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Charting childhood development: language, cognition and diversity
Workshop Photos
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Keynote Speaker
Prof. Evan Kidd
Australian National University
Date: 5 February 2026 (Thursday)
Venue: Room 220, Fung King Hey Building
Session 1: Keynote Speech (Open to the public)
Time: 9:00 am – 10:15 am
Session 2: Workshop (By invitation)
Time: 10:15 am – 12:30 pm
Abstract
Title: Linguistic diversity in child language acquisition research: Moving forward.
Disciplines within the psychological and cognitive sciences are currently within an extended period of soul searching concerning their ability to explain the full range of human behaviours. This includes the field of child language acquisition, which has disproportionately focused on English and a handful of other commonly spoken languages. In this talk I review language coverage in the field and discuss new initiatives to expand the languages children learn and the contexts in which they learn them. I will largely focus on the Sketch Acquisition Project, a long-term initiative aimed at increasing language coverage in a tractable and cost-effective manner.
Speaker Bio
Evan Kidd is a Professor of Linguistics at The Australian National University. He works on language acquisition (including first language acquisition, bilingualism, and second language acquisition) and adult language processing.
Program Rundown
| Program Rundown | |
| Prof. Stephen Matthews | Opening |
| Group Photo | |
| Prof. Evan Kidd | Keynote Speech Title: Linguistic diversity in child language acquisition research: Moving forward |
| Prof. Ziyin Mai | Introduction |
| Dr. Anna Ma | Title: A Training Programme to Nurture Maternal Childcare Assistants to Support Early Child Development |
| Dr. Mengyao Shang | Title: Developmental hierarchy of the noun-modifying clause construction in Mandarin-speaking children |
| Dr. Jingyao Liu | Title: Production of focus by bilingual children and parents in naturalistic interactions |
| Miss Yuxuan Chen | Title: Affectedness in Mandarin bei-passives in monolingual and bilingual children |
| Dr. Yuqing Liang | Title: Grammatical development of the native L1 in Cantonese-English bilingual children |
| Miss Jiaqi Nie | Title: Verbs and verb morphology in the L2 English input by Cantonese-L1 mothers |
| Dr. Zhenting Liu | Title: Cross-linguistic mapping between Cantonese and Mandarin lexical tone in school-age children |
| Prof. Ziyin Mai | Title: Zhuang-Mandarin bilingual children in rural China and the role of grandparental input in early bilingualism |
| First Q&A Session | |
| Mr. Carleon Mendoza | Title: The Grammar of Adult Heritage Tagalog Speakers in Hong Kong |
| Miss Danielle Lung | Title: The roles of executive functions and bilingual proficiency in preschoolers’ conversational awareness |
| Miss Meiyu Xiang | Title: Perceptual Processing of Mandarin Ideophones and Reduplication in Children: An Eye-Tracking Study |
| Mr. Chris Law | Title: How Parental Beliefs Steer the Course of Child Bilingual Development |
| Dr. Jiangling Zhou | Title: Neurodevelopment in Infants with Elevated Risk Profiles in Hong Kong |
| Second Q&A Session | |
Workshop Presenters
Ziyin Mai
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: Zhuang-Mandarin bilingual children in rural China and the role of grandparental input in early bilingualism
Abstract
Linguistic properties of bilingual input and their relations with acquisition outcomes are being intensively studied in current research on early bilingual development. Motivated by emerging interests in grandparental input and the unique language profile of Zhuang-Mandarin bilinguals in rural China, we report an exploratory study investigating bilingual input-outcome relations in two groups of age-matched kindergarteners who were primarily cared for by Zhuang-speaking grandmothers (GRA group, n = 4) and by Zhuang-Mandarin bilingual mothers (MOT group, n = 5) respectively. Through (grand)parental questionnaires, caregiver-child interaction recordings and direct assessments of the children, we collected two waves of data around the beginning and the end of Mandarin-medium kindergarten, focusing on the input and the outcomes respectively (Time 1/Time 2 design). Our findings show that at both times, the grandparents spoke considerably larger proportions of Zhuang to the children than the mothers, who had completely shifted to Mandarin by Time 2. Both groups of children were dominant in Mandarin at Time 2, demonstrating quantitatively and qualitatively similar production performance, but only the GRA children were able to produce words and narratives in Zhuang. It is argued that early sequential bilingualism actively promoting and supporting grandparental input in Zhuang in addition to school input in Mandarin is beneficial to the preservation of Zhuang as a minority language and mastery of the national majority language.
