Crosslinguistic InfluenCrosslinguistic Influence in Two Directions The Acquisition of Dative Constructionsce in Two Directions The Acquisition of Dative Constructions

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DOI: 10.1177/1367006909356646
2010 14: 87 International Journal of Bilingualism
Chloe Chenjie Gu
English bilingual children in Cantonese
Crosslinguistic influence in two directions: The acquisition of dative constructions
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87 Gu: Crosslinguistic influence in two directions International Journal of Bilingualism Volume 14 Number 1 2010, 87103
|
Crosslinguistic influence in two
directions: The acquisition of dative
constructions in CantoneseEnglish
bilingual children
Chloe Chenjie Gu
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA
Abstract
Previous studies suggest that language dominance and input ambiguity are
the two major determinants of crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language
acquisition. This article reports a case of bi-directional crosslinguistic transfer in
the acquisition of dative constructions by CantoneseEnglish bilingual children.
Longitudinal data of five bilingual children reveal qualitative and quantitative
differences between bilingual and monolingual children in the development
of English prepositional datives and Cantonese inverted double object datives.
Individual differences among the five bilingual children largely correspond to
their language dominance patterns, and input ambiguity also helps to explain
some transfer effects. It is found that crosslinguistic influence is most likely
to take place at vulnerable domains in language acquisition, and a great deal of the interaction between
the two languages is observed in such domains. The findings suggest that crosslinguistic influence is
pervasive in both directions of bilingual acquisition.
Introduction
Many cases of crosslinguistic influence in the bilingual first language acquisition literature
are accounted for by both language dominance and input ambiguity factors (e.g. Paradis &
Genesee, 1996; Mller & Hulk, 2001). According to Paradis and Genesee (1996), there are three
major instantiations of crosslinguistic influence: acceleration, delay and transfer. Acceleration/
delay refers to precocious/postponed development in one language, while transfer is defined
as the incorporation of a grammatical property into one language from the other (Paradis
& Genesee, 1996: 3).
Key words
Cantonese
English bilingual
children
dative
constructions
transfer
The International Journal of Bilingualism
Copyright 2010 the Author/s 2010, ISSN; Vol 14 (1): 87103; ID no 356646;
DOI; 10.1177/1367006909356646 http://Ijb.sagepub.com
Address for correspondence
Chloe Chenjie Gu, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, South College, Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
[email: cgu@linguist.umass.edu]
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Yang Gu, Richard Larson, Thomas Lee, Yafei Li, Gladys Tang, Joshua Viau,
Virginia Yip, audiences at BUCLD31 and ISB6, and the IBJ reviewers and editors for helpful comments
and discussion. Responsibility for errors is entirely mine. This research is supported by a postgraduate
studentship from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
at UNIVERSITY OF PERADENIYA on March 19, 2014 ijb.sagepub.com Downloaded from
88 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUALISM 14 (1)
Transfer reflects the interdependence of two grammars in bilingual first language
acquisition, as one of the two languages serves as a guide for the other to build certain syntactic
properties on it. Two major proposals have been suggested to explain why one of the languages
becomes the model language in the development of a particular structure. The first proposal
holds that language dominance patterns greatly influence the direction of crosslinguistic
influence, as the model language is very often the dominant language. Certain structures in
the weak language may take longer to acquire, or reflect (target-deviant) syntactic properties
that resemble the dominant language. However, there is also some evidence that suggests that
certain types of crosslinguistic influence do not take place from the dominant language to the
weak language (Mller & Hulk, 2001). This type of crosslinguistic influence is taken care
of by the second proposal, which argues that one language becomes the model language
because it contains little input ambiguity with regard to a particular construction, whereas
more ambiguity is found in the other language (Mller, 1998; Mller & Hulk, 2001). The two
proposals make different predictions when the language that contains more ambiguous input
is the dominant language.
In addition to the directionality issue, more details need to be sorted out about the domains
in which crosslinguistic influence is likely to take place. Mller and Hulk (2001) argue that
crosslinguistic influence occurs at the exact syntactic domains in which monolingual children
also have trouble withthough to a less extent. Such domains can be referred to as vulnerable
domains in language acquisition, and Mller (2003) defines them as domains thus: children
develop particular grammatical phenomena much later than others, adding that they are
prone to error in acquisition in the sense that children will deduce systems for these domains
which do not correspond to the target system (Mller, 2003: vii). Thus, predictions about the
locus of crosslinguistic influence heavily depend on identification of vulnerable domains in
language acquisition.
Acquisition of dative constructions is of special interest to our study of vulnerable
domains and crosslinguistic influence, as this is an area where both monolingual and bilingual
children are prone to error or delay. Snyder and Stromswold (1997) report that monolingual
English-speaking children start to produce English prepositional datives at a later stage than
double object datives. In the case of monolingual Cantonese-speaking children, previous
studies show that many such children find a language-specific inverted double object dative
construction difficult to acquire (Chan, 2003; Yip and Matthews, 2007). This article looks
at the acquisition of dative constructions in bilingual children, with emphasis on vulnerable
domains and crosslinguistic influence. In particular, we examine the role language dominance
and input ambiguity play regarding the direction and patterns of crosslinguistic influence.
More details on the properties of English and Cantonese dative constructions are given in
the next section.
Dative constructions in English and Cantonese
In English (and a number of other languages), dative verbs have two argument realization
options, namely the double object dative (DOD) (1a), and the prepositional dative (PD) (1b).
In prepositional datives, there is a non-benefactive vs. benefactive distinction, realized by
different choices of to (1b) and for (2b).
