The Maintenance and Use of Ba and Bei Constructions in Bilinguals

Abstract

This honours project examines the use of BA and BEI constructions for school-aged children. The study includes in-person interviews and conversation sessions to demonstrate how syntactic priming is effective for passive BEI constructions. It emphasizes the combination of priming and translation activities of the research design. Research results summarize that girls use more BA constructions than boys, and younger children make verb omissions and word-order errors. This study provides unique insights into bilinguals ‘syntactic productivity in BA and BEI constructions and aligns with second language acquisition (SLA) and Speech-Language Pathology (SLP). Language educators can focus on the enjoyment element in their language teaching methods for elementary students whose second language is English. Future studies can find the patterns in the syntactic performances of BA and BEI constructions among those with and without language impairments (LI).

Keywords: Bilingualism, Age of Acquisition (AoA), Heritage Language (HL) Learning, BA and BEI Construction, Syntactic Priming, Interlanguage (IL), Chinese Heritage Language (CHL) learner