Mandarin Chinese

This study investigated Mandarin-speaking children’s acquisition of grammatical and lexical aspect. In addition, maternal speech was also investigated to examine the relationship between maternal input and acquisition patterns. The data consisted of natural interactions between six children (3 to 5 years old) and their mothers. The grammatical aspect markers analyzed in the study included the perfective marker –le, the experiential marker –guo, the progressive marker zai, and the durative marker –zhe. The lexical aspect was classified into five categories: stative, activity, accomplishment, achievement and semelfactive. Strong associations were observed in both the children’s and the mothers ’ speech between the perfective marker –le and accomplishment verbs/achievement verbs, between the progressive marker zai and activity verbs, between the experiential marker –guo and activity verbs, and between the durative marker –zhe and stative verbs. The findings were discussed in relation to the naturalness of combination principle, the prototype account, and the role of adult input in language acquisition. Key words: grammatical aspect, lexical aspect, language acquisition