Acquisition of English Grammatical
Morphology by Native Mandarin-
Gisela Jia
Lehman College, The City University of
New York
Akiko Fuse
Brooklyn College and Graduate Center,
The City University of New York
P
1280 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research •
Speaking Children and Adolescents:
Age-Related Differences
Purpose: This 5-year longitudinal study investigated the acquisition of 6 English
grammatical morphemes (i.e., regular and irregular past tense, 3rd person singular,
progressive aspect –ing, copula BE, and auxiliary DO) by 10 native Mandarin-
speaking children and adolescents in the United States (arrived in the United States
between 5 and 16 years of age). The goals were to chart and compare the acquisition
trajectories and levels of mastery across the morphemes, identify when age-related
differences emerged and which forms they took.
Method: Morphological proficiency was measured by the accuracy of these
morphemes in obligatory contexts during spontaneous speech.
Results: The morphemes were mastered by different numbers of participants and
showed different growth trajectories. Performance variance was partially predicted
by age of arrival (AoAr) in the United States, with early arrivals achieving greater
proficiency than late arrivals. However, such AoAr effects took several years to occur
and only existed for 2 of the 6 morphemes (i.e., 3rd person singular and regular past
tense). Growth curve analysis revealed that language environment was a stronger
predictor of individual differences than AoAr. Results did not uncover age-related
differences in the acquisition of tense versus non-tense-related morphemes, nor in
regular versus irregular morphemes, nor in the error types.
Conclusion: Findings support an Environmental account for age-related differences in
2nd language (L2) morphological acquisition. Results also indicate that the acquisition
of some grammatical morphemes by school-aged immigrants takes several years
to complete. As L2 learners exhibit some error types and difficulties similar to
monolingual children with specific language impairment, caution needs to be taken
when interpreting and using morphological errors as indicators of speech /language
learning problems in this population.
KEY WORDS: bilingualism, English language learners, sequential bilingualism
revious research has shown consistently that the acquisition of gram-
matical morphemes presents significant challenges to second lan-
guage (L2) learners. Different from native language (L1) learners, L2
learners constitute a dramatically heterogeneous population. They learn
L2 in different settings (e.g., immersion through immigration, or foreign
language instructions at home country). The current study focuses on
the immigration setting. Among the many variables that set L2 learn-
ers apart, age of L2 exposure is an important one. In the immigration set-
ting, those with younger ages of L2 exposure (indexed by ages of arrival
[AoAr] in the L2-speaking country) tend to obtain greater L2 proficiency
than those with older AoAr in the long run. However, the explanations for
Vol. 50 • 1280–1299 • October 2007 • D American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
1092-4388/07/5005-1280
such age-related differences have been under debate.
They range from maturational constraints postulated by
the Critical or Sensitive Period account, to language envi-
ronment differences postulated by the Environmental
account.
To advance our understanding of the applicability of
different theoretical accounts, we examined how 10 na-
tive Mandarin-speaking children and adolescents with
different AoAr in the United States acquired six English
grammatical morphemes over a 5-year period. The first
goal was to identify the timing in which age-related dif-
ferences occur and to examine how much variance in per-
formance among participants could be uniquely predicted
by AoAr and language environment. The second goal was
to investigate the specific forms that age-related differ-
ences took in terms of error types and relative difficulty
with different morphemes. Achieving these goals would
lead to a deeper understanding of the processes and the
underlying mechanisms of L2 morphological acquisition.
Such knowledge can also inform practitioners diagnosing
and treating speech, language, and learning problems of
bilingual populations, as well as English language edu-
cators working with these populations.
Age-Related Differences in L2
Morphological Acquisition:
Theoretical Accounts
Age-related differences in L2 morphological acqui-
sition have been most explicitly dealt with by a group of
studies on the long-term grammatical proficiency of L2
learners (e.g., Bialystok & Miller, 1999; Birdsong & Molis,
2001; Flege, Yeni-Komshian, & Liu, 1999; Jia, Aaronson,
& Wu, 2002). Participants in these studies were adult bi-
linguals who had arrived in the L2-speaking country at
different ages and had resided there for at least several
years. The studies measured grammatical sensitivity by
having participants detect violations of L2 grammatical
rules (mostly morphological) in spoken or written L2 sen-
tences. One predictor of L2 morphological proficiency that
has been consistently found across these studies was AoAr.
