Use of the “ba” construction in Heritage Chinese speakers and L2 speakers of Chinese

ABSTRACT This thesis analyses the differences in using the ba construction in heritage Chinese speak-ers and L2 speakers of Chinese. The study compares the use and knowledge of the ba con-struction by L1 native speakers, heritage speakers (HL), and L2 learners of Mandarin Chi-nese. Heritage language speakers are exposed to minority languages from birth, and they are exposed to a majority language later in life (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007), which then causes the L2 to become the dominant language. Other L2 learners tend to retain their L1 as a dom-inant language. The ba construction is an active sentence in which the particle ba is used before the predicate verb to introduce the subject and dispose of the object. The focus is on the result or change to the object instead of the event in a regular active sentence. These meaning changes are accompanied by a change in word order from the regular SVO to SOV. Language transfer, linguistic environment, age, and age of language acquisition were con-sidered factors influencing the use and judgment of the ba construction. In this study, 88 participants were included: 25 in the HL group, 24 in the L2 group, and 39 in the CN group. Support for this proposal comes from an online experiment that investigat-ed three groups and the usage of ba sentences. The participants of the three speaker groups were evaluated based on a grammatical judgment task, a multiple-choice test, and a con-trolled production task in the GORILLA Experiment Builder. The results show that HL and L2 speakers differ from L1 speakers in the use of ba sentences, while HL and L1 speakers differ from L2 speakers in the judgement of ba sentences. Com-pared to L1 speakers, HL and L2 speakers used simple complements in ba sentences more frequently. The results also demonstrated that the age of second language acquisition had the most significant influence on the usage of HL and L2 in ba sentences, followed by the dominant language, dominant language environment and lastly the age of the participants. These results support the importance of language dominance and age of acquisition in the usage patterns for heritage and L2 speakers.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Linguistics

Grantor

University of Saskatchewan

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Wu, Xiaodan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Spreng, Bettina

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Li, Zhi
• Cenerini, Chantale

• heritage speakers, heritage Chinese, L2 Chinese speakers, ba sentences, language transfer, language environment, age of acquisition

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10388/14629

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:harvest.usask.ca:10388/14629