Dual input and learnability: Null objects in Cantonese-English bilingual children

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A patient-subject construction in Cantonese

A novel patient-subject construction (1a) emerged from children’s and adults’ elicited production. Such construction only appeared when the target aimed for an object relative clause with an inanimate subject and an animate object (IA), as shown in (1b), but not in other animacy configurations or relative clauses of other NP types, such as subject relative clauses. (1) a. Patient-subject relative clause: [RC __ 冚住張被]嗰個BB kam2zyu6 zoeng1 pei2 go2go3bi4bi1 cover-CONT CL blanket that CL baby 'the baby being covered by the blanket' b. Target object relative clause with an inanimate subject and an animate object: [RC張被冚住嗰個 zoeng1 pei2 kam2zyu6 go2 go3 bi4bi1 CL blanket cover-CONT __ ] that CL BB baby 'the baby that the blanket is covering' The relative clause in (1a) can be analysed as a subject relative clause based on the main clause in (2). (2) Patient-subject construction: 個BB冚住張被 go3 bi4bi1 kam2zyu6 zoeng1 pei2 CL baby cover-CONT CL blanket 'the baby is being covered by the blanket' The original patient object becomes the subject, whereas the original agent subject becomes the object of the patient-subject construction. The switch of the syntactic positions does not trigger a change in meaning of the predicate event; the original transitive sense, such as the meaning of the sword stabbing the old man in the example, is preserved. There is, however, a slight difference in semantics between the target transitive construction and the patient-subject construction: the latter carries a sense of describing a state experiencing by the target referent, instead of describing the happening of an event, making the patient subject more like an experiencer in the predicate. The construction resembles an unaccusative one with the subject being the patient of the predicate, yet it is not an unaccusative verb as it is not intransitive; it takes an agentive object. It is similar to the passive voice, which promotes the object to the subject position and demotes the subject to lower positions, yet it does not have the appropriate grammatical markings for passive voice; it is not marked by bei2, and neither does the agent become an oblique object. It also resembles locative inversion, as suggested by the verb often marked by the continuous aspect zyu6, yet it is not necessarily marked by zyu6. This paper explores the nature of the patient-subject construction. By scrutinizing the properties of the construction in detail, it aims to identify what kind of verb construction exactly is the construction with a transitive verb taking a patient subject and an agent object.published_or_final_versio

Code-Mixing and Mixed Verbs in Cantonese-English Bilingual Children: Input and Innovation

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The canonical word order myth: investigating a processing-typological puzzle in the Cantonese double object construction

PosterThe frequency of canonicity (frequent, structurally basic and/or pragmatically neutral) word orders is often associated with easier processing, while syntactic alternatives usually incur complexity and processing difficulty (Hawkins, 2004; Ellis, 2002; Cook et al., 2009). In this paper we show that the canonical double-object construction (DOC, a) in Cantonese (VO with head-final NPs) is difficult to process in that incremental increases in the complexity of the direct object (DO) increase reading time (RT) and reduce recall accuracy relative to syntactic alternatives, and induce greater avoidance of the DOC in elicited production. We hypothesize that this is because the canonical word order involves processing-demanding center-embedding ...postprin

Syntactic transfer in a Cantonese-English bilingual child

Research on early bilingual development has suggested that syntactic transfer in bilingual acquisition is dependent on patterns of dominance and properties of the dual input the child is exposed to. In a case study of a Hong Kong bilingual child we present evidence of transfer from Cantonese to English in three areas where the two languages contrast typologically: wh-in-situ interrogatives, null objects and prenominal relatives are observed at a period when Cantonese is dominant as measured by MLUw. Comparisons with monolingual development show both qualitative and quantitative differences attributable to transfer. Language dominance is seen as the major determinant of transfer, with input ambiguity playing a role in the domain of null objects. While two distinct and separate linguistic systems are simultaneously developing in the bilingual mind, the pervasiveness of transfer implies a high degree of interaction between them. The findings show that the bilingual subject in our case study has taken a different path from monolinguals toward the target.published_or_final_versio

Bilingual first language acquisition and the mechanisms of substrate influence

This paper draws together two fields of study, early bilingual acquisition and language contact, showing close parallels between transfer at the individual and substrate influence at the societal level. Romaine (1996) emphasizes that ‘the bilingual individual is the ultimate locus of language contact’, while Thomason (2001) considers bilingual first language acquisition as a mechanism of contact-induced change which has been relatively little studied to date. Pursuing these two ideas, we show how the developmental patterns in bilingual Cantonese-English children parallel prominent features in a contact variety of English, namely Singapore Colloquial English, spoken by a community of native speakers (Gupta 1994). At the individual ...postprin

Relative clauses in English-Mandarin bilingual children: Language transfer and development in Singapore

