DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHINESE BA CONSTRUCTION: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY

Based on the data of a Mandarin-speaking child from 1;9 to 6;1, this case study posits that the child’s BA changes from a verb, to a semi-functional category, and eventually to a functional category as a Case assigner after 6;0. The findings explain why the acquisition of BA may take a long time, in contrast to the early acquisition of a functional category such as aspect (cf. Liu 2009; Chang 2013; Yang, Shi and Xu 2018). The findings are also compatible with the continuity hypothesis, which suggests that child language can differ from the language spoken by adults only in ways that adult language can differ from each other (Crain 1991; Crain and Pietroski 2002; Crain, Goro and Thornton 2006).