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Article published In: International Journal of Chinese Linguistics
Vol. 7:2 (2020) ► pp.223–269

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Acquisition of null objects in Mandarin Chinese by heritage speakers

Syntax-pragmatics interface knowledge without inflectional morphology

 | National Chiao Tung University
 | National Tsing Hua University
 | University of Michigan
Published online: 10 December 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.19016.cho
Abstract
The acquisition of the grammatical knowledge related to inflectional morphology and syntax-pragmatics interface have both been shown to be challenging for heritage speakers (e.g., Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñán, S. (2008). Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning, 581, 503–553. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; (2006). Incomplete acquisition: American Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, 141, 191–262.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, (2008). Gender under incomplete acquisition: Heritage speakers’ knowledge of noun categorization. Heritage Language Journal, 6–11, 40–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Sorace, A., Serratrice, L., Filiaci, F., & Baldo, M. (2009). Discourse conditions on subject pronoun realization: Testing the linguistic intuitions of bilingual children. Lingua, 1191, 460–477. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 195–210. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; (2013a). Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics, 391, 129–181. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Laleko, O. & Polinsky, M. (2016). Between syntax and discourse: Topic and case marking in heritage speakers and L2 learners of Japanese and Korean. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 61, 396–439. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). In these previous work on heritage language acquisition, the acquisition of inflectional morphology (e.g. either agreement morphology or topic marking) is also a relevant acquisition task associated with the syntax-discourse phenomena under investigation. In this paper we focus on the acquisition of discourse-conditioned structures by heritage speakers when inflectional morphology is not part of the learning task. Specifically, we report results of a picture-verification experiment focusing on English-dominant heritage Chinese speakers’ grammatical knowledge of null objects. As a topic-prominent language lacking verbal tense/agreement morphology, the licensing and identification of null arguments in Chinese has nothing to do with agreement morphology. In addition, unlike other topic-prominent pro-drop languages, Chinese has no inflectional morphology associated with grammatical subjects/objects and topic phrases. Without the interference of co-occurring inflectional morphology, we found that there is no significant difference between heritage Chinese speakers and the monolingual baseline in their acceptance of null objects in contextually appropriate contexts. The results of our study cast doubt on the thesis that heritage speakers are unable to acquire discourse-related knowledge (cf. Sorace, A. & Serratrice, L. (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 195–210. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Laleko, O. (2010). The syntax-pragmatics interface in language loss: Covert restructuring of aspect in heritage Russian. Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Minnesota.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Laleko, O. & Polinsky, M. (2016). Between syntax and discourse: Topic and case marking in heritage speakers and L2 learners of Japanese and Korean. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 61, 396–439. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and support (2010). Domain-wide or variable-dependent vulnerability of the semantics – syntax interface in L2 acquisition? Evidence from wh-words used as existential polarity words in L2 Chinese grammars Second Language Research, 26 (2), 219–260. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar claim that interface categories should not be considered holistically.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Heritage bilingualism and vulnerable domains
  • 2.Chinese null arguments
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Subjects
    • 3.2Picture-verification task (PVT)
      • 3.2.1Procedure
      • 3.2.2Materials
      • 3.2.3Results
      • 3.2.4Discussion
  • 4.General discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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