www​.lang​.ox​.ac​.uk​/tests/(French and English tests). 4 Test sentences are available upon request. 5 Two examples illustrate the importance of context. The referent in the context is not exactly the same word in the existential sentence. In story (i), pencils is not mentioned. The existential is the felicitous option since it expresses new information. (i)  Liz and Stan want to make drawings. They need stuff to draw with. Liz: # Some colour pencils are in the drawer. (grammatical but infelicitous) Stan: There are some colour pencils in the drawer. In story (ii) cookies is mentioned. The non-existential is the optimal answer since it expresses old information. (ii)  Liz and Stan are playing. They become hungry and want to eat cookies. Liz: *There are all the cookies in the bag. Stan: All the cookies are in the bag. 6 In the generative tradition, anaphors refer to reflexive and reciprocal pronouns. Here anaphor refers to a nominal expression whose interpretation depends upon another one in the context (its antecedent). We included test items on singular and plural referential nouns to ensure the learners had acquired the basic knowledge of (in)definiteness prior to the syntactico-semantic restrictions on its usage. 7 For non-speakers of French the corresponding grammatical sentences are respectively: Gabriel était là sans le maillot du club. [Gabriel was there without his team shirt.] C’est vrai, Lucie et Marc étaient malades sur le bateau. [It is true, Lucie and Marc were sick on the ship.] 8 A reviewer, native speaker of English, noted that the context was not rich enough for the informants to accept the definite article. An indefinite article would be correct without more contexts that introduced the bottle of juice previously and allowed the DE to be suspended.

104  Abdelkader Hermas Reference list Abbott, B. (1993). A pragmatic account of the definiteness effect in existential sentences. Journal of Pragmatics, 19, 39–55. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/0378​ -2166(93)90069-2 Beaver, D., Francez, I., & Levinson, D. (2006). Bad Subject: (Non-)canonicality and NP distribution in existentials. In E. Georgala & J. Howell (Eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory XV (pp. 19–43). Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications. https://doi​.org​/10​.3765​/salt​.v0i0​.2920 Belikova, A., Hagstrom, P., Kupisch, T., Özçelik, Ö., & White, L. (2010). Definiteness in positive and negative existentials in the L2 English of Russian speakers. In J. Costa, A. Castro, M. Lobo, and F. Pratas (Eds.), Proceedings of GALA 2009 (pp. 28–38). Cambridge, UK: CSP. Beyssade, C. (2004). Les constructions existentielles. In C. Beyssade & C. DobrovieSorin (Eds.), Définir les Indéfinies [Defining Indefinites]. Paris: CNRS. Fischer, S. (2013). Unaccusatives, existentials and the definiteness restriction: Explorations of the syntax-semantic interface. In S. Chiriacescu (Ed.), Proceedings of the VI Nereus International Workshop ‘Theoretical Implications at the Syntaxsemantics Interface in Romance’ (pp. 33–55). Arbeitspapier 127. Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Konstanz. Freeze, R. (1992). Existentials and other locatives. Language, 68(3), 553–595. https://doi​.org​/10​.2307​/415794 Garcia-Mayo, M., & Hawkins, R., eds. (2009). Second Language Acquisition of Articles: Empirical Findings and Theoretical Implications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi​.org​/10​.1075​/lald​.49 Guardiano, C., & Koopman, H. (2018). Negative Existential Contexts. On the Form(s) of Indefinite Subjects: Bare, Articles, NPIs, “Special” Forms. MS: UCLA. Hermas, A. (2018). Sources of article semantics in L3 English: Definiteness and specificity. The Linguistics Journal, 12(1), 139–168. Hermas, A. (2020a). Genericity in L2 French and L3 English: A pragmatic deficit with a semantic consequence. International Journal of Multilingualism. https://doi​.org​ /10​.1080​/14790718​.2020​.1820510 Hermas, A. (2020b). Genericity in third language English: Acquisition pattern and transfer in ultimate attainment. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 24(2), 266–288. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/1367006919826865 Hermas, A. (2020c). Lexical semantics in advanced second language French: The acquisition of genericity. Lingua, 234, 102761. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​.lingua​ .2019​.102761 Ionin, T., Montrul, S., Kim, J.-H., & Philippov, V. (2011). Genericity distinctions and the interpretation of determiners in second language acquisition. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 18, 242–280. Doi​.org​/10​ .1080​/10489223​.2011​​.610264 Ionin, T., Grolla, E., Santos, H., & Montrul, S. (2015). Interpretation of NPs in generic and existential contexts in L3 Brazilian Portuguese. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 2, 215–251. https://doi​.org​/10​.1075​/lab​.5​.2​.03ion Kayne, R.S. (2019). The unicity of there and the definiteness effect. In R.S. Kayne (Eds.), Questions of Syntax (pp. 134–166). New York: Oxford University Press. Kearns, K. (2000). Semantics. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Language acquisition at the syntax–semantics interface  105 Keenan, E. (1987). A semantic definition of indefinite NP. In E. J. Reuland, and A. G. B. ter Meulen (Eds.), The Representation of (In)definiteness (pp. 286–317). Cambridge: MIT Press. Kupisch, T. (2016). Definiteness effects in German-Turkish bilinguals acquiring English as third language. In S. Fischer, T. Kupisch, & E. Rinke (Eds.), Definiteness Effects: Bilingual, Typological and Diachronic Variation (pp. 404–423). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press. Lardiere, D. (2004). Knowledge of definiteness despite variable article omission in second language acquisition. In A. Brugos, L. Micciulla, & C.E. Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 328–339). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Leonetti, M. (2008). Definiteness effects and the role of the coda in existential constructions. In A. Klinge, and H. Hoeg-Muller (Eds.), Essays on Nominal Determination: From Morphology to Discourse Management (pp. 131–162). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Lumsden, M. (1988). Existential Sentences: Their Structure and Meaning. London: Croom Helm. Lyons, C. (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. McNally, L. (1997). A Semantics for the English Existential Construction. London: Garland Publishing. McNally, L. (2011). Existential sentences. In C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger, & P. Portner (Eds.), Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning (Vol. 2, pp. 1829–1848). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Milsark, G. L. (1977). Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of the existential construction in English. Linguistic Analysis, 3, 1–29. Rando, E., & Napoli, D. J. (1978). Definites in there-sentences. Language, 54, 300–313. Safir, K. (1987). What explains the definiteness effect? In E. J. Reuland, & A.G.B. ter Meulen (Eds.), The Representation of (In)definiteness (pp. 71–97). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Slabakova, R. (2015). The effect of construction frequency and native transfer on second language knowledge of the syntax-discourse interface. Applied Psycholinguistics 36(03), 671–699. https://doi​.org​/10​.1017​/S0142716413000386 Slabakova, R. (2017). The scalpel model of third language acquisition. International Journal of Bilingualism 21(6), 651–666. Doi​.org​/10​.1177​/13670069166​55413 Snape, N., Garcia Mayo, M. P., & Gurel, A. (2013). L1 transfer in article selection for generic reference by Spanish, Turkish and Japanese L2 learners. International Journal of English Studies 13, 1–28. https://doi​.org​/10​.6018​/ijes​/2013​/1​ /138701 Snape, N., & Sekigami, S. (2016). Japanese L2 speakers’ acquisition of the English definiteness effect. In S. Fischer, T. Kupisch, and E. Rinke (Eds.), Definiteness Effects: Bilingual, Typological and Diachronic Variation (pp. 424–446). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press. White, L. (2003). Fossilization in steady state L2 grammars: Persistent problems with inflectional morphology. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 6, 129–141. https://doi​.org​/10​.1017​/S1366728903001081 White, L. (2008a). Definiteness effects in the L2 English of Mandarin and Turkish speakers. In H. Chan, H. Jacob, & E. Kapia (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd

106  Abdelkader Hermas Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 550–561). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. White, L. (2008b). Different? Yes. Fundamentally? No. Definiteness effects in the L2 English of Mandarin speakers. In R. Slabakova, J. Rothman, P. Kempchinsky, & E. Gavruseva (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2007) (pp. 251–261). Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. White, L., Belikova, A., Hagstrom, P. Kupisch, T., & Özçelik, O. (2012). Restrictions on definiteness in second language acquisition: Affirmative and negative existentials in the L2 English of Turkish and Russian speakers. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 2(1), 54–89. https://doi​.org​/10​.1075​/lab​.2.1 Zielke, M. (2016). The acquisition of definiteness effects in the L2 European Spanish of L1 German and L1 Turkish speakers. In S. Fischer, T. Kupisch, & E. Rinke (Eds.), Definiteness Effects: Bilingual, Typological and Diachronic Variation (pp. 441–468). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press/CSP. Zucchi, A. (1995). The ingredients of definiteness and the definiteness effects. Natural Language Semantics, 3, 33–78.

6

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese by English native speakers A perspective from syntax–pragmatics interface Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin

Introduction It is generally agreed that learning a second language goes beyond accumulating vocabulary and grasping the morpho-syntactic rules of the language. A competent learner must develop knowledge of how referentiality, the distinction of definiteness in particular, is encoded in the target language. All languages provide two ways of differentiating definite and indefinite entities in discourse (Hickmann et al. 1996): local markings on the nominal, e.g., the articles the and a(n) in English encode definiteness and indefiniteness, respectively, and global markings involving the entire clause, e.g., nominals in preverbal position are generally definite in Mandarin Chinese. Nevertheless, different languages rely on these two types of devices differently: while English expresses definiteness primarily through nominal forms, Mandarin Chinese employs both nominal form and syntactic position in marking definiteness. Second language acquisition in recent years has revealed that while L2 semantic properties do not pose serious problems to L2 learners, some grammatical aspects of L2 are more difficult to learn than others. According to the interface hypothesis (Sorace and Filiaci 2006; Sorace and Serratrice 2009), whereas the core syntactic knowledge is attainable to nativelike proficiency, linguistic properties that interface with other domains such as the lexicon and pragmatics show residual optionality even at the level of near-native proficiency. The deficits in the interface properties in the interlanguage grammars of L2 learners are caused by influence exercised by the less complex syntactic system (either L1 or L2) on the more complex syntactic system. In this study, we explore the L1-English learners’ development of the ability to encode definiteness in L2 Mandarin Chinese. On the one hand, the computation of definiteness in communicative situations depends on how the speaker uses contextual cues to evaluate the knowledge of the hearer, hence it is virtually pragmatic (Slabakova 2013). On the other hand, the marking of definiteness involves morpho-syntactic devices that are different across languages. Therefore, the acquisition of definiteness provides a good window to DOI: 10.4324/9781003251194-7

