Doctoral Dissertation Research: The acquisition of Mandarin by heritage speakers and second language learners

在美国，汉语是仅次于英语和西班牙语的第三大语言。随着中国在世界舞台上的知名度越来越高，学习普通话的成人（青春期后）第二语言学习者的数量正在增加，普通话传统使用者的数量也在增加，这些人自出生以来就从父母那里接触到普通话，但成年后以英语为主导。本项目将研究第二语言学习者和传统普通话使用者如何获得普通话的四种不同语言特性。该项目将对语言教学产生潜在影响，通过识别汉语学习者面临的问题领域，并提供有关传统语言学习者与传统课堂学习者面临的挑战的信息。鉴于普通话是一门相对较少研究的语言，这个项目将增加我们对这门语言的了解。先前对传统西班牙语的研究发现，传统西班牙语使用者在音韵学上比第二语言学习者有选择性优势，但在形态语法上却没有。这项研究的目的是检验这种选择性优势是否适用于普通话，普通话是英语学习者最难掌握的语言之一。本研究调查了当普通话熟练程度和主导语言（英语）保持不变时，早期习得是否使母语者比第二语言学习者具有优势，以及这是否取决于语言领域（音韵学、形态语义、句法和句法语义界面）。三组（母语者、传承者和第二语言学习者）将完成三项心理语言学任务，测试四种普通话语言现象：变调、体标记、关系从句和远距离反身。之所以选择这些词，是因为(i)它们代表语言学的不同子域，（ii）它们在单语儿童的习得年龄方面存在差异，（iii）英语和普通话在这些现象上存在差异，这对于教学和语言学原因都很重要。研究结果对汉语语言学和语言习得的研究具有重要意义。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In the US, Chinese is the third most-spoken language, after English and Spanish. As China gains visibility on the world stage, the number of adult (post-puberty) second language learners of Mandarin is growing, as is the number of Mandarin heritage speakers, individuals who were exposed to Mandarin from their parents since birth, but as adults are dominant in English. This project will examine how second language learners and heritage speakers of Mandarin acquire four different linguistic properties of Mandarin. The project will have potential implications for language pedagogy, by identifying problem areas facing learners of Mandarin and providing information about challenges that face heritage speakers vs. traditional classroom learners. Given that Mandarin is a relatively understudied language, this project will increase our understanding of this language. Previous studies on heritage Spanish have found heritage speakers to have a selective advantage over second language learners on phonology but not on morphosyntax. The goal of this study is to examine whether such selective advantages hold for Mandarin, one of the hardest languages for English speakers to acquire. This study investigates whether, when both Mandarin proficiency and the dominant language (English) are held constant, early age of acquisition confers an advantage to heritage speakers over second language learners, and whether this depends on the linguistic domain (phonology, morpho-semantics, syntax, and syntax-semantics interface). Three groups (native speakers, heritage speakers and second language learners) will complete three psycholinguistic tasks testing four Mandarin linguistic phenomena: tone sandhi, aspect marking, relative clauses, and long-distance reflexives. These are chosen because (i) they represent different subdomains in linguistics, (ii) they differ regarding the age of acquisition in monolingual children, and (iii) English and Mandarin differ on these phenomena, which is important for both pedagogical and linguistic reasons. The results will contribute to the fields of Chinese linguistics and language acquisition.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.