University of Alberta.
J Child Lang. 2020 Sep;47(5):1073-1083. doi: 10.1017/S0305000920000082. Epub 2020 Feb 27.
Learning to mark for tense in a second language is notoriously difficult for speakers of a tenseless language like Chinese. In this study we test two reasons for these difficulties in Chinese-English sequential bilingual children: (1) morphophonological transfer (i.e., avoidance of complex codas), and (2) interpretation of -ed as an aspect marker of completion, like the Mandarin -le. Mandarin-English bilingual children and age-matched monolinguals did a cartoon retell task. The verbs used in the stories were coded for accuracy in English, telicity, and suppliance of -ed or -le. The results were consistent with morphophonological transfer: the bilingual children were more accurate with irregular past forms in English than regular forms. The results were also consistent with the bilingual children's interpretation of -ed as an aspect marker: most of their production of -ed was on telic verbs. We discuss possible reasons for the children's interpretation of -ed as an aspect marker.
对于像中文这样没有时态的语言的使用者来说，学习在第二语言中标记时态是出了名的困难。在这项研究中，我们测试了汉语-英语顺序双语儿童在这些困难中的两个原因：（1）形态音位转移（即避免复杂的词尾），以及（2）将-ed 解释为完成的体标记，类似于普通话的 -le。汉语-英语双语儿童和年龄匹配的单语儿童完成了卡通复述任务。故事中使用的动词在英语中的准确性、终点性和-ed 或 -le 的补充方面进行了编码。结果与形态音位转移一致：双语儿童在英语不规则过去式的准确性上高于规则形式。结果也与双语儿童对-ed 的解释一致，即作为一个体标记：他们的-ed 的大部分产生都在终点动词上。我们讨论了儿童将-ed 解释为体标记的可能原因。