108  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin look at the L2 learners’ development of knowledge at the syntax–pragmatics interface. Definiteness marking in Mandarin Chinese Definiteness is a linguistic feature represented in some form in all languages (Lyons 1999). Two characteristics are often involved in defining this feature. The first is identifiability or familiarity, that is, whether the entity denoted by the noun phrase is familiar/identifiable to both the speaker and the hearer (Hawkins 1978). The second is uniqueness or inclusiveness, i.e., whether there is just one single entity satisfying the description of the noun phrase (Heim 1982). Nevertheless, Lyons (1999) pointed out that neither of the two characteristics is apparently fully adequate as the defining feature of definiteness. Identifiability is particularly attractive for referential uses, especially where the referent is a physical entity locatable in a physical context, while inclusiveness is particularly attractive for non-referential uses. Many uses are readily handled by either one of these characteristics, but neither works for all uses. In this study, we adopt the following definition of definiteness. A nominal is definite if the speaker using it presupposes that the referent of the nominal is identifiable to the hearer. The presupposition can be made on the basis of mutual knowledge of the real world or context or on prior discourse context (Hawkins 1978, Avrutin 1994, Lee & Wu 2019). A nominal is indefinite if the speaker believes it to be unidentifiable to the hearer. Another issue related to definiteness is specificity. An indefinite nominal is specific if the speaker, but not the hearer, presupposes the existence of particular referents of it. For example, if the referent is a subset of a group of entities mentioned in prior discourse, the use of the nominal will be seen as specific (i.e. partitive use). An indefinite nominal is non-specific if no such presupposition on the existence of the referents is made in the speaker’s universe of discourse. If the referent is newly introduced into discourse, the nominal is considered non-specific (Kartunnen 1976, Enç 1991, among others). The crosslinguistic survey has revealed that while definiteness exists in all languages, its coding differs crosslinguistically (Li 2013). Unlike English, where definiteness is primarily marked by articles, Mandarin Chinese expresses definiteness through multiple aspects. Both the nominal form and syntactic position are related to the feature. Nominals in Mandarin Chinese can be classified into seven categories according to their form (Chen 1987), as listed in Table 6.1. In addition to the forms of nominals, there is a null element (ø) in Mandarin Chinese which has no phonetic form but can function as an argument, i.e., referential (Huang et al. 2009), as in (1). (1)  ø chi1-guo4 ø le.   ø eat-ASP ø SFP “A particular entity has eaten a particular thing”.3

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  109 Table 6.1 Mandarin Chinese nominals classified according to form Category Form

Examples

1 2 3

Pronoun Proper name Demonstrative phrase [DEM1-(NUM-CL)-N]

4

Bare noun [N]

5

Numeral phrase [NUM-CL-N]

6

Quasi-indefinite article phrase [Yi “one”-CL-N2] Classifier phrase [CL-N]

wo3 “I”, ni3 “you”, ta1 “she” kong3zi “Confucius” zhe4-(ben3)-shu1 “this book”, na4(liang3-ge4)-xue2sheng1 “those two students” shu1 “(the) book(s)”, xue2sheng1men “(the) students” san1-ben3-shu1 “(the) three books”, liang3-ge4-xue2sheng1 “(the) two students” yi1-ben3-shu1 “a book”, yi1-ge4xue2sheng1 “a student” ben3-shu1 “a book”, ge4-xue2sheng1 “a student”

7

The relationship between the nominal form and definiteness is complicated. Out of the eight nominal forms (the seven forms in Table 6.1 plus the null element) descried above, six strictly correspond to definiteness or indefiniteness: the pronoun, proper name, demonstrative phrase, and null nominal are obligatorily definite, whereas the quasi-indefinite phrase and classifier phrase4 must be indefinite (Chen 1987, Wu 2006, Wen 2010, Wu 2017). The other two forms, namely bare nouns and numeral phrases, are unspecified in terms of definiteness. They can be definite or indefinite depending on their syntactic position: bare nouns and numeral phrases in the subject position of a sentence are definite as in (2), those in the object position tend to have an indefinite interpretation as in (3), and those functioning as object of the existential verb you3 (“have”) are indefinite as in (4). (2) a.  shu1 mai3 le. Book buy SFP “The book has been bought”. b.  liang3-ben3-shu1 yi3jing1 mai3 le. Two CL book already buy SFP “The two books have been bought”. (3) a.  mai3 shu1 le. Buy book SFP “(Someone) has bought books”. b.  yi3jing1 mai3-le liang3-ben3-shu1 le. Already buy-ASP two CL book SFP “(Someone) has bought two books”.

110  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin (4) a.  you3 shu1 fang4-zai4 zhuo1zi shang4. Have book put on desk LOC “There are books on the desk”. b.  you3 liang3-ben3-shu1 fang4-zai4 zhuo1zi shang4. Have two CL book put on desk LOC “There are two books on the desk”. Hence the correspondence between syntactic positions and definiteness is straightforward. The subject position of a sentence requires nominals to be definite (Chao 1968, Zhu 1982). Nominals that are inherently indefinite, such as quasi-indefinite phrases and classifier phrases, are banned in this position, as in (5); and nominals whose definiteness is not determined can only have a definite interpretation in the subject position. (5) a.  ?? yi1-wei4-ke4ren2 lai2 le. One CL guest come SFP “A guest came”. b.  * wei4-ke4ren2 lai2 le. CL guest came SFP Intended: “A guest came”. By contrast, the object of the existential verb, which requires indefinite elements, prohibits the occurrence of inherently definite nominals like pronouns, proper names, demonstrative phrases, and null nominals (Huang 1987), as in (6). Accordingly, unspecified nominals receive an indefinite interpretation in this position. (6) a.  ?? you3 ta1 lai2 le. Have him come SFP Lit. “*There is he coming”. b.  ?? you3 kong3zi lai2 le. Have Confucius come SFP Lit. “*There is Confucius coming”. c.  ?? you3 zhe4-ge ren2 lai2 le. Have this CL person come SFP Lit. “*There is this person coming”. d.  * you3 ø lai2 le. have ø come SFP Lit. “there is some previously mentioned individual coming”. The object position of other verbs allows both definite and indefinite nominals, but unspecified nominals are more likely to bear an indefinite interpretation. The marking of definiteness in Mandarin Chinese is in Table 6.2.

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  111 Table 6.2 The marking of definiteness in Mandarin Chinese

Pronoun Proper name Demonstrative phrase Null nominal Bare noun Numeral phrase Quasi-indefinite article phrase Classifier phrase

Subject

Object

Existential Object

+ definite + definite + definite + definite + definite + definite / /

+ definite + definite + definite + definite – definite – definite – definite – definite

/ / / / – definite – definite – definite – definite

Definiteness in L2 acquisition The L2 acquisition of definiteness marking in English has largely been investigated from a grammar-oriented perspective (Dekydtspotter 2013). Research has established that L1 Chinese learners of L2 English, whose native language is article-less, have persistent difficulties with articles (e.g., Shao & Wu, 2017). They usually begin with a stage of article omission, and then move on to a stage of overusing “the” with indefinites. Compared with L2 acquisition of English articles, the acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese is relatively understudied, and it has been addressed mainly from a discourse-oriented perspective. In a study of intermediate and advanced learners of Mandarin Chinese whose native language is Korean, Cao (2000) found the overuse of pronouns and demonstrative phrases with indefinite reference was pervasive in their writing. Similarly, Gao (2014) revealed that L2 Mandarin Chinese learners seldom used numeral phrases for newly introduced referents in writing. They tended to overuse bare nouns for referent introduction, even for prominent referents that generally require numeral phrases. As for definite reference, Chen (2005) and Xu & Xiao (2008) found that, in comparison to native speakers, the L2 Mandarin Chinese learners tended to use more null nominals and pronouns for discourse anaphora. Furthermore, Cao (2000) reported the misuse of quasi-indefinite article phrases with definite reference by L2 Mandarin Chinese learners in writing. Recently, Xiang and Yuan (2020) investigated L2 and L3 Mandarin Chinese learners’ knowledge of the subject definiteness constraint, using a self-paced reading task. They found that both L2 and L3 learners were not nativelike in taking longer time in processing definite subjects than indefinite subjects. To wrap up, the acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese is challenging. However, the picture is far from clear. Previous research has focused on the use of nominal forms by L2 learners in writing exclusively. No efforts have been made to explore L2 learners’ use of syntactic devices for definiteness representation, and no research has been carried out on L2 spoken

112  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin Mandarin Chinese, either. Previous research (Fan 1985, Wu & Lee 2019, etc.) has revealed that in written Mandarin Chinese the constraint against indefinite subjects can be relaxed, therefore it would be especially beneficial to look at spoken data produced by L2 learners. In addition, the learners involved in these studies are Korean and Mandarin Chinese, both languages are articleless. Therefore, how native speakers of article-based languages would acquire definiteness in Mandarin Chinese remains an unresolved issue. Given that English is a language representing definiteness by lexical devices exclusively (specifically, articles), it would be interesting to know how the native speakers of English learn the multiple aspects of definiteness marking in Mandarin Chinese. Experiment 1 In this experiment, we investigate how L2 learners and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese use lexical and syntactic devices to mark definiteness in their spoken Mandarin Chinese. Method Subjects

To participate, 34 overseas students (21 males and 13 females) were recruited from a university in China. All the subjects met the following criteria: a) English is the first language; b) Mandarin Chinese is not their heritage language, that is, they are not descendants of Mandarin Chinese immigrants; c) their Mandarin Chinese was at or above the intermediate level when the study was carried out; in particular, they passed Band 6 of Han4yu3 Shui3ping2 Kao3Shi4 (HSK, “The Mandarin Chinese Proficiency Test”) or have been learning Mandarin Chinese for more than three years in China. Thirty native speakers of Mandarin Chinese formed the control group. Procedure and materials

We tested the subjects using a picture description task. They were individually invited to look at some pictures and then to tell the stories there in Mandarin Chinese to a blindfolded fellow student. The hearer of the story was blindfolded so that the speaker would not make the presupposition that the referents in the stories were identifiable to the hearer. There were three trials for the elicitation production task. On a typical trial, the subjects were required to tell the story described in the pictures in Figure 6.1. There are four entities in the pictures: a rat, a cat, a tree, and a piece of cheese. These entities are indefinite when they are introduced in the discourse for the first time, as they are unidentifiable to the hearer. However, when they are mentioned a second time in subsequent discourse, they become definite referents, since they integrate the common ground of the speaker and the

