First language acqusition of functional categories in Mandarin nominal expressions: a longitudinal study of two Mandarin speaking children

Abstract

In the present study, I adopt theoretical aspects from the Minimalist framework (Chomsky 1995), namely the theory of Economy, Merge Operation and Feature Checking, to account for the acquisition of functional categories in early child grammar. I focus on the acquisition of functional categories associated with Mandarin nominal expressions, namely Determiner Phrase (DP), Number Phrase (NumbP) and Classifier Phrase (ClP), by carrying out longitudinal studies of two Mandarin speaking children, one monolingual and the other bilingual. Based on the data from two corpora (starting from the onset of the one-word stage to the later multi-word stage), clear developmental sequences, which I categorize in terms of six phenomenological phases, for the acquisition of functional categories associated with Mandarin nominal expressions are identified. Interpretations of the developmental sequences, leading to proposals for the incremental development of phrase structure representations, together with tentative rationalizations for why the developmental sequences proceed as they do are provided. As a result of my analysis of the two corpora, I demonstrate that at least one functional head (namely head D) was already manifested in the child's grammar from the middle of the one-word stage onwards. Both head Numb and head Cl are instantiated from the second half of the two-word stage (MLU 1.5 - 2.0). However, while instantiated early in child Mandarin, the grammatical features of these functional heads appear to be under­ specified, i.e., they do not contain all the grammatical features of those in adult Mandarin. For instance, at least the specifier- and complement-feature of the head D and the complement-feature of the head Cl are still missing during the second half of the two-word stage. The grammatical features of functional heads in Mandarin nominal expressions are found to be instantiated incrementally in the child's grammar during the course of development. Overall, the findings of the present study provide strong support for the Weak Continuity perspective regarding children's grammatical competence during the earliest stage of syntactic development. Show more