It often predicts the largest amount of variance in mor-
phological proficiency (e.g., Flege et al., 1999; Jia et al.,
2002). More specifically, those who arrived in the L2-
speaking country at younger ages, usually before 9 years
of age (hereinafter called early arrivals), tended to perform
at or close to native speaker levels, whereas those who
arrived at older ages ( hereinafter called late arrivals)
tended to perform significantly poorer than the native
speakers and early arrivals. This finding, termed the AoAr
effects, has been repeatedly obtained from English L2 learn-
ers with various native languages, including Mandarin
(Jia et al., 2002), Korean (Flege et al., 1999), Vietnamese
(McDonald, 2000), and Spanish (Bialystok & Miller, 1999;
Jia, Aaronson, Young, Chen, & Wagner, 2005). However,
the nature of the AoAr effect has been controversial, al-
though it carries much theoretical and applied significance.
Three general theoretical accounts have been put
forth to explain the AoAr effect found in long-term at-
tainment studies: the Critical Period account, the L1
Transfer account, and the Environmental account. Ac-
cording to the Critical Period account, the genetically
guided maturation of a domain specific language learn-
ing mechanism underlies the declining ability to learn L2
grammatical morphology (e.g., Lenneberg, 1967; Patkowski,
1990). After a certain time window (i.e., a critical or
sensitive age period), L2 acquisition becomes severely
constrained by maturational factors, which cannot be
overridden by even a rich L2 environment. The L1 Transfer
account posits that processing of a new language is ham-
pered by the strength of the linguistic processing routines
automatized in native language processing. In compari-
son with early arrivals, late arrivals have used their native
language for more years and thus experience stronger
transfer from L1 to L2 that interferes with some aspects of
L2 acquisition. According to the Environmental account
(Jia & Aaronson, 2003; Marinova-Todd, Marshall, & Snow,
2000; Snow, 1983; Snow & Hoefnagel-Höhle, 1987), in
the immigration setting, early arrivals are exposed to a
significantly richer L2 environment than late arrivals,
in both quantity and quality (see later sections for details
of relevant findings). Such systematic environmental
differences lead to higher levels of L2 attainment by early
arrivals in the long run (Jia & Aaronson, 2003).
In reality, all three accounts can apply to the immi-
grant populations, in the sense that early arrivals are
within a sensitive time window, have a richer L2 envi-
ronment, and experience less interference from their L1.
Where researchers diverge is in the degree to which a
given account can effectively explain the AoAr effects. To
fully understand this issue, we may need findings ob-
tained from many sources, including investigations at
different levels of analysis (e.g., behavioral and neuro-
logical), from different angles (e.g., contrasting different
L1–L2 populations; contrasting the acquisition of L2
structures bearing different linguistic relations to L1),
and using different approaches (e.g., longitudinal and
cross-sectional). A finding can offer direct support for an
account (e.g., showing the exclusive explanatory power
of a factor over others), or be consistent or inconsistent
with predictions drawn from a given account, or pose a
challenge to an account, or simply fail to generate sup-
port for an account. In light of the range of ways that re-
search findings can address theoretical accounts, the
current study was intended to illuminate the differential
contributions of maturational constraints (as postulated
by the Critical Period account) and language environ-
ment (as postulated by the Environmental account) to
the AoAr effects in L2 morphological acquisition in the
immigration setting. Below, we discuss findings from
Jia & Fuse: L2 English Grammatical Morphology Acquisition 1281
previous research that are related to these two goals of
the study.