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  113

Figure 6.1  Sample test picture.

hearer, and they have become identifiable and unique to the hearer. Hence, we can analyse the subjects’ knowledge of definiteness marking through analysing their choices of nominal form and syntactic position for referents of different information statuses. Results and discussion

We transcribed the stories narrated by the subjects. The referential nominals in the transcription were sorted by their form and distribution in the utterances. Then the number of each nominal form in each syntactic position was calculated. Note that for the definite use of nominals, we only count the second mention of the referent in the discourse, as the number of referent re-mentions is different across both stories and subjects. Each subject narrated three stories, with 4 referents per story. Therefore, there are altogether 12 target referents for each subject. We used a Mann-Whitney U test to compare the numbers of various nominal forms and their syntactic positions between the two groups. The results are in Table 6.3. The results show that although the native speakers and L2 learners of Mandarin Chinese used virtually no pronouns, demonstrative phrases and null nominals to introduce referents, the two groups differed significantly on nominal forms for indefinite referents. For the native speakers, the most frequent nominal forms for indefinite reference were classifier phrases (40.5%)

Pronoun Demonstrative phrase Null nominal Bare noun Quasi-indefinite article phrase Classifier phrase Total

0 (0) 0 (0)

0 (0) 121 (33.6) 15 (4.2)

53 (14.7) 189 (52.5)

0 (0) 0 (0)

0 (0) 15 (4.2) 12 (3.3)

0 (0) 27 (7.5)

93 (25.8) 144 (40)

0 (0) 0 (0) 51 (14.2)

0 (0) 0 (0)

146 (40.5) 360 (100)

0 (0) 136 (37.8) 78 (21.7)

0 (0) 0 (0)

Total

0 (0) 153 (37.5)**

0 (0) 30 (7.4) 123 (30.1)**

0 (0) 0 (0)

Subj.

E-Obj.

Subj.

Obj.

L2 Learners

Native Speakers

Table 6.3 The number and percentage of nominal form tokens for indefinite reference

12 (2.9)** 141 (34.5)**

0 (0) 52 (12.7)**5 77 (18.9)**

0 (0) 0 (0)

Obj.

25 (6.1)** 114 (27.9)**

0 (0) 0 (0) 89 (21.8)**

0 (0) 0 (0)

E-Obj.

37 (9.1)** 408 (100)

0 (0) 82 (20.1)** 289 (70.8)**

0 (0) 0 (0)

Total

114  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  115 and bare nouns (37.8%). Quasi-indefinite article phrases constituted only 21.7% of the total cases of referent introduction. On the other hand, the learners of L2 Mandarin Chinese used significantly more (70.8%) quasi-indefinite article phrases for indefinite referents than the native speakers (Z = 4.47, p ≤ 0.01), while bare nouns and classifier phrases represented, respectively, 20.1% (Z = 3.54, p ≤ 0.01) and 9.1% (Z = 4.55, p ≤ 0.01) of all indefinite nominals. Further analysis indicated that the Mandarin Chinese controls used the vast majority (92%) of both classifier phrases and quasi-indefinite article phrases to refer to entities that are animate, prominent in discourse, and thematically important, such as the rat and the cat in Figure 6.1, whereas bare nouns were almost exclusively (97%) used to refer to inanimate entities. The use of indefinite nominals by L2 learners, however, did not reveal the same pattern: they used the three indefinite nominal forms randomly for both animate and inanimate entities. There were also significant differences between native speakers and L2 learners in their use of indefinite nominals in the position of subject, object, and existential object. As expected, the native speakers were sensitive to the constraint banning indefinite nominals in the subject position. Of all indefinite nominals they used, 52.5% were in the object position, 40% in the existential subject position, and only 7.5% in the subject position. The L2 learners, by contrast, tend more to use an indefinite nominal in the subject position (37.5%, Z = 3.54, p ≤ 0.01). The nominals used by native speakers and L2 learners are exemplified in (7) and (8), respectively. (7)a. you3

zhi1-lao3shu3

zheng4zai4

have CL-rat ASP-PROG chi1 yi1-kuai4-nai3lao4, zhe4-shi2 eat one-CL-cheese, at this moment zhi1-mao1 zou3-le-guo4lai2. Cl-cat walk-ASP-over “A rat was eating a piece of cheese under a tree, and a cat came over”.

shu4-xia4 tree-LOC you3 have

b. lao3shu3 zheng4zai4 shu4-xia4 chi1-zhe rat ASP-PROG tree-LOC eat-ASP-CONT nai3lao4, hu1ran2 yi1-zhi1-mao1 pao3-le-guo4lai2. cheese suddenly one-CL-cat run-ASP-over “A rat was eating his cheese under a tree, suddenly a cat ran over…”

116  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin c. you3 yi1-tian1, yi1-zhi1-lao3shu3 zheng4zai4 have one day, one-CL-rat ASP-PROG shu4-di3xia4 chi1 dan4gao1 hu1ran2 Tree-LOC eat cake suddenly kan4jian4 yi1-zhi1-da4-mao1 zou3-le- guo4lai2. see one-CL-big-cat walk-ASP-over ‘‘One day, a rat was eating cake under a tree. Suddenly he saw a cat coming over”.

(8)a. you3 yi1-zhi1-lao3shu3 zai4 chi1-zhe have one-CL-rat ASP-PROG eat-ASP-CONT dan4gao1, pang2bian1 hai2 you3 cake nearby still have yi1-ke1-shu4. yi1-zhi1-mao1 guo4lai2-le, ta1 one-CL-tree one-CL-cat come over-ASP He xiang3 zhua1 na3-zhi1-lao3shu3. want catch that-CL-rat “A rat was eating cake. There was a tree nearby. A cat came over. He wanted to catch the rat”.

b. lao3shu3 zai4 chi1 rat ASP-PROG eat bai2-mao1 guo4lai2 zhuo1 white cat come over catch “A rat was eating cheese. A white cat came over to catch him…”

nai3lao4, cheese ta1 him

c. wo3 kan4jian4 yi1-zhi1-lao3shu3 I see one-CL-rat chi1 dong1xi, zhe4shi2 eat thing at this moment zhi1-mao1 CL-cat “I saw a cat eating something, then there came a cat”.

zai4 ASP-PROG lai2-le come-ASP

The nominal forms and syntactic positions used for definite referents are reported in Table 6.4. The native speakers and L2 learners differed significantly in the use of four nominal forms to refer to referents introduced earlier in the discourse: demonstrative phrases, null nominals, bare nouns, and quasi-indefinite article phrases. Whereas the L2 learners produced bare nouns for definite reference only 11.8% of the time, the native speakers used bare nouns in the same context 39.7% of the time, Z = 3.41, p ≤ 0.01. The L2 learners also tended to use fewer null

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  117 nominals for definite referents than the native speakers (3.4% vs. 13.1%, Z = 3.89, p ≤ 0.01). The most frequent nominal form for definite reference by L2 learners was the demonstrative phrase, accounting for 40.2% of all definite nominals, significantly higher than the use of demonstrative phrases by native speakers (20.3%, Z = 5.57, p ≤ 0.01). Furthermore, although quasi-indefinite article phrases represented 14.2% of the definite nominals produced by L2 learners, this nominal form was not used by native speakers at all for definite entities. Both the native speakers and L2 learners excluded definite nominals in the existential object position, suggesting their sensitivity to the definiteness effect in existential construction. Although for individual types of definite nominals, the likelihood of occurring in the subject position or in the object position was significantly different between the native speakers and L2 learners, there was no significant difference between the two groups in the overall tendency to use definite nominals in the subject position. Both groups used more definite nominals in the subject position than in the object position. The examples of how the native speakers and L2 learners use various nominal forms and syntactic positions for definite reference are shown in (9) and (10), respectively. (9) a. ta1 yi1 kan4jian4 mao1 he once see cat jiu4 gan3jin3 diu1-xia4 nai3lao4 Focus marker hasten throw cheese pa2-dao4 shu4-shang4. climb-to three-LOC “…It climbed up the tree on the sight of the cat, leaving the cheese behind”.

b. na4-ke1-shu4 tai4 gao1, mao1 that-CL-tree too tall cat pa2-bu4-shang4qu4, zhi3hao3 zou3-kai1le Climb-not-up have to go away “…The tree is too tall, and the cat could not climb up, so he went away”.

c. yi1-zhi1-lao3shu3 zheng4zai4 chi1 one-CL-rat ASP-PROG eat hu1ran2 ø kan4jian4 suddenly null element see yu2shi4 fei1kuai4-de pa2shang4-le so quickly climb up-ASP “A rat was eating, when he saw a cat. He climbed up a tree quickly”.

dong1xi thing yi1-zhi1-mao1 one-CL-cat shu4. tree.

Pronoun Demonstrative phrase Null nominal Bare noun Quasi -indefinite article phrase Classifier phrase Total

33 (9.2) 27 (7.5) 13 (3.6) 61 (16.9) 0 (0) 0 (0) 134 (37.2)

64 (17.8) 46 (12.8) 34 (9.4) 82 (22.8) 0 (0)

0 (0) 226 (62.8)

0 (0) 0 (0)

0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 360 (100)

97 (26.9) 73 (20.3) 47 (13.1) 143 (39.7) 0 (0) 0 (0) 240 (58.8)

77 (18.9) 105 (25.7)** 14 (3.4)* 19 (4.7)** 25 (6.1)**

Subj.

Sum

L2 Learners E-Obj.

Subj.

Obj.

Native Speakers

Table 6.4 The number and percentage of nominal form tokens for definite reference

0 (0) 168 (41.2)

47 (11.5) 59 (14.5)* 0 (0)** 29 (7.1)** 33 (8.1)**

Obj.

0 (0) 0 (0)

0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0)

E-Obj.

