Syntactic and Discourse Features in Chinese Heritage Grammars: A Case of Acquiring Features in the Chinese Sentence-Final Particle <i>ba</i>

• Main Author: Shanshan Yan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-06-01
• Series: Languages
• Subjects: sentence-final particle; Chinese heritage speakers; features
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/5/2/26

This study investigates how syntactic and discourse features of Chinese sentence-final particles (the question particle <i>ba</i> and the suggestion particle <i>ba</i>) are reconfigured in Chinese heritage grammars. It has been argued that features of the Chinese particles <i>ba</i> are present in English but are configured differently. An acceptability judgment task, a discourse completion task, and a translation task were adopted in this study. In total, 35 Chinese heritage speakers and 18 Chinese native speakers took part in this study. The results show that none of the heritage speaker groups had any problem in configuring the discourse feature of the suggestion particle <i>ba</i> and the syntactic features of the question particle <i>ba</i>. However, none of them could successfully reconfigure the discourse feature of the question particle <i>ba</i>. It seems that the effects of dominant language transfer, reduced Chinese input, and limited processing resources play roles in the reconfiguration of discourse features in heritage grammars. As compared to previous L2 studies regarding the same phenomenon, heritage speakers with more and early Chinese input seem to have advantages over L2 learners in terms of syntactic features. L2 learners are found to be slightly better than heritage speakers in terms of reconfiguring some discourse properties.