Acquisition of the Perfective Aspect Marker "le" of Mandarin Chinese in Discourse by American College Learners
Acquisition of the Perfective Aspect Marker

Author: Lixia Ma

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13:

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The Chinese perfective aspect marker le is one of the most challenging yet very important grammatical features for learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). Based on the observation that there was a lack of width in the study of this feature in the earlier research, the current study presents a new perspective at the discourse level to achieve a more in-depth understanding of the acquisition of le. In response to the obvious need to obtain data on the acquisition of this linguistic feature with a global view, the current thesis study starts with the discourse functions of le, and eventually providing an encompassing guideline in learning le at the prosodic, syntactic, semantic and discourse level in linguistics. Three instruments (UI Placement Test-Grammar Section, Knowledge Test, and Production Test) were administered to 95 American college CFL learners of four different proficiency levels and to 30 native speakers of Chinese as controls.

Imperfective and Perfective Aspect Comprehension in Bilingual Mandarin-English Children
Imperfective and Perfective Aspect Comprehension in Bilingual Mandarin-English Children

Author: Huadan Liu

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13:

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As bilingual populations continue to grow throughout the world, there is a greater need to better understand how language is acquired in bilinguals and find common patterns of language development for clinical purposes. The goal of this study is to better understand the acquisition of aspect markers in bilingual Mandarin-English children who are growing up in an English-dominant environment. 14 typically developing bilingual children from ages 3 to 5 participated in the study. Children were asked to interpret a spoken sentence that contained either a perfective or imperfect aspect by selecting the correct picture on a computer screen. Results revealed significant correlations between performance on --ed and --le, the perfective aspect markers in English and Mandarin, and provided evidence of morphosyntactic transfer with respect to aspect marking. No significant correlation was found for --ing and zai, the imperfective aspect markers for English and Mandarin. Also, children performed significantly better when comprehending sentences with imperfective aspects. In addition, significant correlations were found between age and aspect proficiency, but not between amount of current language use and aspect proficiency. Finally, clinical implications and future directions are discussed.

The Acquisition of Lexical and Grammatical Aspect
The Acquisition of Lexical and Grammatical Aspect

Author: Ping Li

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 3110800713

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Language acquisition is a human endeavor par excellence. As children, all human beings learn to understand and speak at least one language: their mother tongue. It is a process that seems to take place without any obvious effort. Second language learning, particularly among adults, causes more difficulty. The purpose of this series is to compile a collection of high-quality monographs on language acquisition. The series serves the needs of everyone who wants to know more about the problem of language acquisition in general and/or about language acquisition in specific contexts.