0 (0) 408 (100)

124 (30.4) 164 (40.2)** 14 (3.4)** 48 (11.8)** 58 (14.2)**

Sum

118  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  119 (10)a. na4-ge-lao3shu3 bei na4-ge-mao1 that-CL-rat Passive Voice that-CL-cat ta1 gan3jin3 tao2zou3. he hasten run away “The rat was scared by the cat, and he ran away immediately…”

xia4huai4-le, scare-ASP

b. yi1-zhi1-lao3shu3 zheng4zai4 chi1 one-CL-rat ASP-PROG eat tu1ran2 ta1 kan4jian4 suddenly he see “A rat was eating cheese. Suddenly he saw a cat”.

nai3lao4, cheese yi1-zhi1-mao1. one-CL-cat

c. yi1-zhi1-lao3shu3 zai4-shu4-xia4 chi1-zhe dong1xi, one-CL-rat at-tree-LOC eat-ASP-CONT thing hu1ran2 yi1-zhi1-mao1 chu1xian4-le. yi1-zhi1-lao3shu3 suddenly one-CL-cat appear-ASP one-CL-rat gan3jin3 pao3dao4-le yi1-ge4-shu4-shang4 hasten run to-ASP one-CL-tree-LOC “A rat was eating under a tree, and suddenly a cat appeared. The rat climbed up a tree quickly…”

d. yi1-zhi1-lao3shu3 zai4 chi1 one-CL-rat ASP-PROG eat zhe4shi2 ø kan4jian4-le at the moment null element see-ASP di2ren2 mao1 Enemy cat “A rat was eating, and then he saw his enemy – a cat”.

dong1xi, thing ta1de his

Overall, the results from Experiment 1 showed that intermediate and advanced English-speaking learners of L2 Mandarin Chinese were aware of the correspondence between definiteness and some of the nominal forms. Like native speakers, they used pronouns and demonstrative phrases exclusively for definite referents and classifier phrases only for indefinite phrases, indicating their awareness of the form-definiteness mapping. They were sensitive to the definiteness effect in existential constructions as well, and so they avoided using definite nominals in the existential object position. Despite these nativelike

120  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin performances, the L2 learners had difficulty with definiteness marking evidenced by misusing quasi-indefinite article phrases and overusing demonstrative phrase for definite reference. Additionally, they underused bare nouns and classifier phrases for indefinite reference. They were also unaware of the subject definiteness constraint, allowing indefinite nominals to occur in the subject position. Experiment 2

In this experiment, we examine the English-speaking Mandarin Chinese learners’ sensitivity to constraints on definiteness marking in comprehension. Method

Subjects

The same subjects of Experiment 1 were tested immediately after they finished the elicitation task. Procedures and materials

The subjects were tested using a felicity judgment task, in which they were asked to judge the appropriateness of sentences on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “completely infelicitous” (5 points) to “completely felicitous” (1 point). As shown in Table 6.5, the test involved the eight nominal forms in addition to null nominals in two syntactic positions (subj./ E-obj.). There were 20 types of test items, with 3 tokens in each type, yielding a total of 60 test items, arranged randomly across types in the questionnaire (See Appendix A.6a). As discussed earlier, half of the test item types conform to the syntax– pragmatics mapping constraints in Mandarin Chinese, and half of them violate them. The subjects’ ranking of the test items can indicate whether they are sensitive to the constraints or not. Results and discussion The dependent measure in the experiment was the subjects’ rating of the test items’ felicity. A Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the response patterns between L2 learners and native speakers in each condition. As shown in Table 6.6, native speakers and L2 learners are similar in evaluating test items with pronouns, proper names, or demonstrative phrases: both groups consistently rated the test items with these three types of nominals in the subject position as “completely felicitous”, and the test items with them in the existential object position as “completely infelicitous” (Type A2: Z = 0.58, p = 0.56; Type B2: Z = 0.73, p = 0.46; Type C2: Z = 0.32, p = 0.95).

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  121 Table 6.5 Conditions of the felicity judgment task Type

Description

Felicity

A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2 D1 D2 E1 E2 F1 F2 G1 G2 H1 H2 I1 I2 J1 J2

Pronoun as Subj. Pronoun as E-Obj. Proper name as Subj. Proper name as E-Obj. Demonstrative phrase as Subj. Demonstrative phrase as E-Obj. Null nominal as Subj. Null nominal as E-Obj. Definite bare noun as Subj. Definite bare noun as E-Obj Definite numeral phrase as Subj. Definite numeral phrase as E-Obj. Indefinite bare noun as Subj. Indefinite bare noun as E-Obj Indefinite numeral phrase as Subj. Indefinite numeral phrase as E-Obj Quasi-indefinite article phrase as Subj. Quasi-indefinite phrase as E-Obj. Classifier phrase as Subj. Classifier phrase as E-Obj.

High Low High Low High Low High Low High Low High Low Low High Low High Low High Low High

Nevertheless, significant differences were found between the two groups with regard to the other five nominals, namely bare nouns, null nominals, numeral phrases, quasi-indefinite article phrases, and classifier phrases. The native speakers almost completely accepted sentences with null nominals, definite bare nouns, or definite numeral phrases in the subject position, and sentences with indefinite bare nouns or classifier phrases in the existential object position. Conversely, the L2 learners only gave moderately positive judgment of these sentences. The differences between the native speakers and L2 learners in these conditions were significant (Type D1: Z = 9.58, p = 0.00; Type E1: Z = 6.76, p = 0.00; Type F1: 8.66, p = 0.00; Type G2: Z = 7.94, p = 0.00; Type J2: Z = 9.68, p = 0.00). On the other hand, while the L2 rated indefinite numeral phrases and quasi-indefinite article phrases in the subject position highly, the native speakers generally rated these sentences “unacceptable”. The differences between the two groups in these conditions were also significant (Type F1: Z = 9.58, p = 0.00; Type I1: Z = 6.76, p = 0.00). Similar patterns were obtained in the subjects’ comprehension in this experiment compared to the production data in Experiment 1. The correspondence between nominal form, syntactic position, and definiteness was partially available in the L2 Mandarin Chinese grammar of intermediate and advanced learners. Like the native speakers, they knew that pronouns, proper names, and demonstrative phrases are inherently definite, and therefore banned

122  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin Table 6.6 Mean and standard derivation of the subjects’ rating of test items Type A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2 D1 D2 E1 E2 F1 F2 G1 G2 H1 H2 I1 I2 J1 J2

Description Pronoun as Subj. Pronoun as E-Obj. Proper name as Subj. Proper name as E-Obj. Demonstrative phrase as Subj. Demonstrative phrase as E-Obj. Null nominal as Subj. Null nominal as E-Obj. Definite bare noun as Subj. Definite bare noun as E-Obj Definite numeral phrase as Subj. Definite numeral phrase as E-Obj. Indefinite bare noun as Subj. Indefinite bare noun as E-Obj Indefinite numeral phrase as Subj. Indefinite numeral phrase as E-Obj Quasi-indefinite article phrase as Subj. Quasi-indefinite article phrase as E-Obj. Classifier phrase as Subj. Classifier phrase as E-Obj.

Native Speakers

L2 Learners

Mean

S. D

Mean

S. D

5.00 1.03 5.00 1.07 5.00 1.09 5.00 1.12 4.47 1.24 4.89 1.14 1.09 4.89 2.43 4.90 2.18 4.78 1.00 5.00

0.00 0.10 0.00 0.14 0.00 0.17 0.00 0.22 0.62 0.24 0.20 0.35 0.14 0.25 0.77 0.16 0.86 0.32 0.00 0.00

5.00 1.02 5.00 1.06 5.00 1.09 1.80** 1.09 3.37** 1.16 3.40** 1.15 1.04 3.81** 4.57** 4.83 4.71** 4.89 1.00 2.80**

0.00 0.10 0.00 0.15 0.00 0.22 1.08 0.19 1.60 0.77 1.07 0.32 0.31 1.11 2.35 0.29 0.88 0.27 0.00 1.29

from occurring in the existential object position which requires an indefinite nominal. Yet, unlike the native speakers, the L2 learners generally accepted sentences with indefinite subjects, suggesting a lack of knowledge about the subject definiteness constraint in Mandarin Chinese. To recap, the data obtained from Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 are convergent. The L2 learners and native speakers differ in marking definiteness. As mentioned earlier, definiteness in Mandarin Chinese is expressed through lexical form, syntactic position, and their interaction. To mark definiteness, the learners have to learn the felicitous nominal forms, their matching with the definite or indefinite feature, and the constraints of definiteness on different syntactic positions. The findings indicate that the L2 learners’ problem lies along the three aspects. They produced significantly less null nominals and classifier phrases in narration and judged all the sentences with classifier phrases to be infelicitous, irrespective of their syntactic position. The L2 learners were also non-native-like with respect to quasi-indefinite article phrases, which are obligatorily indefinite in Mandarin Chinese to denote definite referents. Furthermore, compared to native speakers, they used more demonstrative phrases for definite reference but less bare nouns and classifier phrases for indefinite reference. In both production and comprehension, L2 learners were more tolerant of sentences violating the subject definiteness

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  123 constraint than native speakers, although they were nativelike in rejecting the existential sentences with definite objects. General discussion and conclusion We began this study by investigating how intermediate and advanced Englishspeaking learners and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese use lexical and syntactic elements to mark definiteness, and how they judge the sentences observing or violating the constraints on definiteness. The results showed that L2 learners have not attained nativelike proficiency in this respect. They indicated that L2 learners had difficulty producing some nominal forms and their mapping onto the definite or indefinite interpretation. Specifically, null nominals and classifier phrases are not as productive in L2 Mandarin Chinese as in the native grammar; L2 learners use the quasi-indefinite article phrase for definite reference, and they show non-native-like preferences for the quasiindefinite article phrase to express indefiniteness, and for the demonstrative phrase to express definiteness. The findings are consistent with previous literature in some aspects. In particular, Cao (2000) reported that null nominals were almost absent in the L2 Mandarin Chinese of Korean-speaking learners. Chen (2005) found that L2 Mandarin Chinese learners tended to use more quasi-indefinite article phrases than native speakers to refer to indefinite entities, and the L2 learners even used this form for definite reference. Comparatively some findings of the present study are at odds with those previously reported. In a study with L2 Mandarin Chinese learners with various L1 backgrounds, Xu and Xiao (2008) concluded that L2 learners tended to encode definiteness exclusively by pronouns. However, the study reported that the most frequently used nominal form for definiteness was the demonstrative phrase. Instead, the L2 learners’ use of pronoun for definite reference is native-like. In addition, while Gao (2014) claimed that L2 learners preferred using bare nouns to quasi-indefinite article phrases to refer to entities thematically prominent, the present study reveals that L2 learners have a strong tendency to use quasi-indefinite article phrase not only for the indefinite entities that are thematically prominent, but also for indefinite entities in the background that are not thematically salient. For example, when referring to the tree and the cheese in Figure 6.1 for the first time, the L2 learners tend to use quasiindefinite phrases yi1-ke1-shu4 (one-CL-tree, “a tree”) and yi1-kuai4-nai3lao4 (one-CL-cheese, “a piece of cheese”) rather than bare nominals shu4 (“tree”) and nai3lao4 (“cheese”). Conversely, native speakers tend to use bare nouns in the same context. This difference might be accounted for by the subjects’ L1. The L1 of the learners in Gao (2014) is Korean, a language allowing bare singular nouns like Mandarin Chinese, whereas the L1 herein is English, which does not allow bare count singular nouns. Another finding of our study is that L2 learners lack knowledge of some language-specific constraints on definiteness in syntactic positions, namely, the

