A corpus-based study of the acquisition of sentence final particles in Cantonese speaking children aged 2;0 to 5;11

Abstract

The present study is an exploratory study that investigates the development and acquisition of sentence final particles (SFPs) in the Cantonese-speaking preschool population. A total of 70 transcripts from the HKU-70 database were coded and analysed to obtain a comprehensive developmental profile of SFPs. The developmental pattern of both the forms and function groups of SFPs are investigated. SFPs emerges at the age of 1;6-2;0, and serves a high semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic function in daily conversation in the Cantonese language. Children as young as 2yo were able to use an average of 4-5 SFPs in 41.52% of their utterances. On average, a 5yo Cantonese-speaking child is able to use 7 SFPs in 61.98% of his utterances. The earliest SFP was aa3 in the function of statement, and the earliest function was statement. However, there has not been an acquisition order of SFP across different individuals.