CHILDES Mandarin-English HKMECC Corpus

	Ziyin Mai Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages Chinese University of Hong Kong maggiezymai@cuhk.edu.hk website		Mengyao Shang Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages Chinese University of Hong Kong shang.melody@link.cuhk.edu.hk
	Jingyao Liu Department of Linguistics and Translation City University of Hong Kong jingyliu27-c@my.cityu.edu.hk		Virginia Yip Linguistics and Modern Languages Chinese University of Hong Kong vcymatthews@cuhk.edu.hk website

Participants:	4
Type of Study:	longitudinal, naturalistic
Location:	Hong Kong
Media type:	audio
DOI:

Citation information

Mai, Z., Shang, M., Liu, J., Yan, S., Matthews, S., & Yip, V. (2024) Acquiring Chinese in US, Hong Kong and Beijing: three new corpora and three verbal structures. Paper presented at the XVIth International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL-2024), July 15-19, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.

In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by at least one of the above references.

Project Description

This corpus documents the early development of four Mandarin-English bilingual children in Hong Kong. The children were born to Mandarin-speaking parents and raised bilingually in Mandarin and English, with minimal or low-level exposure to Cantonese (biographies of individual children below). Their bilingual development was documented longitudinally through monthly video recording of them interacting with a trained research assistant at home for 24 months (30 minutes per language per month; starting age ranging from 2;10 to 4;5). The parents of the children are originally from mainland China, speaking Mandarin Chinese as their native language and highly proficient in English. At time of recruitment, the children were attending an international kindergarten, with English as the medium of instruction and daily hour-long Mandarin lessons as part of the curriculum. All children remained in the same kindergarten and/or advanced to the same international primary school except for Gabriel, who attended a Cantonese-English bilingual kindergarten for 12 months during the observation period. Overall, the children had substantial exposure to Mandarin much earlier than to English, and they used mostly Mandarin at home and English at school, with minimal exposure to Cantonese outside home in three out of four cases. They can be considered as Mandarin-L1 English-L2 sequential bilingual children who develop their languages in the one context-one language model during the study period. Biographies of individual children are provided below.

Madison

Madison was raised in Hong Kong. She is the only child of the family. Her parents are both from mainland China and had lived in the US for years before moving to Hong Kong. During the study period, Madison’s primary caretakers were her mother and a Burmese helper; her father and grandparents also spent considerable time with her. Her mother’s native tongue is Mandarin but is also highly proficient in English. At home, her parents and grandparents mainly spoke Mandarin with her, and her helper used a mix of Mandarin and English, and occasionally Burmese. Madison’s formal schooling began at 3;0, which was predominantly in English except for daily Mandarin classes (45 minutes). She was exposed to a variety of languages including English, Mandarin and Cantonese in extracurricular activities. Madison was recorded monthly from 4;5 to 6;4. Currently this corpus contains 49 recordings of Madison, with 24 recordings in Mandarin and 25 in English.

Alex

Alex was raised in Hong Kong and is the only child of the family. Both of his parents are native speakers of Mandarin and highly proficient in English. During the study period, Alex’s primary caretakers were his parents, maternal grandmother and a domestic helper. His parents and grandmother typically spoke with Alex in Mandarin, though at times the father switched to English. The domestic helper only spoke to him in English. Alex started attending school at 2;11. His education was predominantly in English, except a daily Mandarin class as part of the school curriculum. From 5;9 to 6;3, he met with a Mandarin tutor for two hours per week. According to parental communication, Alex primarily used English to communicate with his friends. Alex was recorded monthly in Mandarin and English from 4;4 to 6;3. Currently this corpus contains 52 recordings, with 26 recordings in each language.

Gabriel

Gabriel was born and raised in Hong Kong. Gabriel’s parents are from mainland China and had spent years studying and working in English-speaking countries before settling down in Hong Kong. Both of his parents’ native language is Mandarin, with advanced proficiency in English. Gabriel is the second-born and youngest child in the family. He has an elder sister who is 5 years older and highly proficient in both English and Mandarin. During the study period, Gabriel lived with his parents, sister, and a Filipino domestic helper. His maternal grandmother was also around most of the time. His mother spoke Mandarin to him 90% of the time. His father and sister both spoke a balanced mix of Mandarin and English with him. The grandmother addressed Gabriel exclusively in Mandarin, and the helper in English. From 1;6 to 3;0, Gabriel attended playgroup sessions and pre-nursery classes, where English is the primary medium of instruction. For a year after that (3;0-4;0), he attended a kindergarten which features a balanced curriculum of Cantonese and English. At 4;0, he switched schools and attended a kindergarten where English was primarily used except for daily Mandarin classes (45 minutes per day). Parents reported that Gabriel spoke Mandarin and English with different friends. Gabriel was recorded monthly from 2;10 to 4;9. Currently this corpus contains 50 recordings of Gabriel, with 25 recordings in each language.

Charles

Charles was born and raised in Hong Kong. He is the only child in the family. During the study period, Charles had spent most of his time at home with his mother, maternal grandmother, and a Filipino domestic helper. Charles’s mother is from mainland China, growing up speaking Mandarin and had lived in the US for a decade before coming to Hong Kong. She spoke Mandarin to Charles most of the time. Charles’s grandmother spoke Mandarin and Shanghainese with him, and the helper spoke English with him. From 2;6 to 4;6, for half of a day on weekdays Charles attended a kindergarten where English was the medium of instruction, except for weekly Mandarin classes. From 3;6 to 4;6, the other half of each weekday besides the aforementioned English medium kindergarten, Charles attended a kindergarten that used Cantonese as the medium of instruction. From 4;7, Charles switched to full-day classes at a primary school where English is the main language of instruction. Charles was recorded monthly from 3;1 to 5;0. Currently this corpus contains 48 recordings of Charles, with 24 recordings in each language.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to Brian MacWhinney, Director of CHILDES for his expertise, advice and technical support. We thank the participating families for their participation and trust over the years.

Special thanks go to the students and assistants at the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre who participated in data collection and transcription: Jiangling Zhou, Haoyan Ge, Scarlet Li, Yanxin Zhu, Chang Wang, Shengnan Zhao, Jiayu He, Hannah Lam, Christa Schmidt, Miriam Wong, Vaness Law, Yuqi Wu, Jieyu Zhou, Qiuyun Cai, Shiyu He, Hecheng Zhang, Yuqing Liang, Xuening Zhang, Ashley Chan, Yingyu Su, Jiaqi Nie, Yue Cao, Yue Chen, Ranee Cheng. We gratefully acknowledge the support and help of our lab members: Xiangjun Deng, Elain Lau, Stephen Matthews.

The research was supported by the General Research Fund from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (“Childhood bilingualism and heritage language development”, Project no. 14632016; “Input and experience in early trilingual development”, Project no. 14615820), as well as a number of internal grants by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the City University of Hong Kong.