124  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin subject definiteness constraint. In their production, a number of quasi-indefinite article phrases are found in the subject position, where indefinite nominals are usually prohibited in Mandarin Chinese grammar. Similarly, in the felicity judgment task they are significantly more tolerant of sentences violating the constraint than native speakers. However, the L2 learners are equally sensitive as the native speakers to universal constraints such as the definiteness effect on existential constructions: they neither produce definite objects in existential sentences nor do they accept them. Although this pattern has not been reported in the L2 literature, we remark lack of sensitivity to the subject definiteness constraint in the L1 acquisition of Mandarin Chinese. Whereas the form-definiteness mapping has already been onset in 4-year-old children’s grammar, by this age native speakers do not attain adult-like knowledge of the subject definiteness, with a large proportion of sentence subjects being indefinite (Wu, Huang & Zhang 2015). In light of the above findings, we argue that L2 learners’ difficulty in acquiring definiteness marking might have different sources. The first is the negative transfer of the related knowledge in L1 English (L1≠L2). As mentioned earlier, English encodes definiteness primarily by determiners. For common nouns, definiteness is typically marked by the definite article “the”, demonstratives, or strong quantifiers like “every”, whereas indefiniteness is typically marked by the indefinite article (a/an), the null article (bare plurals), and weak quantifiers like “some” (Milsark 1977). According to the DP hypothesis (Abney 1987, Longobardi 1994), referential nominals are in the maximal projection of the head D(eterminer), which assigns referentiality to its complement NP. However, it is controversial whether definiteness is related to D in Mandarin Chinese. Cheng and Sybesma (1999) proposed that Mandarin Chinese encodes definiteness by the functional category CL(assifier) and indefiniteness by the Numeral. In other words, the syntactic structures of definite and indefinite nominals are ClP and NumeralP, respectively. Furthermore, the head CL and Numeral can be null, which leads to bare nouns in the surface structure. At the syntactic level, the definite and indefinite features in Mandarin Chinese are mapped onto the specifier of IP and the specifier of VP, respectively (Tsai 2001), but no such mapping takes place in English. In order to learn definiteness in L2 Mandarin Chinese, the learners have to unlearn the mechanisms of the English grammar first. Unlearning is a process described to be more difficult than learning (Wexler & Manzini 1987, Lardiere 2009, Liu et al. 2013). The performance of L2 learners in the study points to the transfer of the English mechanisms: they tend to rely more on determiners to encode definiteness, such as demonstrative for definite referents and quasiindefinite article for indefinite referents. Bare nouns were not frequent in their L2 Mandarin Chinese production and not highly rated in their judgments, a pattern not found in among L1-Korean L2 learners. Furthermore, they were not sensitive to definiteness constraint in the subject position, a languagespecific property in Mandarin Chinese, while they acquired the universal definiteness constraint in existential constructions.6

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  125 A second source of learning difficulty might be the interface nature of definiteness marking. As noted earlier, processing definiteness and representing it linguistically involves knowledge from both syntax and pragmatics. Take the subject definiteness constraint for example. Unlike the various syntactic constraints mandatory in grammar, this one is arguably a strong tendency (Chao 1968) subject to relaxation in a number of contexts (Fan 1985, Pan & Lu 2009). In other words, the violation of the subject definiteness constraint causes infelicity rather than ungrammaticality. This is important because learners usually get less correction when a pragmatic error is committed than when a grammatical error is made (Taguchi 2019). Without enough negative evidence, it is difficult for L2 learners to become aware of the discrepancy between their interlanguage grammar and the target. As proposed by the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2011, White 2011), while it is possible for L2 learners to attain native-like proficiency in a linguistic property that is purely syntactic or involves internal interfaces (e.g., the syntax–semantics interface, the syntax–morphology interface), they may have deficiency in linguistic property of external interfaces (e.g., the syntax–pragmatics interface). This is because, on the one hand, the acquisition of external interface property is influenced continually by the learners’ L1 grammar, and negative transfer is more likely to occur when there is a difference between the L2 and L1 in the relevant property (Hopp 2004, Montrul 2010). On the other hand, the processing of syntax–pragmatics interface needs the integration of knowledge of different modules; therefore, it is more challenging (Sorace 2011). To mark definiteness properly, the speakers need to estimate the common ground knowledge (to generate the presupposition) between them and the interlocutor based on contextual information, and then represent their presupposition using appropriate linguistic expressions. The processing load of integrating different information sources makes the acquisition of definiteness a difficult task. Notes 1 The following abbreviations are used in this chapter: PN (proper name), DEM (demonstrative), NUM (numeral), CL (classifier), N (noun), ASP (aspect marker), SFP (sentence final particle), LOC (locative). 2 Here, yi must be unstressed. As in many other languages, the unstressed word for “one” in Mandarin Chinese can be regarded as a quasi-indefinite article (Chen 2003). When it is stressed, the nominal belongs to NUM-CL-N. 3 The referents of Pro have to be recovered from the prior linguistic context. 4 In some dialects of Mandarin Chinese, such as Cantonese, the classifier phrase can be definite, and it can occur in the subject position which requires a definite nominal (See Cheng & Sybesma 1999 for details). 5 ** Indicates the difference between native speakers and L2 learners is significant at the 0.01 level (p. ≤ 0.01); * indicates the difference is significant at the 0.05 level (p ≤ 0.05). 6 Similarly, it is easy to find L1 transfer in Mandarin Chinese learners’ L2 English. For example, the omission of articles and overuse of bare singular count nouns are

126  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin prevailing (Roberston 2000, Wu & Shao 2017), whereas the definiteness effect in existential constructions is onset very early (Yu & Su 2011, Chang & Zhao 2014).

References Abney, S. P. (1987). The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. Avrutin, S. (1994). Psycholinguistic investigations in the theory of reference. Ph.D. Dissertation. MIT. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/lang​.12062 Cao, X. L. (2000). An investigation of discourse reference in L2 Mandarin Chinese of Korean learners. Mandarin Chinese Teaching in the World, 4, 77–83. Chang, H. & Zhao, Y. (2014). A study of missing articles and the impairment of interlanguage syntax. Foreign Language Learning: Theory and Practice, 1, 10–16. Chao, Y. R. (1968). A grammar of spoken Mandarin Chinese. University of California Press. Chen, C. (2005). The coherence devices in L2 Mandarin Chinese of intermediateand advanced-level learners from English-speaking countries. Mandarin Chinese Learning, 1, 66–72. Chen, P. (1987). On four sets of notions related to nominals in Mandarin Chinese. Studies of the Mandarin Chinese Language, 2, 81–92. Chen, P. (2003). Indefinite determiner introducing definite referent: A special use of yi ‘one’ + classifier in Mandarin Chinese. Lingua, 113, 1169–1184. https://doi​.org​ /10​.1016​/S0024​-3841(02)00163-8 Cheng, L. & Sybesma, R. (1999). Bare and not-so-bare nouns and the structure of NP. Linguistic Inquiry, 30, 509–542. https://doi​.org​/10​.1162​/002438999554192 Dekydtspotter, L. (n.d.). Semantics. In J. Herschensohn & M. Young-Scholten (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 461–481). Cambridge University Press, 2013. Enç, M. (1991). The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry, 22, 1–55. Fan, J. Y. (1985). Sentences with indefinite subjects. Studies of the Mandarin Chinese Language, 5, 321–328. Gao, W. (2014). The errors of numeral phrases as antecedents and their sources: A discourse perspective. Language Teaching and Research, 3, 11–19. Hawkins, J. A. (1978). Definiteness and indefiniteness: A study in reference and grammaticality predication. Croom Helm. https://doi​.org​/10​.4324​ /9781315687919 Heim, I. (1982). The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Hickmann, M., Hendriks, H., Roland, F. & Liang, J. (1996). The marking of new information in children’s narratives: A comparison of English, French, German and Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 23(3), 591–619. https://doi​.org​ /10​.1017​/S0305000900008965 Hopp, H. (2004). Syntactic and interface knowledge in advanced and near-native interlanguage grammars. Eurosla Yearbook, 4, 67–94. Huang, C.-T. James, Y.-H. Li, A. & Li, Y. (2009). The syntax of Mandarin Chinese. Cambridge University Press. Huang, C.-T. J. (1987). Existential sentences in Mandarin Chinese and definiteness. In E. J. Reuland & A. G. B. ter Meulen (Eds.), The representation of definiteness (pp. 226–253). MIT Press.

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  127 Karttunen, L. (1976). Discourse referents. In J. D. McCawley (Ed.). Syntax and semantics Vol. 7: Notes from the linguistic underground (pp. 363–385). Academic Press. Lardiere, D. (2009). Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 25, 171–225. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1177​/0267658308100283 Lee, H. T., & Wu, Z. (2019). The acquisition of nominal structure, word order and referentiality in Mandarin Chinese: Corpus and experimental findings on the numeral phrase. In J. H. Hu and H. H. Pan (Eds.), Interfaces in grammar (pp. 301–340). John Benjamins. Li, X. P. (2013). Numeral classifiers in Mandarin Chinese. De Gruyter Mouton. Liu, A. J., Dai, M. C., & Li, Z. (2013). Mandarin Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of English articles: A study from the perspective of feature assembly. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 45(3), 385–397. Longobardi, G. (1994). Reference and proper names: A theory of N-movement in syntax and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry, 25, 609–665. Lu, S. & Pan, H. H. (2009). An analysis of semantic licensing of indefinite subjects in Mandarin Chinese. Studies of the Mandarin Chinese Language, 6, 528–537. Lyons, C. (1999). Definiteness. Cambridge University Press. Milsark, G. (1977). Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of the existential construction of English. Linguistic Analysis, 3, 1–29. Montrul, S. (2010). Dominant language transfer in adult second language learners and heritage speakers. Second Language Research, 26, 293–327. https://doi​.org​ /10​.1177​/0267658310365768 Robertson, D. (2000). Variability in the use of the English article system by Mandarin Chinese learners of English. Second Language Research, 16, 135–172. https://doi​ .org​/10​.1191​/026765800672262975 Shao, S. Y. & Wu, Z. (2017). The acquisition of English articles by Mandarin Chinese learners: A perspective from linguistic interface. Modern Foreign Languages, 4, 552–563. Slabakova, R. (2013). Discourse and pragmatics. In The Cambridge handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 482–504). Cambridge University Press. Sorace, A. (2011). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 1, 1–33. https://doi​.org​/10​.1075​/lab​.1​.1​.01sor Sorace, A. & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339–368. https://doi​.org​/10​.1191​ /0267658306sr271oa Sorace, A. & Serratrice, L. (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism 13(2), 195–210. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/1367006909339810 Taguchi, N. (2019). Second language acquisition and pragmatics: An overview. In N. Taguchi (Ed.), The routledge handbook of second language acquisition and pragmatics (pp. 1–14). Routledge. Tsai, W.-T. D. (2001). On subject specificity and theory of syntax-semantics interface. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 10, 129–168. Wen, W. P. (2010). The semantics of bare nouns in English and Mandarin Chinese. Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 1, 37–43. Wexler, K. & Manzini, M. R. (1987). Parameters and learnability in binding theory. Parameter setting (pp. 41–76). Springer Netherlands