Anna Ma and Virginia Yip
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: A Training Programme to Nurture Maternal Childcare Assistants to Support Early Child Development
Abstract
To support the child’s development in the early years, especially in the first 1000 days of birth, it is important to prioritize the role of Community Health Workers (CHW), as advocated by WHO (Ballard et al. 2020). Trained CHWs act as frontline agents and a bridge between medical healthcare and the patient, providing culturally appropriate health education and information, informal counselling and guidance on health behaviors. In Hong Kong, deprived families often lack sufficient public health support despite the city’s extreme wealth, with poverty figures reaching, and in some cases exceeding, pre-pandemic levels. In response to the needs identified by WHO and to assist families from lower-income background in our community, a newly emerged role, “Maternal Childcare Assistant (MCA)” has been created by the Baby Blossom project funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club to support these families and their children in the early years.
To equip MCAs, a 50-hour multi-disciplinary training programme was designed and implemented. We will discuss the design of the curriculum ranging from prenatal care to special baby care with the aim of training and scaling up existing Family Aide workers and certified post-natal caregivers. The programme leverages the trained MCAs to provide community-based care on a most-effective approach to expand services to the at-risk groups. The training curriculum was jointly designed and developed by early childhood researchers, medical professionals (pediatricians, registered nurses, midwives, etc.) and allied health professionals (speech therapists, social workers, educational psychologists and occupational therapists). In particular, four unique modules including early identification of special education needs (SEN), care of pre-term babies, parent-child stimulation, and sleep routine are built into the curriculum. The success of this training programme will not only build a safety net in the community but create career development opportunities in the future. Early identification reduces the need for intensive, costly support later in life, supports families, and ensures children reach their highest potential by addressing developmental delays early in their development, while early intervention can significantly improve long-term developmental, cognitive, and social-emotional outcomes.
Jiangling Zhou, Anna Ma, Peggy H. Y. Chan, Sze Wing Li, Shuying Chen, Patrick Chun Man Wong and Virginia Yip
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: Neurodevelopment in Infants with Elevated Risk Profiles in Hong Kong
Abstract
This study investigated neurodevelopment in Hong Kong infants with elevated risk profiles compared to those without apparent adverse factors. We assessed a target group (N=141) recruited through a community intervention program who presented with at least one risk factor (preterm birth, socioeconomic disadvantage, or maternal mental conditions) and a comparison group (N=45) without known adverse exposures. Assessments included the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, the Cantonese Communicative Development Inventory (CCDI), and the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ), the screening results of which were compared against the Bayley.
The target group scored significantly lower than the comparison group in Bayley cognitive and communication domains, exhibiting a higher prevalence of developmental delay (< -1SD). Gestational age uniquely and positively predicted expression communication skills. In contrast, Cantonese vocabulary production (CCDI) was comparable between the two groups. Notably, the ASQ demonstrated limited accuracy in detecting Bayley-confirmed delays within the target group, showing low sensitivity despite moderate-to-high specificity. These findings highlight the complex developmental profiles of disadvantaged infants and suggest that standard screening tools may require supplementation with robust clinical assessment to adequately support vulnerable populations.
Carleon Mendoza
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: The Grammar of Adult Heritage Tagalog Speakers in Hong Kong
Abstract
This study investigates the grammar of heritage Tagalog in adult speakers raised in Hong Kong’s trilingual environment (Tagalog, English, Cantonese). While heritage language research has grown, adult knowledge of typologically distinct systems like the Tagalog symmetrical voice system remains underexplored. This system uses voice markers (e.g., -um- for agent voice, -in- for patient voice) to assign thematic roles to focused arguments, allowing flexible word orders with stable meaning (e.g., H<um>ila ng babae ang lalaki / H<um>ila ang lalaki ng babae both mean “The boy pulled a girl”). Prior studies of heritage Tagalog speakers in the US and Italy show maintained comprehension but a dominant Agent-Verb-Patient word order preference in production.