Age-Related Differences in L2
Morphological Acquisition: When They
Emerge During the Acquisition Process
The first goal was to identify the timing in which
age-related differences occur and examine how much of
the variance in performance among participants could
be predicted by AoAr when language environment was
taken into account. Such information can only be gained
by obtaining a clearer picture of the processes and cir-
cumstances of L2 morphological acquisition in the im-
migration setting. Most previous studies, adopting the
long-term attainment approach, only measured morpho-
logical proficiency at one time point of L2 immersion,
without detailed data on language environment. The few
existing longitudinal studies (e.g., Hakuta, 1978; Lardiere,
1998) did not address age-related differences in relation to
time because of too brief a study period or small sample
sizes. Further, most previous studies have not exam-
ined language environment in detail. Rather, some
simplified measures, such as length of residence in the
L2-speaking country, have been used to indicate the
amount of language input. As a result, little is known
about the acquisition processes through which L2 learn-
ers reach a certain long-term time point or the circum-
stances in which the age effects emerge. For example,
how long after L2 immersion does the AoAr effect start to
appear? Under what kind of learning conditions (envi-
ronment) do AoAr effects occur? If detailed enough lan-
guage environment data are obtained and incorporated
into the statistical analyses, would AoAr still remain
the most significant predictor of the learning outcome?
These questions all need to be answered to achieve our
first goal.
To address these questions, the current study exam-
ined when AoAr effects emerged during the process of
English grammatical morpheme acquisition over a 5-year
period, while taking into account language environment
measured concurrently with morphological proficiency.
Participants’ age of L2 immersion, indicated by AoAr
(from 5 to 16 years), covered a broad range during which
major age effects on L2 acquisition have been proposed to
occur. This allowed for the explicit examination of age-
related differences in the acquisition process. The rela-
tively long time span of the study allowed us to investigate
when during the acquisition process the AoAr effects
began to emerge.
The debate concerning the explanatory power of the
Critical Period or Environmental accounts on AoAr ef-
fects can benefit from more accurate descriptions of age-
related differences in L2 morphological learning along
1282 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 50 • 1280–1299 • October 2007
the time and environment dimensions. If, as previous
findings with L2 phonological learning indicates, AoAr
effects take a long time to emerge (e.g., Jia, Strange, Wu,
Collado, & Guan, 2006), the Critical Period account is
challenged to specify a language learning mechanism
unique to a younger age that would take time to exert
its effect. In contrast, such findings are easily explained
by the Environmental account in that younger learn-
ers’ richer L2 environment accumulates over time
and leads to greater L2 proficiency. Further, with de-
tailed environmental information over the course of L2
acquisition, we were able to pit AoAr against language
environment, a documented covariate of AoAr (Jia &
Aaronson, 2003), in a growth curve analysis. This would
offer direct evidence regarding whether environment or
AoAr was a more powerful explanation for the AoAr
effects.
Participants in the current study were native
Mandarin speakers. The Mandarin morphological sys-
tem differs significantly from that of English in that it
does not have morphological markers that indicate tense,
number, gender, or case. However, it has several aspect
markers, in the form of free-standing morphemes, also
called particles (Li & Shirai, 2000). For the six morpho-
logical structures tested in the current study, only the
progressive aspect –ing has its equivalent in Mandarin
(i.e., zai). English progressive aspect –ing has been found
to be one of the first acquired morphemes by various lan-
guage acquisition populations. Therefore, the perfor-
mance contrast between this morpheme (present in L1
Mandarin) and other morphemes (absent in L1 Mandarin)
may not be telling about L1 transfer or interference effects.
Subsequently, we will discuss our results only in relation
to the Enviromental and Critical Period accounts.
Age-Related Differences in L2
Morphological Acquisition: The Forms
in Which They Exist
The second goal of the current study was to investi-
gate whether age-related differences existed along speci-
fic dimensions of morphological acquisition. The AoAr
effect, though its causes are controversial, is acknowl-
edged by most researchers (e.g., Flege, 1995; Singleton &
Ryan, 2004). However, there is limited knowledge of ex-
actly what aspects of learning are particularly challeng-
ing to older learners. Such knowledge can help gauge the
contributions of the theoretical accounts, which propose
different levels of continuity of the L2 acquisition mech-
anism. A general quantitative difference in long-term L2
morphological attainment (i.e., younger learners are bet-
ter than older learners) is predicted by both the Critical
Period and Environmental accounts. However, the Crit-
ical Period account, which assumes the least continuity of
the learning mechanism, needs to be supported by find-
ings of qualitative differences between younger and older
learners in specific aspects of morphological learning. In
contrast, the Environmental account is compatible with a
language learning mechanism that is consistent across
different ages and, thus, does not need to be supported by
evidence of qualitative differences among learners of dif-
ferent ages.
