Acquisition of Classifiers in Heritage Mandarin: Parental Input Quality, Register Exposure, and Developmental Metrics Beyond Age
(Under Review) Heritage language grammars are often labeled "incomplete," but evidence suggests they are coherent systems that simply differ in usage. Analyzing Mandarin classifier development in heritage and monolingual children, this study shows near-perfect syntactic accuracy across all subjects. Heritage speakers favored the general classifier 个 (gè) more often, demonstrating that variation lies in lexical choice preferences rather than underlying grammatical gaps.
The Socioemotional Risk of Heritage Language Loss in Childhood: A U.S. Nationally Representative Longitudinal Analysis
(In Preparation) This longitudinal study tracks heritage language trajectories from kindergarten through fifth grade using the ECLS-K:2011 dataset. Results show that children who completely lost their heritage language exhibited significantly higher internalizing symptoms—such as anxiety, loneliness, and low self-esteem—compared to those who maintained it. These findings hold true independent of family warmth, demonstrating that heritage language preservation directly supports socioemotional health and bicultural identity.
The Lexical and Syntactic Input–Output Relationship in Heritage Language Acquisition: Evidence from Spanish Bilingual and Monolingual Parent-Child Dyads
(In Preparation) Addressing the assumption that heritage language differences stem from deficient parental input, this study compares child-directed Spanish between bilingual and monolingual mothers using longitudinal CHILDES dyad data (ages 3;0–3;6). Bilingual mothers produced significantly higher lexical diversity than monolingual mothers, yet total Spanish exposure at home remained the primary predictor of children's language performance. Results demonstrate that heritage language differences are driven by reduced input quantity and register range rather than caregiver input quality.