Employing a mixed-methods approach with 30 second-generation Filipino adults, this research integrates background surveys, proficiency tests, and language tasks (sentence completion, picture-matching, and a narrative task). It examines how historical input, current language use, and cultural identity relate to grammatical performance. This work provides the first systematic investigation of adult heritage Tagalog grammar in Hong Kong, contributing novel data on multilingual grammatical representation and informing heritage language support initiatives.
Chris Law
Education University of Hong Kong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: How Parental Beliefs Steer the Course of Child Bilingual Development
Abstract
Charting a child’s developmental path in a bilingual home is profoundly influenced by parents’ beliefs and assumptions. Drawing upon the Impact Belief Hypothesis (De Houwer, 1999), this study examines how parental perceptions—ranging from seeing bilingualism as an enriching asset to viewing it as a potential source of confusion—directly shape the home learning environment and, consequently, the child’s developmental trajectory. The evidence indicates that when parents embrace fluid language practices (translanguaging), they chart a course supporting cognitive flexibility, literacy in multiple languages, and strong socio-emotional and cultural identity. Conversely, parental anxiety about language mixing can unintentionally restrict linguistic exposure and impact the child’s confidence and heritage language maintenance. Thus, a child’s bilingual development is less a fixed route and more a dynamic journey, charted in large part by the beliefs and strategies employed by their family.
Danielle Hiu Fung Lung
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: The roles of executive functions and bilingual proficiency in preschoolers’ conversational awareness
Abstract
Conversational awareness is the ability to recognize whether a speaker follows implicit conversational principles, primarily studied through Gricean maxims: be truthful (Quality), be relevant (Relevance), be informative (Quantity), and avoid ambiguity (Manner).
Despite the importance of maxims in characterizing the developmental trajectory of conversational awareness, the factors associated with this awareness remain understudied. This study investigates the associations among executive functions (EF) and sensitivity to maxim violations in 3-to-4-year-old children. Additionally, it examines whether acquiring a second language influences conversational awareness.
Seventy Cantonese-English bilinguals participated in: (i) an EF battery assessing inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility; (ii) receptive vocabulary tests in both Cantonese and English to assess language proficiencies; and (iii) a maxim violation task to evaluate maxim understanding.
Findings indicated that EF components differentially associate with children’s sensitivity to violations of different maxims. Furthermore, bilinguals with higher L2 proficiency were more sensitive to maxim violations than those with lower L2 proficiency, particularly in detecting untruthful sentences (violation of Quality). Mediation analysis shows that the enhanced performance is mediated through inhibitory control, suggesting that bilingual experience may support pragmatic development through enhanced inhibitory control.
This study provides evidence for the roles of EFs in maxim understanding. The findings contribute to the understanding of conversational awareness and pragmatic development in a bilingual context.
Xiang Meiyu
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: Perceptual Processing of Mandarin Ideophones and Reduplication in Children: An Eye-Tracking Study
Abstract
Reduplication is a highly productive morphological process in Mandarin Chinese, and a salient feature of child-directed speech (CDS). Cross-linguistic research suggests that ideophones can facilitate early language acquisition by providing iconically motivated cues that strengthen form–meaning mapping (Imai et al., 2008; Ibrahim & Ibrahim, 2016; Xu, 2016). Despite this, Mandarin reduplication remains comparatively understudied relative to prosodic properties of CDS (Han & Gu, 2023; Han et al., 2024), and existing work has disproportionately focused on onomatopoeia rather than other ideophone types such as motion- and visual-related expressions (Dewey et al., 2024). In corpus-based analyses, we found that young Mandarin-learning children often rely on ideophones as preferred labels (e.g., producing wang-wang to refer to “dog”), and caregivers frequently use reduplication when helping children establish word–referent links. These patterns suggest that ideophones and reduplication may serve as an accessible bridge between speech and perceptual experience. Motivated by this naturalistic evidence, the present project asks whether ideophones confer an online processing advantage during early word comprehension, and whether any advantage reflects iconicity rather than superficial properties such as word length or repetition.
