A Case Study Of The Acquisition Of Sentence Final Particles BA And MA

This study investigates the development of the acquisition of Mandarin sentence final particles by ZZM from Tianjin. This thesis is a case study of Children’s acquisition of Mandarin sentence final particles BA and MA. It is based on the data of utterances ending with BA and MA from longitudinal observation of a Mandarin speaking child ZZM from10to22months.By analyzing the data, we found that the production of BA by ZZM in imperative mood is much larger, the number of interrogative is very limited and declarative moods do not emerge. The first emergence of sentence with SFP BA indicates interrogative mood, which is different from the previous studies. Yang (2010) claims that the first production of SFP BA by children expresses imperative mood. The child’s production of MA is dominantly in interrogative mood and the number of declarative and imperative is much fewer. However, the previous studies confess that the final particles of BA and MA have been basically mastered by the child before the age of two. Yang (2011) claims that SFPs BA, MA, NE and A have emerged before age of two, by investigating two Mandarin-speaking children.How BA and MA as SFPs are acquired early by children is worth further studies. The study tries to offer an explanation for the children acquisition of SFPs from the semantic and syntactic perspectives and then further verify the Maturation Hypothesis.