89 Gu: Crosslinguistic influence in two directions
(1) a. John gave Mary a book. (double object dative)
b. John gave a book to Mary. (prepositional to-dative)
(2) a. John baked Mary a cake. (double object dative)
b. John baked a cake for Mary. (prepositional for-dative)
Cantonese, like English, has double object datives and prepositional-like serial verb dative
constructions (in which a grammaticalized dative marker bei2originally meaning give
introduces the goal/benefactive argument as the English prepositions do). Cantonese also has
an inverted double object dative (IDOD) which places the theme and the goal in the reverse
order of an English double object dative. These three types of Cantonese dative constructions
can be categorized as follows:
(3) a. DOD: Verb-Goal-Theme
b. SVD: Verb-Theme-Dative Marker (bei2)-Goal
c. IDOD: Verb-Theme-Goal
(adapted from Tang, 1998)
Unlike English, most Cantonese dative verbs only appear in one type of dative construction.
1

Tang (1998) sub-categorized these verbs into three groups: (a) teach verbs, (b) send, fry, pluck
verbs and (c) give verbs. The first two classes consist of many dative verbs, but the give class
only has one verb bei2 (give). Teach verbs appear in the double object dative (4), send, fry,
pluck verbs appear in the serial verb dative (5), and bei2 (give) appears in the inverted double
object dative (6).
(4) Ngo5 gaau3 keoi5 Gwong2dung1waa2 (DOD)

I teach 3sg Cantonese
I teach him/her Cantonese. (Tang, 1998)
(5) Siu2ming4 gei3 zo2 jat1 fung1 seon3 bei2 ngo5 (SVD)

Siuming send PERF one CL letter give I
Siuming sent a letter to me. (Tang, 1998)
(6) Ngo5 bei2 zo2 jat1 zi1 bat1 keoi5 (IDOD)

I give PERF one CL pen 3sg
I gave a pen to him/her. (Tang, 1998)
1
In English, a group of verbs that have Latinate origins only appear in the prepositional dative construction, but
in general, non-Latinate dative verbs are compatible with both constructions.
It is suggested that the Cantonese inverted double object dative is derived from the underlying
serial verb form [bei2-Theme-bei2-Goal] (Tang, 1998; Yip and Matthews, 2007). The second
bei2 is deleted due to haplology effect, which penalizes repetition of the same phonological
element:
(7) SVC: bei2-Theme-bei2-Goal
IDOD: bei2-Theme--Goal (adapted from Tang, 1998)
Similarities and differences between English and Cantonese dative constructions are
summarized in Table 1. Both languages contain double object dative and prepositional/serial
verb dative constructions, but Cantonese also has a special inverted double object dative
which puts the two objects in the reverse order of double object datives. There is no dative
alternation in Cantonese, as each construction is subcategorized for a specific class of verbs.
Table 1
English and Cantonese dative constructions
English Cantonese
Double object datives Yes Yes (limited to teach class verbs)
Prepositional datives Yes Yes (limited to send, fry and pluck
class verbs)
Inverted double object datives No Yes (limited to give class verbs)
Prone-to-error dative constructions
Snyder and Stromswold (1997), using age of first use as a measure, analyze the acquisition
order of double object datives and to-datives of 12 English monolingual children. They find
that the acquisition of the two constructions is strongly correlated with each other, but children
acquire double object datives significantly earlier than to-datives. The mean age of acquisition
of double object datives is 2;2.5 (years;months), while the mean age of acquisition of to-datives
is 2;6.9 (years;months). There is an average gap and 4.4 months between the acquisition of
double object datives and to-datives. Another study of 22 monolingual English-speaking
children from the CHILDES corpus by Viau (2006) also shows a similar developmental gap
between double object datives and prepositional datives.
Chan (2003) investigates the longitudinal development of Cantonese dative constructions
in 8 Cantonese monolingual children and 3 CantoneseEnglish bilingual children. One of her
major findings is that both monolingual and bilingual children have difficulty in acquiring
inverted double object datives with the verb bei2 (give). She reports that childrens early
utterances are generally in the non-target double object order ([bei2-Goal-Theme]), and some
contain a topicalized theme ([Theme-bei2-Goal]) or are in the serial verb order ([bei2-Theme-
bei2-Goal]). The error rate of inverted double object constructions for monolingual children
is around 64 per cent, while the rate for CantoneseEnglish bilingual children is as high as
88 per cent (Yip & Matthews, 2007).
However, there are still several unanswered questions concerning the development of
dative constructions in CantoneseEnglish bilingual children. This article aims to illustrate
the developmental path bilingual children follow and the interaction of two grammars in the
acquisition of dative constructions. In particular, it is shown that each languagedominant
or non-dominantinfluences the other on certain aspects of grammar, and a great deal of
interaction is found in the vulnerable domain of bilingual language acquisition.
Methodology
This study investigates longitudinal data of five CantoneseEnglish bilingual children from the
Hong Kong Bilingual Child Language Corpus (Yip & Matthews, 2007). All the five children are
raised in one-parent-one-language families and are exposed to Cantonese and English naturally
from birth. Parents of these children are native speakers of English or Cantonese, and they use their
native language to communicate with their children. The children are recorded weekly or biweekly
in an age period between 1;03 (years;months) and 4;06.
2
Among the 5 bilingual children, 4 are dominant in Cantonese, and 1 is dominant in English
(Yip & Matthews, 2006, pers. comm.).
3
This combination of different language dominance
patterns allows us to investigate the role of language dominance in crosslinguistic influence.
Also, note that 3 of the 4 Cantonese-dominant children (Timmy, Sophie and Alicia) are siblings in
the same family. Information on age range, gender, dominant language and numbers of sessions
in each language is summarized in Table 2. When comparison with monolingual children is
needed, we use data from 9 out of the 12 monolingual English-speaking children Snyder and
Stromswold (1997) have studied.