Further, from an applied perspective, only knowl-
edge about the specific challenges encountered by learn-
ers of different ages can lead to effective instruction and
intervention. Drawing upon existing literature in various
language acquisition populations, the current study ex-
plored three aspects of L2 morphological acquisition with
potential age-related differences: (a) the degree of perfor-
mance discrepancy between tense- and non-tense-related
morphemes, (b) error patterns, and (c) the acquisition of
regular versus irregular morphemes.
The first issue concerns whether age-related differ-
ences exist in the degree of performance discrepancy be-
tween tense- and non-tense-related morphemes. Interest
in this aspect of learning originated in the study of chil-
dren with specific language impairment (SLI). Monolingual
children with SLI have particular difficulties acquiring
tense-related morphemes (i.e., regular and irregular past
tense, third person singular, copula and auxiliary BE,
and auxiliary DO) but not non-tense-related morphemes
(i.e., plural, possessive –s, articles, and progressive aspect
forms; e.g., Bedore & Leonard, 1998; Rice & Wexler,
1996). From a linguistic perspective, some researchers
have suggested that monolingual children with SLI have
limitations in connecting the abstract functional category
Tense (e.g., rather than Agreement) with its surface mor-
phological forms (Wexler, 1998). Currently, there is a
growing interest in directly contrasting multiple lan-
guage learning populations, including L1 and L2 learn-
ers, with and without SLI. The general purpose is to find
the differences and similarities among these groups of
learners, illuminate and constrain language acquisition
theories that supposedly explain all these similarities
and differences, and identify markers that distinguish
typically developing and nontypically developing learn-
ers in each of the L1 and L2 learning populations.
In line with this interest, the study of tense-related
and non-tense-related morphemes has been adapted in
L2 acquisition research. Paradis (2005) studied 24 typi-
cally developing English L2 learners with ages ranging be-
tween 50 and 94 months from various L1 backgrounds
(e.g., Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, and Korean). Par-
ticipants were all child L2 learners (age of English expo-
sure ranged from 3 to 6 years of age) and had been
exposed to English for about 2 to 18 months. In obligatory
contexts of spontaneous speech, accuracy for tense-related
morphemes was significantly lower (48.81%) than that for
non-tense-related morphemes (70.58%). These findings
led to the conclusion that the morphological acquisition
profiles of child L2 learners resembled those of mono-
lingual children of the same age with SLI in exhibiting
more difficulties with tense-related morphemes.
The current study investigated whether the find-
ings from child L2 learners can be generalized to a sam-
ple of native Mandarin speakers with a more varied age
of exposure to English. Particularly, given that tense-
related morphemes present a larger challenge to child
L2 learners than non-tense-related morphemes, would
this difference be more or less pronounced among older
L2 learners? Would the potential age-related differences
in this aspect uncover something deeper about the changes
of the L2 acquisition mechanisms across age? No existing
findings are available to address this issue. In the current
study, we compared early and late arrivals’ performance
on individual morphological structures, and we observed
whether the relative difficulty levels of tense- and non-
tense-related morphemes varied between the two groups.
Consistent with previous studies (e.g., Paradis, 2005;
Rice & Wexler, 1996), the tense-related morphemes in-
cluded regular and irregular past tense, third person
singular, auxiliary DO, and copula BE, and the non-tense-
related morpheme was progressive aspect –ing. To en-
hance the tense and nontense contrast, performance on
another non-tense-related structure, plural, was included
in the nontense group. Except for this analysis, data on
the plural morpheme were not included in other anal-
yses of the current report (see Jia, 2003, for other findings).
