Predicting Chinese and English interrogative development in a multilingual context: a corpus-based study of Singapore preschoolers

ABSTRACT

This study elicited and analyzed all the Chinese and English interrogatives from the Singapore Early Child Mandarin Corpus (132 children aged 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, and 5;6) to examine the effects and predictors of early bilingual development in Singapore preschoolers. The results indicated that: (1) there was significant age (but not gender) effect in the production of Chinese and English interrogatives; (2) relatively more types of English interrogatives were produced and more preschoolers produced English interrogatives; (3) Parent Language Input Pattern significantly predicted the increase of Chinese interrogatives, whereas Parent Language Input Pattern and Language Spoken by Child jointly but negatively predicted English interrogatives; (4) the pattern that both parents only speak Chinese was associated with the highest production of Chinese interrogatives and the lowest production of English ones, whereas the pattern that both parents only speak English had the highest production of English interrogatives; and (5) the ‘one-parent-one-language’ pattern was found to have a balanced but reduced production of Chinese and English interrogatives, indicating a subtractive bilingualism in Singapore preschoolers.

KEYWORDS:

• Early bilingual development
• Chinese and English interrogatives
• subtractive bilingualism
• corpus study
• Singapore

Acknowledgement

Thanks, are given to all the participating children and their parents, Dr Connie Lum and her Singapore team, and the Hong Kong student research assistants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is based on a project (RGC Ref No. 747109) funded to the first author by the Research Grants Council of the Government of the Hong Kong SAR.