A corpus-based study of the acquisition of post-verbal particles by Cantonese-speaking children aged 2;5-5;8

Abstract

This study investigates the development Cantonese post-verbal particles (V-PRTs) and how they function in young children. Children’s usage of thirty V-PRTs described by Matthews and Yip (2011) were investigated. Data from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) HKU-70 corpus, consisting of language samples from 70 Cantonese-speaking children from Hong Kong aged 2;5-5;8, were amended and analyzed. The results indicated that V-PRTs emerged in language production by the age group of 2;6. Children used more tokens and types of V-PRTs with increasing age and grammatical development, as indexed by mean length of utterances in morphemes (MLUm). Children also attached V-PRTs to more verbs, and more different types of verb as MLUm increased. Children's generalization of item-based knowledge was hypothesized as an explanation for the findings. In terms of Matthews and Yip’s (2011) functional categories, children used more resultative particles than any other category. Different senses of the same V-PRTs also served different functions and children demonstrated the ability to use more than one sense of the same V-PRT. However, only the lexicalized meanings of some V-PRTs were used by the children.