The second issue is whether younger and older L2
learners’ error patterns differ. Most morphological pro-
duction errors of L1 and L2 learners are omission errors.
That is, speakers tend to use nonfinite verbs (verb stems
without inflections) in finite positions in which morpho-
logical inflections are necessary. The overuse of nonfinite
verbs (underuse of morphemes) is proposed to be due to
either missing functional categories underlying the mor-
phemes (the impairment view) or problems with mapping
from abstract categories to their surface morphological
representations (the missing surface inflection hypothesis;
see Ionin & Wexler, 2001, for a review). Two findings have
been used as evidence to support the missing surface in-
flection hypothesis. First, whereas L2 learners tend to use
nonfinite verbs in finite positions, they rarely use finite
verbs in nonfinite positions (Paradis & Crago, 2000;
Prévost & White, 1999). For example, L2 learners may
inappropriately drop the third person singular “s” in
“She like(s) to go to school” (omission errors), but they
rarely mistakenly add “s” as in “They like(s) to go to
school” or “She begin to like(s) to go to school” (commis-
sion errors). Such findings are argued to indicate that L2
learners have the knowledge and thus intact underlying
Jia & Fuse: L2 English Grammatical Morphology Acquisition 1283
representations of the functional categories. If they did
not, they would also overuse the morphological markers
when they are not required. Second, L2 learners are also
found to overuse suppletive morphemes (e.g., DO and BE)
in situations when inflectional morphemes are required
(e.g., “He is want to go there”). Such findings are inter-
preted to show that L2 learners not only have intact un-
derlying representations of functional categories but also
resort to expressions that are more easily perceived and
produced, such as the suppletive forms (Leonard, 1998),
and other times to the nonfinite forms that have high fre-
quency of occurrence.
Though the predominance of omission errors has
been found separately in both child (Paradis, 2005) and
adult L2 learners (Zobl & Liceras, 1994), no study has ex-
plicitly examined whether its existence shows any age-
related difference. In the current study, the errors made
across L2 speakers of various AoAr were compared. We
particularly examined whether the younger and older
learners made similarly high proportions of omission er-
rors that are predicted by the missing surface inflection
hypothesis.
Third, to further investigate any potential qualitative
differences among younger and older learners, we ex-
plored a division between the regular versus irregular mor-
pheme acquisition proposed by the declarative/procedural
( D/ P) model (Ullman, 2001). This model describes lan-
guage function as based on two independent systems, the
declarative system (a mental lexicon of memorized word-
specific knowledge) and the procedural system (a mental
grammar that subserves the rule-governed combination
of lexical items into complex representations). Irregular
morphological forms are learned through the declarative
system, and the regular forms are learned through the
procedural system. According to this model, with increas-
ing age, especially after puberty, the procedural system is
less available than the declarative system because of the
attenuation of procedural memory as a result of increased
estrogen levels at puberty. (However, different from the
irreversible age effects postulated by the Critical Period
account, this model predicts that practice increases per-
formance in procedural memory and late language learn-
ers can become native-like with experience.) This proposal
predicts a superiority of late arrivals (i.e., older learners)
in learning irregular forms over regular forms, a trend
reduced or even reversed among early arrivals (i.e., younger
learners).
There is some supporting evidence for the D/P model
from the acquisition of an artificial language in adulthood
(Opitz & Friederici, 2003). However, two existing studies
of L2 acquisition yielded the opposite results of what the
D/P model predicts. In two long-term attainment studies
that used grammatical judgment tasks, whereas younger
arrivals (with AoAr around 7–8 years) showed identical
1284 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 50 • 1280–1299 • October 2007
performance on both regular and irregular forms, the
older arrivals performed better on the regular than irreg-
ular forms (Birdsong & Flege, 2000; Flege et al., 1999). To
further investigate this inconclusive issue, in the current
study, performance discrepancy between regular and ir-
regular forms was examined across all participants. Al-
though the regular and irregular dimension exists for
several morphemes measured in the study (e.g., third per-
son singular –s and has, plural nouns, and past tense), we
only focused on past tense, which had yielded a sufficient
number of tokens for the two types to be contrasted.
