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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 12:3 (2022) ► pp.377–405

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

ORCID logo | City University of Hong Kong
| The University of Sheffield
| Chinese University of Hong Kong

Recent research has identified language development in school-age heritage children as an important yet missing link between child early bilinguals and adult heritage speakers. This study investigates the Mandarin ba-construction ([(NP1)-ba-NP2-VP]) through elicited narration among heritage Mandarin children (n = 27, aged 4–14) and their parents (n = 18) in the UK. The results showed considerable similarities between the children and their parents in a number of key structural properties of the ba-construction. However, the children produced the ba-construction with reduced frequency and in a “heritage variety” with a reduced set of nominal and verbal phrases in NP2 and VP, which is not attested in a group of age-matched Mandarin speakers in Beijing. Additionally, higher frequency of the ba-construction in the heritage children’s production is associated with greater lexical diversity, rather than higher frequency of the ba-construction, in their parental input. We lay out positive aspects of the heritage variety of the ba-construction in sustaining the heritage language in bilingual contexts and consider the different roles of structural frequency and lexical diversity in parental input in maintaining the heritage grammar in late childhood and adolescence.

Keywords: Mandarin, heritage, input, syntax, lexicon
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Parental input and heritage language development at school age
  • 3.The ba-construction and its acquisition
    • 3.1Grammatical structure and semantic properties
    • 3.2Acquisition of ba-construction across contexts
  • 4.This study
    • 4.1Research questions and predictions
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Tasks and procedures
    • 4.4Transcription and coding
    • 4.5The homeland variety: The Beijing group
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Words and clauses in the UK group
    • 5.2NP2 and VP in the ba-construction in the UK group
    • 5.3The Beijing group
    • 5.4Correlations in the UK group
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Summary of main findings
    • 6.2Simplification of the ba-construction in the heritage language
    • 6.3Potential triggers for the simplification
    • 6.4Role of input at the transition stage
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 February 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.18025.mai
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