4
For Cantonese, 8 monolingual children from the Hong Kong
Cantonese Child Language Corpus are selected. All these children were born to Cantonese-
speaking parents and speak Cantonese as the first and only language. Each child is recorded on
a biweekly basis. Every corpus used in this study is available at CHLDES (MacWhinney, 2000).
Following Snyder and Stromswold (1997) and Viau (2006), this study chooses age of first
non-imitative use as the measure of emergence.
5
If children produce no non-target structures
or only make a few performance errors after their first such constructions, the age of emer-
gence is also considered as the age of acquisition of such constructions.
6
We separate the
notion of emergence from acquisition, as by acquisition we expect children to have very low
2
Previous work from Snyder and Stromswold (1997) and Viau (2006) shows that the age range 1;063;06 repre-
sents the best time for studies on early double object and prepositional datives. Recordings of the five bilingual
children fit exactly into this age period.
3
Following Yip and Matthews (2000), language dominance of the five bilingual children is determined by
comparing childrens Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) in each language. Though it is still unsettled whether
MLU values of different languages are fully comparable, Yip and Matthews (2006) show that MLU differential
(the difference between MLU scores in each language) is a reliable measure of language dominance for children
in the Hong Kong bilingual child language corpus, and childrens MLU differentials match patterns of transfer
effects and language preference.
4
These children include: Adam, Eve, Mark, Naomi, Nathaniel, Nina, Peter, Sarah and Shem. The other 3 children
(Allison, April and Ross) are excluded from our study because of infrequent recordings during an age period
when first double object datives are expected to emerge.
5
To qualify as a non-imitative utterance, children must produce an utterance that is not identical to the preceding
adult utterance (i.e. childrens utterance must contain at least one different element which indicates that they
have processed the preceding adult utterance and produced their own version afterwards). However, when
children produce a very similar sentence after several such adult utterances, it would be regarded as imitative.
6
For an utterance to be counted as the first use of a construction, it must be non-imitative and clearly uttered.
error rates in one construction for a continuous period, while by emergence we only expect
children to have some basic syntactic structures of that construction, with or without making
a decision between target and non-target structures. We think that compared with order of
acquisition, order of emergence is a better indicator of childrens developmental patterns in
dative constructions, as at the time of first non-imitative use, children already form their
initial grammar of that construction.
As previous studies report that children acquiring Cantonese dative constructions are
prone to error in producing the inverted double object datives, a Cantonese dative construction
will not be considered as being fully acquired until its accuracy rate reaches and remains more
than 90 per cent after a certain age.
7
The procedures to identify English dative constructions are similar to what Snyder and
Stromswold (1997) use in their study. Snyder and Stromswold (1997) make a list of potential
dativizable verbs to identify childrens double object datives.
8
The CLAN program is used
to extract all childrens utterances that contain any of the potential dativizable verbs, and the
results are checked by hand to make sure they are not imitations of a preceding adult utter-
ance. For prepositional datives, the CLAN program is used to extract all childrens utterances
containing to and for, and these sentences are hand checked for prepositional datives, including
ungrammatical ones. For an utterance to be counted as a prepositional dative, it must have two
objects and an overt preposition to or for. The sequence of the two objects can be non-target-
like, but if there is no overt preposition, it will be counted as a double object dative.
The procedures to identify Cantonese dative constructions are similar to the procedures
for English ones. For inverted double object datives, as bei2 (give) is the only give class
7
It is arbitrary to set the accuracy rate at 90 per cent, but in this study, when children produce non-target structures
alongside target structures, their accuracy rate is around 50 per cent. However, later most children suddenly
stop producing non-target structures and their accuracy rates rise to nearly 100 per cent. Therefore, whether we
take 90 per cent rather than other rates to be the indicator of acquisition does not make a significant difference
to our argument.
8
These verbs included: address, admit, afford, allocate, allocating, allow, ask, assign, bake, baking, bought, bring,
broadcast, brought, build, building, built, buy, buying, commend, communicate, communicating, concede,
conceding, convey, demonstrate, demonstrating, denied, denies, deny, describe, describing, devote, devoting,
dictate, dictating, did, dig, do, does, doing, done, dug, explain, gave, get, give, giving, got, gotten, grant, guar-
antee, impart, lend, lent, made, make, making, mention, order, ordering, orders, preach, prescribe, prescribing,
promise, promising, radio, read, refer, refuse, refusing, relate, relating, relay, reserve, reserving, restore, restoring,
reveal, sell, send, sent, serve, serving, show, sold, submit, take, taking, taught, teach, telegraph, tell, told, took,
transmit, unveil, volunteer, whisper, wire, wiring, write, writing and wrote.
Table 2
Background information of children in the Hong Kong Bilingual Child Language Corpus (Yip and
Matthews, 2007)
Dominant Cantonese English
Child Gender language Age range sessions sessions
Alicia F Cantonese 1;03;103;00;24 40 40
Charlotte F English 1;08;283;00;03 19 19
Llywelyn M Cantonese 2;00;123;04;17 17 17
Sophie F Cantonese 1;06;003;00;09 40 40
Timmy M Cantonese 1;05;203;06;25 34 38
verb that is frequently used in modern Cantonese, the CLAN program is used to extract all
childrens utterances containing bei2, and the results are checked by hand to select possible
non-target double object datives ([bei2-Goal-Theme]) or target inverted double object datives
([bei2-Theme-Goal]). For serial verb constructions and double object datives, the CLAN
program is used to extract all childrens utterances that contain potential dativizable verbs
identified by Tang (1998).
9
The results are hand checked to make sure they are full dative
constructions.
Developmental lag of English prepositional datives
It is found that bilingual children, like their monolingual counterparts, produce English
double object datives before prepositional datives, but there is a wider gap between bilingual
childrens first double object datives and first prepositional datives.
