This paper investigates the responses to Cantonese A-not-A questions in bilingual and monolingual children. Yes/no is a response to most English yes-no questions while hai6/m4hai6 is a response to some Cantonese yes-no questions, i.e., intonational questions and particle questions. This fulfils the structural overlap condition for cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in Hulk & Müller’s (2000) hypothesis. Therefore, we predict CLI from English to Cantonese in bilingual children’s responses to A-not-A questions. The research questions are: 1) To what extent do bilingual and monolingual children produce target responses to A-not-A questions? What types of mismatches are produced? 2) How do bilingual and monolingual children’s patterns of mismatch differ and why? We compare longitudinal data from Cantonese-English bilingual children (N=8, Yip & Matthews, 2007) and monolingual Cantonese-speaking children (N=8, Lee et al., 1996). Data are sampled at three-month intervals from 2;0 to 3;0. 4236 question-response pairs are examined and two types of mismatches are discussed: 1) using hai6 ‘yes’ or m4hai6 ‘no’ to answer non-hai6-m4-hai6 questions, 2) using jau5 ‘have’ or mou5 ‘not have’ to answer non-jau5-mou5 questions. Both appeared in monolingual and bilingual children’s production.
Mixed effects logistic regression shows significantly more mismatches (p = .01) in bilinguals, especially hai6 mismatch (p = .008), and less target responses (p = .01) compared to monolinguals. The higher production rate of hai6 ‘yes’ mismatches in bilinguals suggests CLI from the English invariable responses to Cantonese. We will also discuss the jau5/mou5 ‘not have’ mismatches which are not attributed to CLI.

Authors:
Virginia Yip, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Charles Cheuk Fung Lok, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Jonathan Him Nok Lee, University of Pennsylvania, United States
Stephen Matthews, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

About the Presenter(s)
Mr. Charles Lok is currently a research assistant in the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre (CBRC) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). His research focuses on bilingual acquisition in early childhood.

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