The role of cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children’s development remains a matter of debate. Some researchers have proposed that simultaneously bilingual learners develop the linguistic systems of two languages in the same way as matched monolingual children do. Other researchers have argued that bilingual children show different developmental pathways. This study investigates cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of relative clauses by English-Mandarin bilingual children in Singapore. The elicitation task included narration and interview tasks. Thirty-six primary school students aged from 6 to 11 years old completed the task in both English and Mandarin. The results reveal that the number of relative clauses increased with age in both languages. Participants had a preference for subject relatives over object relatives. The most frequent error type in Mandarin involves postnominal relative clauses, which have not been reported in monolingual children in the literature and thus can be treated as evidence of transfer from English. The findings of this study provide evidence for cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children's speech.postprin

Comprehension of Subject and Object Relative Clauses in a Trilingual Acquisition Context

Chinese relative clauses (RCs) have word order properties that are distinctly rare across languages of the world; such properties provide a good testing ground to tease apart predictions regarding the relative complexity of subject and object RCs in acquisition and processing. This study considers these special word order properties in a multilingual acquisition context, examining how Cantonese(L1)-English(L2)-Mandarin(L3) trilingual children process RCs in two Chinese languages differing in exposure conditions. Studying in an English immersion international school, these trilinguals are also under intensive exposure to English. Comparisons of the trilinguals with their monolingual counterparts are made with a focus on the directionality of cross-linguistic influence. The study considers how various factors such as language exposure, structural overlaps in the target languages, typological distance, and language dominance can account for the linguistic abilities and vulnerabilities exhibited by a group of children in a trilingual acquisition context. Twenty-one trilingual 5- to 6-year-olds completed tests of subject- and object- RC comprehension in all three languages. Twenty-four age-matched Cantonese monolinguals and 24 age-matched Mandarin monolinguals served as comparison groups. Despite limited exposure to Mandarin, the trilinguals performed comparable to the monolinguals. Their Cantonese performance uniquely predicts their Mandarin performance, suggesting positive transfer from L1 Cantonese to L3 Mandarin. In Cantonese, however, despite extensive exposure from birth, the trilinguals comprehended object RCs significantly worse than the monolinguals. Error analyses suggested an English-based head-initial analysis, implying negative transfer from L2 English to L1 Cantonese. Overall, we identified a specific case of bi-directional influence between the first and second/third languages. The trilinguals experience facilitation in processing Mandarin RCs, because parallels and overlaps in both form and function provide a transparent basis for positive transfer from L1 Cantonese to L3 Mandarin. On the other hand, they experience more difficulty in processing object RCs in Cantonese compared to their monolingual peers, because structural overlaps with competing structures from English plus intensive exposure to English lead to negative transfer from L2 English to L1 Cantonese. The findings provide further evidence that head noun assignment in object RCs is especially vulnerable in multilingual Cantonese children when they are under intensive exposure to English.published_or_final_versio

Structural insights into functional amyloid inhibition in Gram –ve bacteria

Amyloids are proteinaceous aggregates known for their role in debilitating degenerative diseases involving protein dysfunction. Many forms of functional amyloid are also produced in nature and often these systems require careful control of their assembly to avoid the potentially toxic effects. The best-characterised functional amyloid system is the bacterial curli system. Three natural inhibitors of bacterial curli amyloid have been identified and recently characterised structurally. Here, we compare common structural features of CsgC, CsgE and CsgH and discuss the potential implications for general inhibition of amyloid

Potent and selective inhibitors of histone deacetylase-3 containing chiral oxazoline capping groups and a N-(2-Aminophenyl)-benzamide binding unit

A novel series of potent chiral inhibitors of histone deacetylase (HDAC) is described that contains an oxazoline capping group and a N-(2-aminophenyl)-benzamide unit. Among several new inhibitors of this type exhibiting Class I selectivity and potent inhibition of HDAC3-NCoR2, in vitro assays for the inhibition of HDAC1, HDAC2, and HDAC3-NCoR2 by N-(2-aminophenyl)-benzamide 15k gave respective IC50 values of 80, 110, and 6 nM. Weak inhibition of all other HDAC isoforms (HDAC4, 5, 6, 7, and 9: IC50 > 100 000 nM; HDAC8: IC50 = 25 000 nM; HDAC10: IC50 > 4000 nM; HDAC11: IC50 > 2000 nM) confirmed the Class I selectivity of 15k. 2-Aminoimidazolinyl, 2-thioimidazolinyl, and 2-aminooxazolinyl units were shown to be effective replacements for the pyrimidine ring present in many other 2-(aminophenyl)-benzamides previously reported, but the 2-aminooxazolinyl unit was the most potent in inhibiting HDAC3-NCoR2. Many of the new HDAC inhibitors showed higher solubilities and lower binding to human serum albumin than that of Mocetinostat. Increases in histone H3K9 acetylation in the human cell lines U937 and PC-3 was observed for all three oxazolinyl inhibitors evaluated; those HDAC inhibitors also lowered cyclin E expression in U937 cells but not in PC-3 cells, indicating underlying differences in the mechanisms of action of the inhibitors on those two cell lines