English double object datives emerge before prepositional datives in all 5 bilingual
children. The age of emergence of double object datives ranges from 1;5.2 (years;months) to
2;2.9 (years; months), while the age of emergence of prepositional datives ranges from 2;4.9
to >3;4.6.
10
The mean age of bilingual childrens acquisition of double object datives is 2;0.1,
and their mean age of acquisition of prepositional datives is >2;9.8.
11
No target to-datives
are attested in the transcripts of two children, Alicia and Llywelyn, and in the transcripts of
Llywelyn and Sophie, no target for-datives are attested.
We also examine childrens age of emergence of directional to as Viau (2006) reports
that monolingual children produce directional to before prepositional datives, and the age
of emergence of directional to can help us to figure out whether prepositional datives in
bilingual children are acquired at a relatively later time. The age of emergence of directional
to in bilingual children ranges from 2;1.3 to 2;5.5, and the mean age of emergence is 2;3.1.
Except for Timmy, all the children produced directional to before prepositional datives and
after double object datives. Timmy produces directional to first, then double object datives,
and prepositional datives come last. Each childs age of emergence of double object dative,
prepositional dative, and directional to is provided in Table 3.
There is an average temporal gap of >9.7 months between the emergence of double
object datives and prepositional datives and a gap of >10.4 months between the emergence
of double object datives and to-datives in bilingual children. Compared with the 3.3 months
gap between double object datives and prepositional datives (Viau, 2006) and the 4.4
months gap between double object datives and to-datives (Snyder and Stromswold, 1997)
9
These verbs include: sung3 to give (a present), zoeng2 to award, bun1 to move, daai3 to bring, dai6 to
hand to, deng3 to pelt, gaau1 to deliver, gaap3 to lift food with chopsticks, gei3 to send, lau4 to reserve,
ling1 to carry with hand/to take, lo2 to bring, maai6 to sell, paai3 to deliver, tek3 to kick, wui6 to remit,
caau2 to fry, jing2 to photocopy, pai1 to cut, sai2 to wash, tong3 to iron, waak6 to draw, zam1 to
pour, zik1 to knit, zing2 to make, zak3 to compose, zyu2 to cook, coeng2 to snatch, gaan2 to choose,
maai5 to buy, lo2 to get, tau1 to steal, zaak6 to pluck, ceng2gaau3 to inquire, gaau3 to teach, haau2
to test, kau4 to request and man6 to ask.
10
>3;4.6 means greater or later than 3;4.6. The exact age of acquisition is not known because the child never
produces any target construction before the recording ends.
11
Note that the mean age for prepositional datives is calculated from the earlier age of emergence of to-datives
and for-datives.
in monolingual English-speaking children, CantoneseEnglish bilingual children exhibit a
much wider temporal gap between double object datives and prepositional datives.
There is an average temporal gap of >6.7 months between the emergence of directional to
and prepositional datives in bilingual children while the gap in monolingual English-speaking
children is 0.9 months (Viau, 2006). In contrast, the average gap between the emergence of
double object datives and directional to in bilingual children is 3.0 months, which is very
similar to the 2.4 months gap in monolingual children (Viau, 2006). Table 4 summarizes the
average temporal gaps between double object datives and prepositional datives, directional
to and prepositional datives and double object datives and directional to in bilingual and
monolingual children.
Information on the mean age of emergence of each construction in bilingual and monolin-
gual children is summarized in Table 5. The mean ages of emergence of double object datives
and directional to in bilingual children and monolingual children are similar while the mean
age of emergence of prepositional datives in bilingual children is much greater than that of
monolingual children. This finding, combined with the fact that bilingual children have wider
Table 3
Emergence of English DOD, PD and directional to in bilingual children
Child DOD PD Directional to
Timmy 2;2.9 2;4.9 2;1.3
Sophie 2;1.7 2;9.8 2;5.5
Alicia 1;5.2 2;11.2 2;1.5
Llywelyn 2;2.1 >3;4.6 2;5.3
Charlotte 2;0.8 2;6.5 2;1.7
Mean 2;0.1 >2;9.8 2;3.1
Table 4
Comparison of average temporal gaps of English DOD/PD/directional to between bilingual and
monolingual children
Directional toPD DODdirectional to
DODPD (months) (months) (months)
Bilingual >9.7 >6.7 3.0
Monolingual 3.3 0.9 2.4
gaps between the emergence of double object datives and prepositional datives, indicates that
bilingual children are further delayed in the acquisition of prepositional datives.
Among the five bilingual children, Timmy has the smallest gap (2.0 months) between
the acquisition of double object datives and the acquisition of to-datives.
12
The gap in the
12
This gap is even smaller than the mean gap of 4.4 months in monolingual children (Snyder and Stromswold,
1997).
other bilingual children ranges from 7.4 months to >19.6 months. Note that Charlotte, an
English-dominant child, does not progress as fast as Timmy (a Cantonese-dominant child) in
the development of to-datives, and the pace of development of the four Cantonese-dominant
children varies greatly. Individual bilingual childrens developmental gaps between double
object datives and to-datives are summarized in Table 6.
Language dominance alone cannot answer the question why Timmy progresses exception-
ally fast in his development of to-datives. Examination of Timmys production of to shows that
he produces triadic directional to see example (8) at the remarkably early age of 2;04;14,
(years;months;days) even before his first to-datives are produced at 2;04;28. In contrast, among
the other bilingual children, only Charlotte produces such triadic directional to example
(9) at the age of 3;03;03, which is 5.3 months after her first to-datives. No other bilingual
children produce similar instances of triadic directional to in their recordings.
