Language Interfaces in Adult Heritage Language Acquisition: A Study on Encoding of Nominal Reference in Mandarin Chinese as a Heritage Language

According to the Interface Hypothesis in the field of bilingualism, the interface connecting a linguistic module with a language-external domain (e.g., syntax-discourse) will present prolonged difficulties for adult bilingual learners, as compared with the interface connecting language-internal modules (e.g., syntax-semantics). This study tested whether the Interface Hypothesis is applicable to the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese as a heritage language. An internet-based acceptability judgment task (AJT) was administered to 58 advanced and intermediate adult Chinese heritage speakers to collect data in accuracy and reaction time to investigate the adult heritage speakers’ mastery of referential nominal expressions regulated at the syntax-semantics and syntax-discourse interfaces, respectively, in Mandarin Chinese. The target linguistic phenomena involved three nominal expressions (i.e., the bare N(oun), the [Cl(assifier)-N], and the [Num(eral)-Cl-N]) under four interface-regulated referential readings (i.e., type-denoting, quantity-denoting, indefinite individual-denoting, and definite individual-denoting). In terms of accuracy, the results showed that (i) for the N and the [Num-Cl-N], regardless of the interface type, the advanced group acquired the target phenomena to a nativelike level, who significantly outperformed the intermediate group; (ii) for the [Cl-N], the advanced group exhibited nativelike attainment at the syntax-discourse interface but not at the syntax-semantics interface, and performed significantly better than the intermediate group at both interfaces. Regarding reaction time, no significant differences were reported between the advanced group and the native group for the target structures at either the syntax-semantics or the syntax-discourse interface, while the advanced group performed significantly better than the intermediate group, regardless of the interface type and the structure type. The findings suggest that the nature of the language interface, i.e., whether it pertains to language-external domains (i.e., the external interface) or not (i.e., the internal interface), should not be a reliable factor for predicting the (im)possibility of nativelike attainment of bilingual grammar knowledge, contra the predictions of the Interface Hypothesis. The present study provides new empirical evidence to show that language-external interface properties are not necessarily destined for prolonged difficulties in heritage language acquisition, and that it is possible for adult heritage speakers to make developmental progress in both accuracy and processing efficiency at different types of interfaces.

Selective Language Maintenance in Multilingual Malaysia

Aiming to understand the phenomena of language maintenance and shift in Malaysia, this chapter focuses on efforts by Penang's Chinese community to maintain Penang Hokkien alongside other Chinese community languages. The Malaysian Government has explicitly allowed the teaching of Mandarin Chinese in Chinese-medium schools, which resulted in the reduced use of Penang Hokkien and other Chinese community languages among the Malaysian Chinese community. Such a situation has caused sociolinguistic realignment in many Malaysian Chinese families, including in Penang, and raised questions about the survival of these languages in Malaysian society. Based on interviews with participants from Penang's Chinese community, the findings reveal that although past studies have demonstrated a decline in the use of Chinese community languages, the participants expressed their willingness to regularly use them in their daily life in various domains. Despite the announced desuetude of these languages, participants consistently used them and indicated their determination to pass on to the next generation.

The Effects of Mandarin Chinese Lexical Tones in Sound–Shape and Sound–Size Correspondences

Crossmodal correspondences refer to when specific domains of features in different sensory modalities are mapped. We investigated how vowels and lexical tones drive sound–shape (rounded or angular) and sound–size (large or small) mappings among native Mandarin Chinese speakers. We used three vowels (/i/, /u/, and /a/), and each vowel was articulated in four lexical tones. In the sound–shape matching, the tendency to match the rounded shape was decreased in the following order: /u/, /i/, and /a/. Tone 2 was more likely to be matched to the rounded pattern, whereas Tone 4 was more likely to be matched to the angular pattern. In the sound–size matching, /a/ was matched to the larger object more than /u/ and /i/, and Tone 2 and Tone 4 correspond to the large–small contrast. The results demonstrated that both vowels and tones play prominent roles in crossmodal correspondences, and sound–shape and sound–size mappings are heterogeneous phenomena.

Syntactic discontinuous reduplication with antonymic pairs: a case study from Italian

This article aims at giving a comprehensive account of a so far undescribed reduplicative pattern in Italian named syntactic discontinuous reduplication with antonymic pairs (SDRA). This pattern, characterized by the non-contiguous repetition of the same element within a larger fixed configuration defined by two spatial antonyms, can be schematized as <Xi Adv1 Xi Adv2>, where Adv1 and Adv2 are antonyms (e.g., di qua ‘here’ ∼ di là ‘there’). After describing its formal and functional properties, based on naturally occurring data extracted from the Italian Web 2016 corpus, the SDRA is analyzed as an independent ‘construction’ in the Construction Grammar sense. This construction is claimed to convey a general value of ‘plurality’ and to have developed a polysemy network of daughter constructions expressing more specific functions such as ‘distributivity,’ ‘related variety,’ and ‘dispersion.’ In addition, we propose considering the SDRA a ‘multiple source construction,’ originating from the blending of two independent constructions: syntactic reduplication and irreversible binomials with antonymic adverbs. Finally, we discuss SDRA-like patterns in other typologically different languages (Russian, Modern Hebrew, Mandarin Chinese, German), pointing out similarities and differences, and paving the way to a more systematic study of discontinuous reduplication in a crosslinguistic perspective.

Disyllabic post-nominal locatives in Mandarin Chinese

In this paper, I focus on disyllabic post-nominal locatives in Mandarin Chinese. In the literature, disyllabic post-nominal locatives have traditionally been considered nouns. Recent proposals, however, have offered different analyses. In Wu (2015), the typical disyllabic post-nominal locative falls somewhere between an adposition and a noun. Djamouri/Paul/Whitman (2013) and Paul (2015) discuss some new disyllabic post-nominal locatives and propose that they are postpositions. In contrast to these analyses, I argue that the commonly analyzed disyllabic post-nominal locatives are indeed nouns, and that so too is one subtype of the locatives recently proposed to be postpositions. I further examine this subtype and discuss its unique behavior. Finally, a diachronic study of disyllabic post-nominal locatives indicates that they may not share the same analysis as mono-syllabic post-nominal locatives.