ORCID Profile
0000-0003-4325-9875
Current Organisation
Western Sydney University
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Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 02-02-2023
Abstract: This study tests the applicability of the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis (LMH) to the L2 acquisition of Chinese syntax within a Processability Theory framework. The LMH makes testable predictions for L2 acquisition based on the mapping between argument-structure and functional-structure. Empirical evidence from typologically erse languages for the LMH is not robust as yet and does not include any L2 Chinese empirical study so far. This study ventures to fill the gap by testing the LMH for the acquisition of Chinese L2. Data for this investigation comes from a one-year longitudinal study on the oral production by three adult beginning learners of L2 Chinese in a Chinese university. Results show that the observed acquisition sequence of the investigated structures was consistent with the hypothesized LMT-based processing hierarchy applied to Chinese L2. This study contributes empirical evidence for the LMH, and supports the hypothesized intermediate stage, i.e., ‘default mapping and additional argument’.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 31-12-2020
Abstract: Cross-linguistic influence studies usually investigate how the bilingual’s first language (L1) influences the acquisition and use of their second language (L2) within the L2 context. This study, by contrast, investigates how the bilingual’s L2 may influence their L1 within the L1 environment, specifically whether the L2 affects L1 performance in an L1 environment in Chinese (L1)-English (L2) late bilinguals, in the domain of subject realisation. Typologically, Chinese allows pronominal subjects to be optionally null under certain discourse-pragmatic conditions whereas English requires obligatory pronominal subjects under most circumstances. To examine possible L2 effects, 15 Chinese-English bilinguals (Experimental) and 15 Chinese monolinguals (Control) participated in Chinese narrative tasks. Results show that bilingual participants produce significantly lower percentages of null subjects than the control group, indicating that bilinguals prefer overt subjects over null subjects in their L1 Chinese utterances under the influence of L2 English syntactic patterns.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 02-02-2023
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 02-02-2023
Abstract: This chapter examines the development of polar questions, in English and Japanese in a bilingual child acquiring these two typologically different languages from birth in a one-parent-one-language environment in Australia. The three-year longitudinal data-set was collected from the time Haru, the informant, was one year and eleven months of age. Her polar questions began with the use of rising intonation in single or two-word utterances in both languages. Her development continued in language-specific ways resembling that of L1 development in each language, much in line with the Prominence Hypothesis. As well as supporting this Hypothesis and the universality of PT in a bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA) context the study highlights the importance of the two-word stage in child language development and proposes a Two-word stage for PT’s developmental schedule, intermediate between the lemma stage and the canonical order stage within the BFLA context.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 02-02-2023
Abstract: This study investigates the development of plural encoding in a Malay-English bilingual first language acquirer from a Processability Theory (PT) perspective. In Malay, plurality is encoded through reduplication, while English uses morphological inflection. The child’s oral production was collected weekly from age 3 to 3 using natural conversation and elicitation tasks in separate Malay and English sessions. Expressions for singular and plural contexts are analysed based on PT. Results suggest that pluralisation in each language followed PT, they add to the applicability of PT to bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), and reveal some novel typological sequences. Cross-linguistic influences were found in plural encodings in each language. Also, a prosodic feature was, usefully, found to disambiguate between Malay ‘iteration’ (Lemma) and ‘reduplication’ (Category procedure).
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 02-02-2023
Abstract: This study investigates the effect of Developmentally Moderated Focus on Form (DMFonF) focusing on plural marking in English L2 in Indonesian kindergarten children. Before the study, these children learned English through a communicative programme. The study, designed within the Processability Theory framework, included a pre-test, DMFonF intervention, and post-test. Two kindergarten classes, K1 (first-year, n = 10) and K2 (second-year, n = 10), participated in the study. At pre-test, all children were at the single-word stage. That was after K1 children learned English for one semester and K2 for three semesters. After the one semester-DMFonF intervention, all children acquired lexical plural marking, and most of them also acquired phrasal plural agreement. This finding suggests that DMFonF is effective in promoting early L2 grammatical development.
No related grants have been discovered for Bruno Di Biase.