13
(8) I take him to the hospital. (Timmy 2;04;14)
(9) Daddy cant do take her to the park. (Charlotte 3;03;03)
Among the five bilingual children, those who exhibit a larger gap between double object
datives and to-datives (Sophie, Alicia, Llywelyn and Charlotte) also fail to produce both
triadic dative to and triadic directional to in a short period of time. This suggests that
the ability to separate triadic dative to from triadic directional to is related to the ability
to make a fast progress from double object datives to to-datives.
13
Childrens utterances with the verb take are also examined, and it is found that all five bilingual children are
able to use take in Verb-Particle constructions ([V-NP-Particle] / [V-Particle-NP]) before their recordings end.
So it is not difficulty in learning the individual verbs that delays production of triadic directional to in these
children.
Table 5
Comparison of mean age of emergence of English DOD/PD/
directional to between bilingual and monolingual children
DOD PD Directional to
Bilingual 2;0.1 >2;9.8 2;3.1
Monolingual 2;2.5 2;4.9 2;4.0
Table 6
Bilingual childrens developmental gap between DOD and to-datives
Child Dominant language Gap between DOD and to-datives (months)
Timmy Cantonese 2.0
Sophie Cantonese 8.1
Alicia Cantonese >19.6
Llywelyn Cantonese >14.5
Charlotte English 7.4
Transfer of a non-target prepositional dative from
Cantonese
Two bilingual children produce English for-datives in non-target [V-PP
GOAL
-DP
THEME
] order,
and no target for-datives are found in these childrens transcripts. Llywelyn produces one such
for-dative in his last recording at age 3;04;17.
14
Sophie produces four such for-datives in her
corpus, and all these for-datives are found in the same recording at age 2;05;30. Some of the
non-target for-datives are illustrated in examples (10)(12).
(10) * will buy for Kenny that. (Llywelyn 3;04;17)
(11) * I buy for you the bear okay? (Sophie 2;05;30)
(12) * buy for me this one. (Sophie 2;05;30)
The same behavior is not found in monolingual English-speaking children. Only one child
(Peter) produces one prepositional dative in the non-target [V-PP-DP] order, and this utterance
is likely to be a performance error, as Peter altogether produces 17 for-datives in nine months,
and except one mistake, the other 16 are all target constructions. The contrast between bilingual
and monolingual children is striking: two out of five bilingual children use the non-target
order for all the for-datives they have produced in their recordings, while only one out of
12 monolingual children occasionally produces one such for-dative. The use of non-target
[V-PP-DP] order reveals a qualitative difference between the two groups.
An analysis of adults utterances containing for-datives shows that the non-target [V-PP
GOAL
-
DP
THEME
] order is never used in the input. This order is not grammatical in Cantonese, either,
as Cantonese serial verb dative constructions always follow the [V-Theme-bei2-Goal] sequence.
However, a search of childrens Cantonese serial verb dative constructions shows that Sophie and
one monolingual Cantonese child (HHC) both produce several serial verb dative constructions with
non-target [V-bei2-Goal-Theme] order. One of these non-target serial verb datives is illustrated in (13).
(13) CHI: * ngo5 dou2 bei2 lei5 seoi2 aa3.

I pour give you water SFP
I pour for you water.
15
(Sophie: 2;08;28)
Sophie produces three non-target [V-bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions from 2;05;02 to 2;08;22,
and seven target serial verb dative constructions at the same period. Her accuracy rate of serial
14
As the construction is found in Llywelyns last recording, we do not know if he continues to produce the same
construction or not. Also, there is a gap of 3.3 months between Llywelyns last two transcripts, and some early
non-target for-datives may not be captured in the recording.
15
The target sentence should be:

(i) ngo5 dou2 seoi2 bei2 lei5 aa3.

I pour water give you SFP
I will pour some water for you.
verb dative constructions remains at 100 per cent after 2;9. Notice that the first occurrence
of Sophies non-target Cantonese serial verb dative construction (2;05;02) is not far from her
first use of non-target English for-datives (2;05;30). However, Sophie only produces non-target
English for-datives in one recording, but the corresponding non-target construction persists
longer in her Cantonese grammar.
The data suggests that bilingual childrens non-target English [V-PP
GOAL
-DP
THEME
]
construction is a transfer effect from Cantonese.
16
This case shows that bilingual childrens
non-target grammar in one language is able to influence parallel structures in the other
language though such non-target structures may not be found in the utterances of monolingual
children (of the other language). It indicates that the two language systems in the bilingual
mind are highly interactive, sharing structural properties at a time when grammars of each
language are still not fully target-like.
Crosslinguistic influence in the development of
English dative constructions
Crosslinguistic influence is manifested as delay in the late emergence of prepositional datives
in bilingual children. Transfer effects are also identified in bilingual childrens non-target
[V-PP-DP] structures, which come from their Cantonese grammar that adopts a similar non-
target [V-bei2-Goal-Theme] structure.
Language dominance can account for some (but not all) differences we observe
between bilingual and monolingual children. Compared with most Cantonese-dominant
children, Charlotte, an English-dominant child, has smaller gaps between her first double
object dative and prepositional dative constructions, but she does not progress as fast
as Timmy, who is a Cantonese-dominant child. Charlotte exhibits a gap of 5.7 months
between her first double object dative and first prepositional dative, while Timmy only
takes 2.0 months to produce his first prepositional dative after his first double object
dative.
However, according to Yip and Matthews (2006), Timmy is relatively less dominant in
Cantonese than other Cantonese-dominant children. The fact that Charlotte performs better
than the Cantonese-dominant children shows that her knowledge of English grammar is still
more advanced than most Cantonese-dominant bilingual children. Charlottes dominance in
English seems to help her acquire prepositional datives in a faster fashion. Timmys faster
progress of prepositional datives, on the other hand, may be related to his early mastery of
different types of dative to and directional to.