128  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin White, L. (2011). The interface hypothesis: How far does it extend? Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 1, 108–110. https://doi​.org​/10​.1075​/lab​.1​.1​.19whi Wu, Z. R. H., & Zhang, Z. H. (2015). Acquisition of definiteness markers in child Mandarin. Foreign Language Teaching and Research 47(2), 176–189. Xu, K. Y., & Xiao, X. Q. (2008). The acquisition of Mandarin Chinese anaphora by CFL learners. Applied Linguistics 4, 118–125. Yu, S. Z. & Su, J. J. (2011). The acquisition of definiteness constraint in “there be” construction. Foreign Language Teaching and Research 43(5), 712–725. Zhu, D. X. (1982). Lectures on grammar. Commercial Press. Wu, A. M. (2006). Can numerals really block definite readings in Mandarin Chinese. In R. F. Chung, H. C. Liou, J. L. Hsu & D. A. Ho (Eds.), On and off work, Festschrift in honor of professor Chin-Chuan Cheng on his 70th birthday (pp. 127– 142). Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica. Xiang, J., & Yuan, B. (2020). Definiteness constraint on subjects in L2 and L3 grammars: Empirical evidence concerning the source of transfer in L3 acquisition. Journal of Second Language Studies 3(2): 233–260. https://doi​.org​/10​.1075​/jsls​ .00012​.xia

Appendix A.6a. Test items in the facility judgment task of Experiment 2 A1  Pronoun as Subj. (1) ni3 ren4shi Yue1han4 ma?Ta1 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. You know John SPF. He at outside wait you “Do you know John? He is waiting you outside”. (2)  wo3 ting1shuo1 Zhang1san1 tui4xue2 le. Ta1 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. I hear Zhangsan quit the school SFP he catch-ASP serious illness “I heard that Zhangsan quitted the school. He has been seriously ill”. (3)  wo3 zui4 xi3huan1 de shi1ren2 shi4 Lu4You2. Ta1 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. I most like DE poet be Luyou he write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem “My favorite poet is Luyou. He wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. Pronoun as E-Obj. ni3 ren4shi Yue1han4 ma?You3 ta1 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. You know John SPF. Have he at outside wait you Intended: “Do you know John? He is waiting you outside”. (5) wo3 ting1shuo1 Zhang1san1 tui4xue2 le. You3 ta1 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. I hear Zhangsan quit the school SFP have he catch-ASP serious illness Intended: “I heard that Zhangsan quitted the school. He has been seriously ill”. (6) wo3 zui4 xi3huan1 de shi1ren2 shi4 Lu4you2. you3 Ta1 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. A2 (4)

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  129 I most like DE poet be Luyou Have he write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem Intended: “My favorite poet is Luyou. He wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. B1 (7) (8) (9)

Proper name as Subj. Yue1han4 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. John at outside wait you “John is waiting you outside”. Zhang1san1 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. Zhangsan catch-ASP serious illness “Zhangsan has been seriously ill”. Lu4you2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. Luyou write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem “Luyou wrote more than thirty thousand poems”.

B2 Proper name as E-Obj. (10) you3 Yue1han4 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. Have John at outside wait you Intended: “John is waiting you outside”. (11) you3 Zhang1san1 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. have Zhangsan catch-ASP serious illness Intended: “Zhangsan has been seriously ill”. (12) you3 Lu4you2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. Have Luyou write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem Intended: “Luyou wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. C1 Demonstrative phrase as Subj. (13) zuo2tian1 wo3-men yu4dao4 de na4-ge4 ren2 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. yesterday we meet DE that-CL person at outside wait you “The person we met yesterday is waiting you outside”. (14) ni3 yi3qian2 ti2dao4-guo4 de na4-ge tong2xue2 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. You before mention-ASP DE that-CL student catch-ASP serious illness “The student that you mentioned before has been seriously ill”. (15) Zhang1san1 xi3huan1 de na4-ge4 shi1ren2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. Zhangsan like DE that-CL poet write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem “The poet that Zhangsan likes wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. C2 Demonstrative phrase as E-Obj. (16) you3 zuo2tian1 wo3-men yu4dao4 de na4-ge4 ren2 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. Have yesterday we meet DE that-CL person at outside wait you Intended: “The person we met yesterday is waiting you outside”.

130  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin (17) you3 ni3 yi3qian2 ti2dao4-guo4 de na4-ge tong2xue2 de2-le hen3zhong4de bing4. Have before mention-ASP DE that-CL student catch-ASP serious illness Intended: “The student that you mentioned before has been seriously ill”. (18) you3 Zhang1san1 xi3huan1 de na4-ge4 shi1ren2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. Have Zhangsan like DE that-CL poet write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem Intended: “The poet that Zhangsan likes wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. D1 Null nominal as Subj. (19) Yue1han4 peng3-zhe hua1, ø zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. John hold-ASP flower at outside wait you “John is waiting you outside with flowers in his hands”. (20) Zhang1san1 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4, bu4 neng2 shang4xue2. Zhangsan catch-ASP serious illness not can go-to-school “Zhangsan is seriously ill, unable to go to school”. (21) Lu4you2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1, fei1chang2 you3ming2. Luyou write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem very famous “Luyou wrote more than thirty thousand poems, and he is very famous”. D2 Null nominal as E-Obj. (22) Yue1han4 peng3-zhe hua1, you3 ø zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. John hold-ASP flower have ø at outside wait you Intended: “John is waiting you outside with flowers in his hands”. (23) Zhang1san1 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4, you3 ø bu4 neng2 shang4xue2. Zhangsan catch-ASP serious illness have ø not can go-to-school Intended: “Zhangsan is seriously ill, unable to go to school”. (24) Lu4You2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1, you3 ø fei1chang2 you3ming2. LuYou write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem have ø very famous Intended: “LuYou wrote more than thirty thousand poems, and he is very famous”. E1 Definite bare noun as Subj. (25) Yue1han4 shuo1 yao4 lai2 zuo4ke4, xian4zai4 ren2 yi3jing1 lai2 le. John say will come be-guest now person already come SPF “John said he is going to visit us, now he is coming”. (26) Zhang1San1 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4, xian4zai4 ren2 yi3jing1 qu4shi4 le. Zhangsan catch-ASP serious illness now person already dead SFP “Zhangsan was seriously ill, and he is dead now”.

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  131 (27) Lu4you2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1, xian4zai4 ren2 fei1chang2 you3ming2. Luyou write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem now person very famous “Luyou wrote more than thirty thousand poems, and now he is very famous”. E2 Definite bare noun as E-Obj. (28) Yue1han4 shuo1 yao4 lai2 zuo4ke4, xian4zai4 you3 ren2 yi3jing1 lai2 le. John say will come be-guest now have person already come SPF Intended: “John said he is going to visit us, now he is coming”. (29) Zhang1san1 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4, xian4zai4 you3 ren2 yi3jing1 qu4shi4 le. Zhangsan catch-ASP serious illness now have person already pass-away SFP Intended: “Zhangsan was seriously ill, and he is dead now”. (30) Lu4You2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1, xian4zai4 you3 ren2 fei1chang2 you3ming2. Luyou write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem now have person very famous Intended: “Luyou wrote more than thirty thousand poems, and now he is very famous”. F1 Definite numeral phrase as Subj. (31) Yue1han4 he2 ma3li4 shuo1 yao4 lai2 zuo4ke4, xian4zai4 liang3-ge4ren2 yi3jing1 lai2 le. John and Mary say will come be-guest now two-CL-person already come SPF “John and Mary said they are going to visit us, and now they two are coming”. (32) Zhang1san1 he2 Li3si4 de2-le zhong4bing4, xian4zai4 liang3-ge4-ren2 yi3jing1 qu4shi4 le. Zhangsan and Lisi catch-ASP serious illness now two-CL-person already dead SFP “Zhangsan and Lisi were seriously ill, and now they two are dead”. (33) Li3bai2 he2 Lu4you2 xie3-le hen3duo1 shi1, xian4zai4 liang3-ge4-ren2 hen3 you3ming2. Libai and Luyou write-ASP many now two-CL-person very famous “Libai and Luyou wrote more than thirty thousand poems, and now they two are very famous”. F2 Definite numeral phrase as E-Obj. (34) Yue1han4 he2 Ma3li4 shuo1 yao4 lai2 zuo4ke4, xian4zai4 you3 liang3ge4-ren2 yi3jing1 lai2 le.

132  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin John and Mary say will come be-guest now have two-CL-person already come SPF Intended: “John and Mary said they are going to visit us, and now they two are coming”. (35) Zhang1san1 he2 Li3si4 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4, xian4zai4 you3 liang3-ge4-ren2 yi3jing1 qu4shi4 le. Zhangsan and Lisi catch-ASP serious illness now have two-CL-person already dead SFP Intended: “Zhangsan and Lisi were seriously ill, and now they two are dead”. (36) Li3bai2 he2 Lu4you2 xie3-le hen3duo1 shi1, xian4zai4 you3 liang3-ge4ren2 fei1chang2 you3ming2. Libai and Luyou write-ASP many now have two-CL-person very famous Intended: “Luyou wrote more than thirty thousand poems, and now they two are very famous”. G1 Indefinite bare noun as Subj. (37) ren2 yi3jing1 lai2 le. person already come SPF Intended: “Someone is coming”. (38) ren2 yi3jing1 qu4shi4 le. person already pass-away SFP Intended: “Someone is dead now”. (39) ren2 fei1chang2 you3ming2. person very famous Intended: “Someone is very famous”. G2 Indefinite bare noun as E-Obj. (40) you3 ren2 yi3jing1 lai2 le. have person already come SPF “Someone is coming”. (41) you3 ren2 yi3jing1 qu4shi4 le. have person already pass-away SFP “Someone is dead now”. (42) you3 ren2 fei1chang2 you3ming2. have person very famous “Someone is very famous”. H1 Indefinite numeral phrase as Subj. (43) liang3-ge4-ren2 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. two-CL-person at outside wait you Intended: “Two persons are waiting you outside”. (44) liang3-ge4-ren2 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. two-CL-person catch-ASP serious illness Intended: “Two persons have been seriously ill”.

