The Acquisition of Determiner Phrase in Early Child Mandarin : A Longitudinal Study of Two Mandarin Speaking Children

ISBN-13: 9783639129410 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 180 str.

Meiyun Chang-Smith

Opis

Meiyun Chang-Smith provides an authoritative accountof the first language (L1) acquisition of MandarinDeterminer Phrase (DP) in this ground breaking work,the first to utilize grammatical aspects of theMinimalist Program to explain early child Mandarindata. The study is both theory and data driven,leading the reader step by step along thedevelopmental pathway for Mandarin DP as exhibited bythe two child subjects, one monolingual and the othera simultaneous Mandarin-English bilingual. Throughthe inclusion of detailed and extensive examples fromthe original corpora together with discussions andanalysis, this book reveals unique and originalinsights into the L1 acquisition of a classifierlanguage possessing a DP with complex internalstructure. By careful comparison of both thebilingual and the monolingual DP acquisitionpatterns, the study reveals that simultaneousbilingual and monolingual children pursue the samedevelopmental pathway during the course ofdevelopment of Mandarin DP. It sheds light onfundamental issues in language acquisition such asthe continuity debate and will be a valuable resourcefor students and practicing acquisition researchersalike.

O autorze

Meiyun Chang-Smith gained her PhD in Linguistics at The
Australian National University in 2005. Her research involves
monolingual and bilingual grammatical development,
grammatical constraints on code switching and
cognitive neuro-linguistics. She is currently Postdoctoral
Research Fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute, University of
Queensland.