The non-target English [V-PP
GOAL
-DP
THEME
] utterances in bilingual children exhibit
transfer effects from Cantonese. Language dominance patterns mainly influence the direction
of transfer in this construction, as only Cantonese-dominant children produce this non-target
structure. The English-dominant child, Charlotte, does not produce any Cantonese dative
constructions throughout her recordings, and her grammar of English prepositional datives
is relatively unaffected.
16
Llywelyn does not produce any Cantonese serial verb dative construction in his corpus, and it is difficult to
conclude whether his non-target English prepositional dative is influenced by his Cantonese grammar because
of the 3.3-month gap between his last two transcripts. It is likely that Llywelyns early Cantonese serial dative
constructions are not captured in the recordings.
With respect to input ambiguity, it is uncertain whether input properties of Cantonese
influence childrens development in English prepositional datives. Cantonese, unlike English,
adopts a different lexicalization pattern and contrasts dative to with directional to by choices of
two different lexical items bei2 (give ) and heoi3 (go ), and dative for with other types
of for by bei2 (give ) and bong1 (help ). However, in Cantonese, no lexical distinction is
made between dative to and dative for (both represented by the same dative marker bei2).
17
The
differences in the lexicalization patterns make it difficult to predict the direction of transfer.
Development of Cantonese dative constructions
A significant contrast is found between monolingual and bilingual children in their develop-
mental patterns of Cantonese dative constructions. Monolingual children, in general, acquire
serial verb dative constructions before producing other types of dative constructions, while
bilingual children do not show a consistent developmental pattern in their use of dative
constructions. The different developmental path is argued to play an important role in influ-
encing childrens acquisition of the inverted double object datives.
Bilingual childrens order of emergence of Cantonese dative constructions is summa-
rized in Table 7. It is found that non-target English double-object-like [bei2-Goal-Theme]
constructions appear in several bilingual children before their first target [bei2-Theme-
Goal] constructions. Most bilingual children do not produce serial verb dative constructions
before their first target [bei2-Theme-Goal] and non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions.
Few bilingual children produce double object datives (with teach verbs) in their recordings.
Charlotte does not produce any dative constructions in her corpus. It is difficult to find a
general developmental pattern in bilingual children.
Monolingual children, on the other hand, exhibit a more consistent developmental
pattern. They produce target [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions before or concurrently with
non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions. Most monolingual children produce serial dative
construction earlier than other constructions.
18
Monolingual childrens order of emergence of
Cantonese dative constructions is summarized in Table 8.
By comparing the order of emergence of Cantonese dative constructions in each bilingual
and monolingual child, we find that one bilingual child (Timmy) demonstrates a developmental
pattern that is more similar to that of most monolingual children, and one monolingual child
(HHC) progresses in a manner that resembles most bilingual children.
Timmy differs from other bilingual children in that he produces his first target [bei2-
Theme-Goal] construction before non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions, and uses a
total of seven such target constructions in five sessions of his corpus (which is very frequent
compared with the one or two target constructions produced by other bilingual children) and
he has the highest accuracy rate in [bei2-Theme-Goal] construction in bilingual children.
HHC differs from other monolingual children in that he only produces non-target
[bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions in his corpus, and he also produces non-target serial verb
dative constructions. Therefore, Timmy and HHC could be considered exceptional cases in
17
Note that bilingual children never produce Cantonese-based [V-Theme-give-Goal] structure in English. This
suggests that bilingual children know that the dative marker bei2 is syntactically different from the main verb
bei2.
18
Except for one child, HHC, who has problems with word order of serial verb dative constructions.
each group, as their performance does not conform to the general developmental pattern of
their own groups.
One major difference we observe between monolingual and bilingual children is the order
of emergence between the target [bei2-Theme-Goal] construction and the non-target [bei2-
Goal-Theme] construction. The mean age of first non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] construction in
bilingual children is 2;6.0, while the mean age of first target [bei2-Theme-Goal] construction is
>2;9.1. If Timmy is excluded, the mean age of first non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] construction
in bilingual children is 2;5.5, while the mean age of first target [bei2-Theme-Goal] construc-
tion is >2;10.5.
The mean age of first non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] construction in monolingual children
is >2;7.2, and the mean age of first target [bei2-Theme-Goal] construction is >2;9.1. If we
exclude HHC, the mean age of first non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] construction in monolingual
children is >2;6.5, while the mean age of first target [bei2-Theme-Goal] construction is 2;7.2.
The mean age of emergence of target [bei2-Theme-Goal] and non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme]
Cantonese constructions is summarized in Table 9.
When we compare the gap between [bei2-Goal-Theme] and [bei2-Theme-Goal] construc-
tions in monolingual and bilingual children, we find that bilingual children have a wider gap
(>5.0 months excluding Timmy) between their first [bei2-Goal-Theme] and first [bei2-Theme-
Goal] constructions than monolingual children (<0.7 excluding HHC). This suggests that
Table 7
Bilingual childrens order of emergence of serial verb dative constructions, [bei2-G-T] constructions
and [bei2-T-G] constructions
Child Order of emergence
Timmy [bei2-T-G] < [bei2-G-T] < serial verb dative
Sophie [bei2-G-T] < serial verb dative < [bei2-T-G]
Alicia Serial verb dative < [bei2-G-T] no [bei2-T-G]
Llywelyn [bei2-G-T] < [bei2-T-G] no serial verb dative
e.g. [bei2-T-G]: bei2 (give)appleme (target order in Cantonese)
[bei2-G-T]: bei2 (give)meapple (non-target order in Cantonese)
Table 8
Monolingual childrens order of emergence of Cantonese serial verb dative constructions, [bei2-G-T]
constructions and [bei2-T-G] constructions
Child Order of emergence
CCC serial verb dative, no [bei2-G-T], no [bei2-T-G]
CGK serial verb dative < [bei2-T-G] = [bei2-G-T]
CKT serial verb dative < [bei2-T-G] no [bei2-G-T]
HHC [bei2-G-T] < serial verb dative no [bei2-T-G]
LLY serial verb dative < [bei2-G-T] < [bei2-T-G]
LTF serial verb dative = [bei2-G-T] < [bei2-T-G]
MHZ serial verb dative no [bei2-G-T], no [bei2-T-G]
WBH serial verb dative no [bei2-G-T], no [bei2-T-G]
monolingual children move faster from their first non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions
to their first target [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions.
