Protracted development in the heritage lexicon

Abstract

Research on heritage language acquisition at the school age has shown protracted development and early stabilisation in morphosyntax and the lexicon. Our study examined the properties of resultative verb compound (RVC), a structure at the crossroads of the lexicon and morphosyntax, in second-generation child heritage speakers in the UK who had continuous input in Mandarin Chinese since birth. We analysed three subclasses of RVCs produced by the heritage children (n = 27, age 4–14) and their parents (n = 18) in an oral narration task and compared them with those by children in Beijing (n = 48, age 4–9) from existing databases. Our results show that the heritage children produced RVCs quite frequently and felicitously yet highly repetitively and conservatively, with a remarkably large proportion of their RVCs consisting of a strongly lexicalised subclass with direct lexical equivalents in English. Correlational analyses show that the heritage children’s RVCs improve with age, rather than provision of RVC in the parental input, indicating the role of cumulative input in RVC acquisition. Overall, the development of RVC in heritage Mandarin is delayed rather than stabilised or attrited, supporting the lexical account for grammatical vulnerabilities in proficient heritage speakers.