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ERIC Number: EJ1333850
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Apr
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0012-1649
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Early Grammatical Marking Development in Mandarin-Speaking Toddlers
Huang, Ruoyu; Fletcher, Paul; Zhang, Zhixiang; Liang, Weilan; Marchman, Virginia; Tardif, Twila
Developmental Psychology, v58 n4 p631-645 Apr 2022
The current study examined early grammatical marking in a relatively understudied language, Mandarin, by using the Mandarin version of MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. Two waves of data collection included 338 monolingual children (17-36 months; 143 female) at Time 1 and 308 children (32-55 months; 139 female) at Time 2 and their caregivers, whose education ranged from third grade (elementary school) or below to postgraduate with a median of high school. Our data showed a clear order of grammatical marking acquisition among these children and supported findings on the linguistic specificity of morphological development such that early- and late-acquired markers in Mandarin are not acquired in the same order as English or other languages. Negative "mei2," "bu4," possessive "-de," classifiers, and the aspect marker "le" were the earliest-acquired markers, followed by modals, negative "bie2," adverbs, sentence final particles, resultative verb compounds, and aspect markers "guo4" and "yao4." Complex clauses and the aspect marker "zheng4" were acquired the latest. Furthermore, consistent with previous cross-linguistic studies, the development patterns of a wide range of Mandarin grammatical markers indicate that markers that are more perceptually salient and obligatory, have clear form-meaning mappings, and often appear in isolation or utterance-final position were acquired earlier than others.
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: China (Beijing)
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A