Moreover, bilingual children demonstrate a strong preference for the non-target [bei2-
Goal-Theme] construction. The average accuracy rate of [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions in
bilingual children is 20 per cent. Among the four children who produce these constructions,
Alicia has the lowest accuracy rate (0%), and Timmy has the highest accuracy rate (41.2%). Also,
when both target and non-target constructions appear in the same transcript, the non-target
constructions always outnumber (or appear as often as) the target ones. Timmys accuracy rate
of [bei2-Theme-Goal] reaches 100 per cent only in the last recording at 3;06;25, but we still
need more information (such as accuracy rates in several continuous recordings after 3;06;25) to
determine whether he has fully acquired the target [bei2-Theme-Goal] construction at that age.
Monolingual children show higher accuracy rates and more frequent uses of [bei2-
Theme-Goal] constructions throughout their recording sessions. The average accuracy rate is
50 per cent. One child (CKT) solely uses the target [bei2-Theme-Goal] form in the corpus.
19

Three children (CGK, LLY and LTF) produce both target [bei2-Theme-Goal] and non-target
[bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions, and among them, LTF has the highest accuracy rate (63.6%),
while CGK has the lowest accuracy rate (40%).
Except for HHC, every monolingual child demonstrates a higher accuracy rate in [bei2-
Theme-Goal] constructions than bilingual children (excluding Timmy). The highest accuracy
rate in monolingual children is 100 per cent, while the lowest accuracy rate in monolingual
children (CGK: 40%) is close to the rate of Timmy (41.2%), and much higher than rates of
Alicia (0%), Llywelyn (20%) and Sophie (10.5%).
In addition to higher accuracy rates, monolingual children also use the target construction
more frequently than bilingual children. Among the three monolingual children who produce
both target [bei2-Theme-Goal] and non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions, the number
of target constructions generally exceeds (or equals) the number of non-target ones.
Inverted double object datives and serial verb dative
constructions
As Cantonese inverted double object datives are fundamentally serial verb dative constructions
with the dative marker deleted (see [7]), acquiring the serial verb dative construction may be
a necessary step for children to discover the underlying [bei2-Theme-bei2-Goal] structure
19
Note that CKT only produces two target [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions in one transcript. It is possible that
later he will also use the non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] form.
Table 9
Mean age of emergence of target [bei2-Theme-Goal] and non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] Cantonese
constructions
Target [bei2-Theme-Goal] Non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme]
Bilingual 2;9.1 (>2;10.5 excluding Timmy) 2;6.0 (2;5.5 excluding Timmy)
Monolingual >2;9.1 (2;7.2 excluding HHC) >2;7.2 (>2;6.5 excluding HHC)
and the bei2-deletion rule, which generates the surface inverted [bei2-Theme-Goal] order. If
children do not produce any serial verb dative before their first inverted double object datives,
it is questionable whether the underlying structure is in place, and it follows that children may
not apply the bei2-deletion analysis to form the inverted bei2-double object dative.
Analysis of the order of emergence of serial verb datives (including bei2-Theme-bei2-Goal
constructions) and inverted double object datives shows that it is very unlikely that the bilingual
children we study have formed a syntactic connection between serial verb datives and inverted
double object datives. When they start to produce the [bei2-Theme-Goal] construction, they
have little (or still uncertain) knowledge of the structure of serial verb dative constructions,
and even though one child (Alicia) acquired the serial verb dative construction at an earlier
age, no evidence shows that she linked the two structures together, as she produced no target
inverted double object datives in her corpus.
Monolingual children, on the other hand, acquire serial verb dative constructions before
they produce their first [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions. Four monolingual children have
produced both serial verb dative constructions and [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions in their
transcripts, and their first serial verb dative constructions all appear before their first [bei2-
Theme-Goal] constructions.
In general, only monolingual children demonstrate some evidence that they have linked
the structure of serial verb dative construction to the inverted double object dative in their
development of Cantonese dative constructions. Bilingual children, on the other hand, may
not have the underlying structure and try to form the surface [bei2-Theme-Goal] order by
other means.
20
Notice that though Timmy produces target [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions more
frequently than other bilingual children and has an accuracy rate that is close to the average
rate of monolingual children, his first serial verb datives are produced after his first [bei2-
Theme-Goal] constructions. This developmental pattern indicates that Timmy may not form
a connection between the surface [bei2-Theme-Goal] sequence and its underlying structure.
Though quantitatively Timmys accuracy rates are closer to that of the monolingual children,
qualitatively, he is not different from other bilingual children with regard to the availability
of the underlying structure.
Crosslinguistic influence in the acquisition of
Cantonese dative constructions
The earlier onset of the non-target double-object-dative-like [bei2-Goal-Theme] structure in
bilingual children suggests that bilingual children are influenced by their English grammar and
start to use non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions at a relatively earlier developmental stage.
