Early Grammatical Marking Development in Mandarin-Speaking Toddlers

The current study examined early grammatical marking in a relatively understudied language, Mandarin, by using the Mandarin version of MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. Two waves of data collection included 338 monolingual children (17-36 months; 143 female) at Time 1 and 308 children (32-55 months; 139 female) at Time 2 and their caregivers, whose education ranged from third grade (elementary school) or below to postgraduate with a median of high school. Our data showed a clear order of grammatical marking acquisition among these children and supported findings on the linguistic specificity of morphological development such that early- and late-acquired markers in Mandarin are not acquired in the same order as English or other languages. Negative mei2, bu4, possessive -de, classifiers, and the aspect marker le were the earliest-acquired markers, followed by modals, negative bie2, adverbs, sentence final particles, resultative verb compounds, and aspect markers guo4 and yao4. Complex clauses and the aspect marker zheng4 were acquired the latest. Furthermore, consistent with previous cross-linguistic studies, the development patterns of a wide range of Mandarin grammatical markers indicate that markers that are more perceptually salient and obligatory, have clear form-meaning mappings, and often appear in isolation or utterance-final position were acquired earlier than others.

Automated summary

This study examined the early grammatical marking in Mandarin and found a clear order of acquisition among Mandarin-speaking children. The findings suggest that the acquisition of grammatical markers in Mandarin differs from English or other languages. The study also indicates that perceptually salient and obligatory markers, with clear form-meaning mappings, are acquired earlier than others.