Acquisition of definiteness marking in L2 Mandarin Chinese  133 (45) liang3-ge4-ren2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. two-CL-person write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem Intended: “Two persons wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. H2 Indefinite numeral phrase as E-Obj. (46) you3 liang3-ge4-ren2 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. have Two-CL-person at outside wait you “Two persons are waiting you outside”. (47) you3 liang3-ge4-ren2 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. have Two-CL-person catch-ASP serious illness “Two persons have been seriously ill”. (48) you3 liang3-ge4-ren2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. have Two-CL-person write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem “Two persons wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. I1 Quasi-indefinite article phrase as Subj. (49) yi1-ge4-ren2 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. one-CL-person at outside wait you Intended: “A person is waiting you outside”. (50) yi1-ge4-ren2 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. one-CL-person catch-ASP serious illness Intended: “A person has been seriously ill”. (51) yi1-ge4-ren2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. one-CL-person write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem Intended: “A person wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. I2 Quasi-indefinite phrase as E-Obj. (52) you3 yi1-ge4-ren2 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. have one-CL-person at outside wait you “A person is waiting you outside”. (53) you3 yi1-ge4-ren2 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. have one-CL-person catch-ASP serious illness “A person has been seriously ill”. (54) you3 yi1-ge4-ren2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. have one-CL-person write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem “A person wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. J1 Classifier phrase as Subj. (55) ge4-ren2 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. CL-person at outside wait you Intended: “A person is waiting you outside”. (56) ge4-ren2 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. CL-person catch-ASP serious illness Intended: “A person has been seriously ill”.

134  Zhuang Wu and Zhouyuan Qin (57) ge4-ren2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. CL-person write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem Intended: “A person wrote more than thirty thousand poems”. J2 Classifier phrase as E-Obj. (58) you3 ge4-ren2 zai4 wai4mian4 deng3 ni3. have CL-person at outside wait you “A person is waiting you outside”. (59) you3 ge4-ren2 de2-le hen3zhong4-de bing4. have CL-person catch-ASP serious illness “A person has been seriously ill”. (60) you3 ge4-ren2 xie3-le san1wan4-shou3-shi1. have CL-person write-ASP more-than-thirty -thousand-CL-poem “A person wrote more than thirty thousand poems”.

7

A longitudinal exploration of the presence of a bilingual advantage in children Sarah Verdon

Introduction Bilingualism is a common phenomenon worldwide. Although global statistics are difficult to obtain, it is estimated that at least half of the world’s population speaks two or more languages (Grosjean 2010). In some parts of the world, such as Europe, bilingualism is a part of daily life and social functioning with more than 68.1% of European Union citizens speaking at least two languages (Eurostat, 2021). Furthermore, in countries such as Canada and South Africa, despite their colonial roots, multilingualism has been enshrined in government policy, with Canada having two official languages (French and English) and South Africa having eleven official languages. In contrast, countries such as the United States and Australia continue to have a “monolingual mindset” with English proficiency being privileged above multilingualism in most aspects of society, including government, employment, and education (Clyne, 2008). Despite this English dominance, both the United States and Australia have high rates of diversity, with more than one-fifth of the population speaking a main language other than English at home and these rates continue to increase with each census (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022; United States Census Bureau, 2021). As such, even in English-dominant countries, bilingualism can no longer be considered a minority issue and must be studied at the national level to understand its impact upon both individuals and society as a whole. Bilingual advantage? The concept of a bilingual advantage has long been debated in the literature (e.g., Bialystok, 1988; Diaz & Farrar, 2017). This debate has largely focused on the existence of a cognitive advantage in the executive function of bilinguals when compared to monolinguals (e.g., Beaudin & Poulin-Dubois, 2022; Calvo et al., 2016). Executive functions are essential for the brain’s ability to engage with stimuli, make decisions, and solve problems based on the data available. This chapter will explore the latest research on this debate. In addition, the current chapter will consider the concept of the bilingual advantage more broadly by exploring multiple domains beyond the cognitive DOI: 10.4324/9781003251194-8

136  Sarah Verdon advantage including social and emotional skills, cultural identity and participation, employment, education, and economic outcomes. In the second half of this chapter, new data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children will be presented considering the potential of an academic advantage for bilingual Australian children across five educational domains: reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and numeracy. These findings are then discussed to highlight the importance of home language maintenance, particularly in contexts where there is significant risk of home language loss. Cognitive advantages of bilingualism Recently multiple literature reviews have worked to synthesise the vast body of literature discussing the potential of a cognitive bilingual advantage, each with their own specific focus. A review by Adesope et al. (2010) identified associations between multilingualism and enhanced performance in cognitive domains including abstract and symbolic representation, attention, problem-solving, phonological awareness, vocabulary, executive functioning, and metacognitive capabilities. Guo and Yao (2022) reviewed literature investigating three areas of potential bilingual cognitive benefits; executive functions (including inhibitory control and working memory), enhanced language skills, and neurological changes for young children. Guo and Yao’s (2022) review identified three studies which showed that bilingual children were more skilled at inhibitory control demonstrating a superior ability to focus on the rules of a task while also suppressing irrelevant information (Filippi et al., 2015; Hilchey & Klein, 2011; Santillán & Khurana, 2018). A study of executive functioning between monolingual and multilingual 23-month-old Canadian toddlers using the parent report measure, The Early Executive Functions Questionnaire, found that multilinguals and children with greater non-dominant language exposure had significantly higher response inhibition; however, no differences were found for attentional flexibility, regulation, or working memory (Beaudin & Poulin-Dubois, 2022). One of the most widely contested areas of potential bilingual advantage is in the area of working memory. Working memory is a system that keeps information accessible while dealing with concurrent processes, distractions, or attention shifts. While some studies have found that there is no overall effect of a working memory advantage for bilinguals (e.g., Namazi & Thordardottir, 2010), others have found enhanced performance on specific tasks involving working memory (e.g., Calvo et al., 2016). For example, Daubert and Ramani (2019) found that bilingual children’s working memory was enhanced on the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA) in comparison to their monolingual peers. Furthermore, Beaudin and Poulin-Dubois (2022) found that non-dominant language production among 23-month-old Canadian toddlers (whether monolingual or bilingual) had a positive correlation with working memory. Bilingual children have been found to have enhanced cognitive abilities in relation to language as a result of learning multiple languages. Such abilities include enhanced metalinguistic awareness, which is defined as a higher-order

Exploration of the presence of a bilingual advantage in children  137 awareness of language and the ability to reflect upon the content of speech and language in order to understand and manipulate the structure of language (Ramirez et al., 2013). Multiple studies have found metalinguistic awareness is enhanced by learning a second language (e.g., Cihat, 2018) and that these skills enable bilingual speakers to more easily acquire a third language (Cenoz, 2013; Huang, 2018). Debate abounds regarding a cognitive bilingual advantage

In the majority of these studies it is agreed that bilingual status alone is not sufficient for a robust comparison of two or more groups. In fact, some scholars maintain that there is no cognitive advantage at all, citing numerous issues, including methodological inconsistencies, as the reason for some studies finding significant differences between monolingual and bilingual populations (Duñabeitia & Carreiras, 2015). One key factor to consider when interpreting data regarding bilingual advantages is the language experiences of participants. Factors such as length of exposure, age of language acquisition, context of language learning (e.g., home, school, or community), interlocuteurs (e.g., parents, grandparents, peers), and the context of language use for each of the child’s languages needs to be considered (Santillán & Khurana, 2018). In addition, demographic factors, such as socio-economic status, have been found to play a significant role in the extent of bilingual advantage in a number of studies (Anton et al., 2014; Duñabeitia et al., 2014; Hilchey & Klein, 2011; Nichols et al., 2020). Nichols et al. (2020) studied 11,041 participants aged 18–87 years and found no reliable differences in executive function between monolinguals and bilinguals in working memory, problem-solving, and planning when the monolingual and bilingual groups were matched for country of birth, socioeconomic status, and education. Therefore, studies considering the potential of a bilingual advantage must be methodologically robust in order to ensure that their findings are in fact the result of a bilingual advantage and cannot be accounted for by other factors. Broader aspects of the bilingual advantage While much of the literature considering the bilingual advantage focuses on the cognitive aspect of a potential advantage, there are many other benefits beyond this that are worth consideration. These include social, emotional, cultural, educational, employment, and economic benefits, not only for the individual but for the society in which bilinguals live. This section will explore the literature on each of these different aspects of the bilingual advantage. Social advantages of bilingualism

Children who are exposed to multiple languages in early childhood have been found to have better social skills, including empathy and theory of mind, than

138  Sarah Verdon children who are exposed to only one language (Fan et al., 2015; Greenberg et al., 2013). Specifically, perspective taking on visual objects has been found to be enhanced among bilingual speakers (Greenberg et al., 2013). Fan et al. (2015) found this advantage to be present even among children who were merely exposed to multiple languages but couldn’t actually speak more than one language. Levi (2018) also found that bilingual children were better able to identify the voices of unfamiliar speakers when compared to their monolingual peers, therefore having superior skills in speaker identification. Multiple studies have suggested that bilinguals have enhanced theory of mind (Han & Lee, 2013; Diaz & Farrar, 2017), which is the ability to attribute mental states to other people and to predict and explain other people’s behaviour on the basis of those mental states. In layman’s terms, it is the ability to put oneself in another person’s shoes to understand their perception of a situation. A meta-analysis by Schroeder (2018) revealed a small bilingual advantage overall on theory of mind and a medium-sized advantage when scores were adjusted for language proficiency. However, the reason for this advantage is not clear. It is theorised that this enhanced social reasoning ability may be due to other established bilingual advantages such as enhanced executive functioning which supports attentional control (Bialystok & Viswanathan, 2009), enhanced metalinguistic awareness which may enhance a bilingual’s ability to understand that there are different experiences of the same phenomena (Bialystok, 1988), or a socio-pragmatic effect from their understanding that people can have different representations of the same concepts (as is the case when the same concept is represented in different ways among the languages a person speaks) (Doherty, 2000). Such advantages may offer bilinguals enhanced social capacity in both personal and professional life through an enhanced understanding and empathy for those they engage with. Emotional benefits of bilingualism