As Charlottes dominant language is English, she progresses slower than other Cantonese-
dominant children in her development of Cantonese dative constructions. Charlotte does not
produce any full Cantonese dative constructions in her corpus. She only uses the verb bei2
in its bare form or in null-object constructions.
20
We are open on how bilingual children form their early [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions. From their develop-
mental pattern, we can only conclude that they do not seem to use the target bei2-deletion analysis when they
start to produce their first [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions.
However, language dominance does not explain why Cantonese-dominant children differ
from monolingual Cantonese-speaking children in their developmental patterns. None of the
four Cantonese-dominant children show evidence that they have made a connection between
target inverted double object datives and serial verb dative constructions.
These qualitative as well as quantitative differences between Cantonese-dominant
children and monolingual Cantonese-speaking children can be attributed to input ambiguity.
As Cantonese input does not show overt evidence for the derivation of inverted double object
datives, and contains many null-object [bei2-Goal] constructions which exhibit a different
surface word order from the target [bei2-Theme-Goal] construction, bilingual children seem
to be influenced by their English grammar to use the English double-object order, as English
input does not contain any ambiguity with this double object dative structure.
The fact that bilingual children start to produce [bei2-Goal-Theme] constructions at a
relatively earlier developmental stage than monolingual children also makes it more chal-
lenging for them to build the target syntactic connection between the target [bei2-Theme-Goal]
structure and the underlying serial verb dative form. As bilingual children adopt a non-target
double-object grammar before they construct the link, they might encounter more difficulty
analyzing the structure of [bei2-Theme-Goal] constructions, and as a result have lower accuracy
rates and longer periods of non-target uses.
As we can see from the different developmental patterns in bilingual and monolingual
children in the development of Cantonese dative constructions, it is crucial to form the correct
analysis of the target inverted bei2-double object dative at the beginning of acquisition,
otherwise the non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] structures will emerge at a relatively earlier
developmental stage, and postpone the acquisition of inverted double object datives. Input
ambiguity appears to play an important role in the acquisition of [bei2-Theme-Goal] construc-
tions, because this construction, compared with other dative constructions, is more difficult
to acquire and more likely to be affected by the English grammar.
21
Vulnerable domains and crosslinguistic influence
The delay of English prepositional datives, as well as childrens non-target [V-PP-DP] utter-
ances, fit into Mllers (2003) definition of vulnerable domains. However, there is a major
quantitative difference between monolingual and bilingual children in the length of the
developmental lag of prepositional datives, as well as a qualitative difference in the use of
non-target prepositional datives.
The inverted double object datives form a vulnerable domain in the acquisition of
Cantonese dative constructions. Both monolingual and bilingual children have high error
21
The inverted bei2-double object datives are more difficult to acquire than other dative constructions, because
no negative evidence is provided to children in the input, and with null-object [bei2-Goal] constructions being
frequent in the input (Chan, 2003 reports that 48.46% of adult input containing the verb bei2 is in this form),
there are few straightforward mechanisms for children to unlearn the [bei2-Goal-Theme] grammar.

The most useful analysis children can rely on, as we have proposed, is the syntactic connection between [bei2-
Theme-Goal] and serial verb dative constructions/double bei2 constructions ([bei2-Theme-bei2-Goal]), and we
find that this is the path monolingual children follow in their acquisition of inverted bei2-double object datives.
However, because of the influence from English that allows a double object dative structure for the verb give, bilingual
children are not so capable of converging on the correct analysis for the inverted bei2-double object datives.
rates in producing the non-target [bei2-Goal-Theme] rather than the target [bei2-Theme-Goal]
construction, and both groups have not fully acquired the target structure when their record-
ings end around 3;03;6. However, monolingual children demonstrate qualitative differences
from bilingual children in their developmental patterns and syntactic knowledge of various
Cantonese dative constructions.
The crosslinguistic influences we observe in this study conform to the proposal of Mller
and Hulk (2001). English prepositional datives and Cantonese inverted double object datives are
two areas where transfer and delay are identified for both monolingual and bilingual children.
Crosslinguistic influence takes place exactly at these domains, and quantitative differences
between the two groups are observed. This shows that the two language systems in a bilingual
child are more likely to interact with each other when certain grammatical domains present
challenges to them, as such problems do to monolingual children as well.
We also report some qualitative differences between bilingual and monolingual children
in these vulnerable domains. The order between PP and DP in prepositional datives is not
prone to error for monolingual English children, but bilingual children still receive influence
on this construction from their non-target Cantonese grammar. As the interaction of the two
grammars is highly active in vulnerable domains, bilingual children may have a stronger
tendency to adopt non-target analysis from the other language and produce structures mono-
lingual children do not use.
References
CHAN, W.-S. (2003). The development of bei2 dative constructions in early child Cantonese. Unpublished
MPhil Thesis. The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
MACWHINNEY, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk (third edition). Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
MLLER, N. (1998). Transfer in bilingual first language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and
cognition, 1(3), 151171.
MLLER, N. (Ed.), (2003). (In)vulnerable domains in multilingualism. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
MLLER, N. & HULK, A. (2001). Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian
and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4(1), 121.
PARADIS, J. & GENESEE, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or
interdependent? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18(1), 125.
SNYDER, W. & STROMSWOLD, K. (1997). The structure and acquisition of English dative construc-
tions. Linguistic Inquiry, 28(2), 281317.
TANG, S.-W. (1998). On the inverted double object construction. In Stephen Matthews (Ed.) Studies
in Cantonese linguistics. Hong Kong: Linguistic society of Hong Kong.
VIAU, J. (2006). Give = CAUSE + HAVE/GO: Evidence for early semantic decomposition of dative
verbs in English child corpora. In David Bamman, Tatiana Magnitskaia and Colleen Zaller (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 30th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp.
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