We will test these questions using an eye-tracking two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) looking-while-listening paradigm in which children view two images or silent clips while hearing a spoken prompt naming the target; gaze provides a time-sensitive index of lexical access. The design includes (i) a within-subject comparison of ideophonic labels (OW) versus concept-matched conventional words (CW) across multiple semantic domains (e.g., sound, motion, visual, texture), and (ii) a control manipulation contrasting reduplicated forms (AABB/ABB/AA) with their shorter base forms (AB/A) to disentangle iconicity effects from length- or reduplication-driven attentional benefits. Prior to testing, children will complete a brief background questionnaire and a vocabulary measure (MCDI or PPVT), and all stimuli will be selected and normed via an adult iconicity-rating questionnaire. By integrating corpus findings with experimental measures, this project clarifies how iconic form–meaning mappings and reduplication in CDS support early real-time language processing.
Mengyao SHANG
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: Developmental hierarchy of the noun-modifying clause construction in Mandarin-speaking children
Abstract
This experimental study investigated the acquisition of the Mandarin noun-modifying clause construction (NMCC; [[modifier clause] de head]). Adopting a typological perspective, we examined three NMCC subtypes: argument, adjunct, and extended. A sentence-repetition task was designed to test an NMCC learning hierarchy previously observed in a corpus-based study: argument > adjunct > extended (easier to more difficult). Results from 121 monolingual Mandarin-speaking children (aged 3;0–4;11) align with the corpus-based analysis: NMCCs in which the head noun plays a more prominent role in the clausal event are less difficult for children. The study extends beyond the traditional focus on relative clauses to include all NMCC types in a language with a general noun-modifying clause construction.
Jingyao LIU
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: Production of focus by bilingual children and parents in naturalistic interactions
Abstract
Encoding only-type exclusive focus in discourse requires the integration of knowledge across multiple linguistic domains and has been shown to pose challenges for preschoolers in experimental studies. Drawing on data of four corpora documenting naturalistic child-adult interactions, this study presents a comprehensive analysis of the syntactic, semantic, prosodic and contextual discourse features of 1,063 utterances containing only and its Mandarin equivalents zhi(you), produced by Mandarin-English bilingual preschoolers and matched monolinguals, as well as by Mandarin native adults. The results revealed largely target-like syntactic positioning and semantic association of the particles in both languages in the bilinguals, with cross-linguistic influence observed between specific usages of only and zhi(you). However, children in both language groups were found to employ longer duration, but not raised mean pitch to mark the intended focus prosodically, although both acoustic features, in addition to word order and contextual cues, were instantiated in the zhi(you)-utterances in the child-directed speech by the adults, suggesting prolonged development in focus-prosody mapping in children independent of bilingualism.
Yuxuan CHEN
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: Affectedness in Mandarin bei-passives in monolingual and bilingual children
Abstract
This study investigates the encoding of affectedness in Mandarin bei-passives in child-produced speech (CPS) and child-directed speech (CDS). Mandarin bei-passives appear in an [NP1-bei-NP2-VP] sequence, where bei is a passive marker, and the two NPs are AGENT and PATIENT/THEME arguments of the event. Affectedness has been proposed as a unified account to account for such semantic conditions of bei-passives (Law & Hirschberg, 2025). It captures the change of a THEME/PATIENT during an event (Beavers, 2011). Previous studies focused on either VP or NP, while a holistic approach to passivizable events in early Mandarin bei is missing. To address this gap, we examine what change types NP1 in bei-passives undergo in Mandarin monolingual children, Mandarin-English bilingual children, and their CDS. A total of 89 bei-passive tokens from CPS and 181 from CDS were extracted from Tong Corpus (Deng & Yip, 2018), Beijing Child Mandarin Corpus (Mai et al., 2024), and Hong Kong Mandarin-English Child Corpus (Mai et al., 2024). Results showed a consistent pattern: internal > spatial > relational > no change (>: has a larger proportion than). The type of no change was unattested. Numerically, bilingual children produced a lower proportion of bei-passives denoting relational change and a larger proportion of those denoting internal change than monolingual children. The findings indicate that the development of bei-passives is semantically constrained by affectedness from early on, and the distribution of change types in CPS closely mirrors that in CDS. Even bilingual children with limited Mandarin exposure and potential transfer from English seem to be able to match the monolingual patterns. This study contributes to the understanding of how semantic notions interact with input patterns in early language development through a new analysis of the bei-passive with newly published data.