Maintenance of the home language offers further benefits by supporting children’s emotional development and their connection to cultural identity. Children’s emotional development is supported through bilingualism as it cultivates a sense of belonging, which facilitates the development of a strong sense of identity, self-esteem, and resilience (Cho, 2000; Wright & Taylor, 1995). When a language is lost, so too is children’s ability to access relationships and cultural practices that only take place in the home language. When language loss takes place suddenly, in just one generation, this can impact the ability to form relationships with parents and grandparents who may only be proficient in the home languages (Wei, 2020). Home languages are often the medium through which cultural traditions are passed between generations, therefore a loss of language can also lead to a loss of culture. Lack of cultural belonging and identity can have negative impacts upon a person’s well-being (Berry & Hou, 2019), leaving a bilingual feeling stuck between two worlds and not wholly fitting in either. In contrast, language learners with a strong

Exploration of the presence of a bilingual advantage in children  139 proficiency in their home language are able “to establish a strong cultural identity, to develop and sustain strong ties with their immediate and extended families, and thrive in a global multilingual world” (Espinosa, 2006, p. 2). As such, it is important to support bilingualism by maintaining the home language while supporting development of a second language, particularly if the home language is not the dominant language of the society in which the child lives, and therefore is at risk of being lost. Employment and economic advantages of bilingualism

There are numerous employment and economic advantages of bilingualism to both individuals and society. For example, a study of census data from 21 million people found that Australians who are competent speakers of English as well as another language, are more likely to be in full-time employment, have postgraduate qualifications, and earn a higher salary than monolinguals (Blake et al., 2018). Similarly, in the United States, longitudinal research revealed balanced bilinguals, that is those with high proficiency in both languages, earned significantly more than monolinguals, and that this wage difference is expected to grow in an increasingly globalised economy (Gándara, 2018). Additionally, Rumbaut (2014) found that bilinguals (regardless of their level of proficiency) had higher levels of occupational prestige. Furthermore, there is an economic cost to individuals who lose their home language, whereby the loss of home language may further disadvantage marginalised communities by reducing income-earning capacity (Agirdag, 2014). Educational advantages of bilingualism

The potential educational advantage of bilingualism has been explored using a range of parameters. Studies have found that bilingual students appear to outperform their monolingual peers across multiple areas of academic achievement. Fenoll (2017) investigated the presence of a bilingual advantage among immigrants to the United States on four standardised measures: (1) Letter Word Identification, which measures symbolic learning and reading identification skills; (2) Applied Problems, which evaluates practical problem-solving in mathematics; (3) Passage Comprehension, which assesses reading comprehension and vocabulary; and (4) Calculation, which measures mathematical and quantitative ability. On all four tests, Spanish–English bilingual children scored significantly higher than their monolingual English-speaking peers. These findings remained significant even when controlling for other factors such as socio-economic status. Multiple other studies have also identified a potential advantage in the area of mathematical aptitude for bilingual children (Clarkson 2007; Daubert & Ramani, 2019; Hartanto et al., 2018). When it came to participation in schooling, Rumbaut (2014) found that balanced bilinguals in the United States were significantly less likely to drop out of high school when compared with monolingual students and students with limited bilingual proficiency. Additionally, bilingual students were significantly more

140  Sarah Verdon likely to attend university than monolingual students, with the effect size increasing as bilingual proficiency increased. From the data presented it is clear that the bilingual advantage may present differently across different subject areas (i.e., reading and mathematics); however, there appears to be positive impacts of bilingualism for educational outcomes overall. Bilingual advantage among children with communication needs

The presence of a bilingual advantage has not only been studied in typically developing children but has also been investigated among children with a range of communication needs including autism, developmental language disorder, and speech sound disorder. Autistic children frequently experience difficulty with theory of mind. Therefore, it is of interest whether the enhanced theory of mind that has been identified among bilingual children may be present among autistic bilingual children. Peristeri et al. (2021) compared autistic monolingual and bilingual children on a theory of mind task and identified a clear bilingual advantage. Interestingly, this advantage was not explained by controlling for executive functioning, metalinguistic awareness or level of autism, indicating a true advantage in theory of mind for bilingual children in this study. This finding was supported in a review of the bilingual advantage in autistic children undertaken by Romero and Uddin (2021) which concluded that a potential bilingual advantage was found for autistic children in the areas of non-verbal intelligence quotient, adaptive functioning, and expressive vocabulary. They suggested that while a bilingual advantage may not be universal among typically developing populations, it may manifest under specific circumstances, such as autism, where executive function is compromised. The potential of a bilingual advantage or bilingual disadvantage has also been investigated among children with speech and language disorders. The need for this investigation stems from ongoing practices whereby medical and educational professionals persist in recommending monolingualism (in the dominant language) for children with communication difficulties (Romero & Uddin, 2021). McLeod et al. (2016) conducted a longitudinal investigation comparing outcomes for Australian monolingual and multilingual children both with and without parental concerns about their speech and language development. They found that while speech and language concerns did have a negative impact upon long-term educational outcomes, this occurred regardless of whether a child was monolingual or multilingual. Therefore, there was no long-term negative impact of being multilingual for these children (McLeod et al., 2016). Furthermore, a systematic review by Hambly et al. (2013) concluded that while there are qualitative differences between the development of monolingual and bilingual children’s speech, there is no evidence to suggest that being bilingual has a negative or detrimental impact upon speech sound acquisition. While a bilingual advantage may not be obvious among children with communication needs, what each of these studies has in common is a

Exploration of the presence of a bilingual advantage in children  141 finding that being bilingual does not negatively impact children with communication needs. In fact, for all of the reasons outlined in this chapter, the removal of a home language when a child has communication needs may do more harm than good, as it denies children a linguistic resource through which they may find connection with identity, family, and community. Investigating a potential bilingual advantage among Australian school children To date, no large-scale data have been examined in the Australian context to explore the diversity of outcomes between monolingual and bilingual Australian school children. Previous research has found that approximately one in six Australian children will speak a language other than English at the time they commence school (Verdon et al., 2014), therefore it is important to investigate their long-term outcomes to inform teaching and practice. Aims

In light of the research synthesised above, there is a need to continue to explore the potential of a bilingual impact upon children’s educational outcomes. The following research question will be addressed in the remainder of this chapter: Does bilingualism in early childhood (4–5 years) significantly impact educational outcomes for reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and numeracy 10 years later in Grade 9 (14–15 years)? Method Context of the present study

Growing up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) is a nationally representative study of children and their families (Gray & Sanson, 2005). LSAC was designed to examine key factors related to child development and long-term outcomes and has two cohorts: (B)irth and (K) indergarten that have been studied over nine waves of data collection to date (Edwards, 2012; Gray & Sanson, 2005). The current study follows a group of children from the K cohort over a 10-year period. Recruitment of participants

Recruitment for the LSAC study was conducted using a two-stage clustered design to select a nationally representative sample of Australian children (Gray & Sanson, 2005). Postcodes (n = 311), identified from the Australian national Medicare database were randomly selected, followed by a random selection of children who lived within those postcodes proportionate to the number of children within each postcode to match the Australian population (Soloff et al., 2005).

142  Sarah Verdon Participants

Participants were 3,409 children in the K cohort who were followed for a period of 10 years from age 4–5 years until age 14–15 years. Children included in this study were those whose parents gave permission for their National Assessment Program for Numeracy and Literacy (NAPLAN) data to be linked with the LSAC dataset. Among the participants, 1,737 (51%) were male and 1,672 (49%) were female. While 89.9% (n = 3,065) spoke English, 10.1% (n = 344) spoke a main language other than English at home at 4–5 years of age. The main languages spoken included Cantonese (1.0%), Mandarin (0.7%), Arabic (0.7%), Vietnamese (0.7%), Greek (0.6%), and Italian (0.6%). Outcome measure

The National Assessment Program for Numeracy and Literacy (NAPLAN) is a nationwide set of tests undertaken by Australian school children every two years from Grade 3 (8–9 years) until Grade 9 (14–15 years). There are five subtests within NAPLAN, namely reading, spelling, grammar, writing, and numeracy. NAPLAN results are standardised and reported on a scale from 0–1000. Children’s scores are aligned with bands ranging from 1 to 10 which represent their level of competency on a subtest (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2022). NAPLAN data from children’s final NAPLAN in Grade 9 (14–15 years) are presented in this study to investigate the long-term impact of bilingualism in early childhood upon their academic outcomes. Bands 5 and under are below minimum standard, band 6 is at minimum standard, and bands 7–10 are above minimum standard (ACARA, 2022). Data collection

Data relating to language status and demographic details were collected using the LSAC parent interview when children were aged 4–5 years. NAPLAN data were collected using direct assessment at ages 14–15 years. Data analyses

To answer the research question, relevant data were extracted from the LSAC dataset. Descriptive analyses were used to describe the variables included in the study. Bivariate analyses including correlations and t-tests were used to identify significant relationships between bilingual status, demographic data, and outcome measures. Multiple regression analyses were then conducted exploring the impact of being bilingual upon academic outcomes at 14–15 years of age. Individual multiple regression analyses were undertaken for each NAPLAN subtest (reading, writing, spelling, grammar, and numeracy) scores at Grade 9 (14–15 years). For each multiple regression analysis demographic variables, including sex, child age at the time they sat the exam, presence of a disability, and socio-economic position were controlled for.

Exploration of the presence of a bilingual advantage in children  143 Table 7.1 Grade 9 NAPLAN results Monolingual Children (n = 3,065)

Bilingual Children (n = 344)

NAPLAN Subtest

Mean

Band

Mean

Band

Reading  Spelling Grammar Writing Numeracy

587.7 588.7 589.1 563.0 585.1

8 7 7 7 8

602.1 621.3 606.3 581.2 624.2

8 8 8 7 8

Results Children’s mean scores on the five NAPLAN subtests for bilingual and monolingual children are presented in Table 7.1. t-tests revealed that bilingual children scored significantly higher than their monolingual peers on all NAPLAN subtests: grammar (t(3407) = –3.775, p