Yuqing LIANG
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: Grammatical development of the native L1 in Cantonese-English bilingual children
Abstract
Abundant research has examined early bilingualism in ‘minority-majority language contexts’, in which the child’s L1 is a minority language with lower social status, while the child’s L2 (or another L1) is the societal majority language. The development of early bilinguals’ L1 as a societal language, with support from mainstream education, is understudied. Such contexts are exemplified in Cantonese–English bilingual infants and toddlers raised by Cantonese-dominant parents in Hong Kong. Many young children receive input in the societal dominant language, Cantonese, from (grand)parents who are native speakers, alongside English input from parents or foreign domestic helpers who speak English as a second and weaker language. This study investigates the grammatical development of L1 Cantonese in children with early onset of English before 3 (earlier-onset bilinguals/EB, n = 31), with matched later-onset bilinguals (LB, n = 25) as the baseline. Results show that, at 3;0, when the LB children were still monolingual, the EB group displayed reduced grammatical complexity and lower performance in seven specific grammatical structures (‘early costs’). At 5;8, the EB children converged with the LB children across grammatical measures in Cantonese, while demonstrating better performance in English receptive and expressive vocabulary (‘long-term gains’). Overall, the findings suggest additive bilingualism in Cantonese–English bilingual children in L1-majority contexts, in contrast to the subtractive bilingualism typically observed in L1-minority settings.
Jiaqi NIE
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: Verbs and verb morphology in the L2 English input by Cantonese-L1 mothers
Abstract
L2 input quality provided by bilingual mothers to their children is found to depend on the mothers’ L2 proficiency (Hoff et al., 2020). Moreover, type and token frequency in parental input are critical to the acquisition of verbs and verb morphology in young children. However, a Cantonese-L1 mother who speaks English in addition to Cantonese and Mandarin to a trilingual toddler displayed larger gaps in lexical diversity and verb marking frequency than MLUw compared to the input provided by native English mothers to age-matched monolingual children (Mai & Yip, 2022). This study investigated how mother L2 proficiency affects verb diversity (i.e., verb type) and verb-marking frequency in the L2 input directed to toddlers. Through caretaker-child standard toy-play sessions (5 minutes), we sampled semi- naturalistic English input provided by 35 Cantonese-L1 mothers to different Cantonese-English bilingual children at 2;6 in Hong Kong. We directly measured mothers’ English vocabulary proficiency through the Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT-3), and verb-marking proficiency through the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI). Results showed that mothers’ L2 vocabulary proficiency was positively correlated with verb type (r = .60, p < .001) in the L2 input, while mothers’ L2 verb-marking proficiency did not correlate with the verb-marking frequency (p = .26) in the L2 input. The correlation line graph showed that after mothers’ EVT3 standard scores reached 90, the number of verb types no longer increased in the toy play. Our findings reveal a more diverse relationship between maternal language proficiency and L2 input quality in different verb features, at least for Cantonese-L1 mothers. Qualitative analysis of verbs produced and verb-marking contexts in the L2 toy play will be done to further understand verb diversity and verb-marking frequency in the L2 input provided by mothers.
Zhenting LIU
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Title: Cross-linguistic mapping between Cantonese and Mandarin lexical tone in school-age children
Abstract
Historically related languages exhibit systematic sound correspondences that reflect shared diachronic origins. In tone languages such as Cantonese and Mandarin, these correspondences extend beyond segments to tonal categories; however, it remains unclear whether children have knowledge of such tone correspondences and can apply them productively to novel lexical items. The present study investigates Cantonese-speaking school-age children’s knowledge of Cantonese–Mandarin sound correspondence using a novel sound-mapping task that elicits Mandarin productions in response to Cantonese pseudowords. Here we report preliminary findings focusing on children’s mapping of Cantonese tones onto Mandarin tones. This abstract reports preliminary results from Grade 6 students. Overall performance was well above chance, indicating that children at this age can reliably perform cross-language sound mapping and extend correspondence knowledge to novel items. Mixed-effects analyses showed higher accuracy for more frequent and consistent tone correspondences across the two languages, as well as a facilitative effect of pitch contour similarity. Importantly, this similarity effect interacted with tone type, suggesting that tonal similarity differentially constrains mapping depending on the structural properties of the correspondence. Ongoing analyses across Grades 3–6 will further examine the developmental trajectory of children’s acquisition and use of Cantonese–Mandarin sound correspondence.