The review of the literature indicates that there is
still much to be learned about the exact forms in which
age-related differences exist during the course of L2 mor-
phological acquisition. The issues regarding tense- and
non-tense-related morphemes, and the error patterns
made, have been examined to understand whether L2
and L1 acquisition share similar mechanisms. However,
age-related differences in these two dimensions have
not been investigated. The third dimension, the acqui-
sition of regular versus irregular morphological forms,
has been addressed from the perspective of age-related
differences. However, because of the inconclusive findings,
more investigation is necessary for a firmer conclusion.
Such knowledge would illuminate the nature of the matu-
ration of the language learning mechanism with age, as
well as provide a detailed knowledge base for L2 language
instruction and intervention targeting L2 learners of dif-
ferent ages.
Summary of Research Goals
and Questions
In sum, the current study has two goals. The first
goal was to identify the timing and context in which
age-related differences in morphological proficiency oc-
curred and to examine how much of the variance in per-
formance among participants could be predicted by AoAr
when language environment was taken into account. To
achieve this goal, we asked (a) How long after L2 im-
mersion do AoAr effects start to appear? and (b) If de-
tailed enough language environment data are obtained
and incorporated into the statistical analyses, would AoAr
still remain the most significant predictor of the learn-
ing outcome? The second goal was to investigate the spe-
cific forms that age-related differences took. The current
study explored three aspects of L2 morphological acqui-
sition with potential age-related differences: the degree
of performance discrepancy between tense- and non-
tense-related morphemes, error patterns, and the ac-
quisition of regular versus irregular morphemes. We
asked (a) In comparison with non-tense-related mor-
phemes, are tense-related morphemes equally challeng-
ing to early and late arrivals? (b) Do both early and late
arrivals make a similarly high proportion of omission er-
rors? and (c) Do early and late arrivals exhibit the same
trend of discrepancy in performance on regular versus ir-
regular morphemes?
Method
Participants
Participants were the same 10 native Mandarin-
speaking children and adolescents as described in Jia
(2003): Anna (f 5), Betty (f 6), Carl (m7), Dianna (f 8), Eric
(m9), Frank (m9), Gary (m12), Hua-lei (f12), Jing-lan
(f 15), and Kang-da (m16). These were 5 girls and 5 boys
who were from 5 to 16 years of age upon immigration to the
New York City area. Participants’ pseudonyms are speci-
fied with their gender and AoAr in parentheses. For all
participants, English immersion began when they en-
tered New York City public schools. Only the two oldest
participants had previous exposure to English through
classroom instruction in their native country. All par-
ticipants attended English-speaking schools where all sub-
jects were taught in English and over 70% of the students
were native English speakers. All received focused En-
glish language instructions from English as a Second Lan-
guage (ESL) programs, with length of attendance varying
from 1 to 3 years across participants. The parents of
the participants all possessed English communication
skills, ranging from basic to fluent. The differences in the
length of ESL education and parental English levels ex-
isted evenly across participants of different ages. Lan-
guage use with siblings was an insignificant part of
language environment because 8 participants were only
children, and the other 2 were sisters who exclusively
used Chinese with each other. As immigrants with AoAr
younger and older than 9 years have been shown to ex-
hibit distinctive patterns in the relative levels of L1 and
L2 obtained in the long run (e.g., Jia et al., 2002; Yeni-
Komshian, Flege, & Liu, 2000), the 10 participants were
subdivided into a group of 6 early arrivals (with AoAr as
9 years and younger) and a group of 4 late arrivals (with
AoAr as 12 years and older).
Procedures
Testing sessions. The study started 3 months af-
ter participants’ English immersion through entering
English-speaking schools. Sixteen testing sessions were
conducted in participants’ homes during the first 5 years
of their residence in the United States. These included
seven monthly sessions during Year 1, four quarterly ses-
sions during Year 2, two semiannual sessions each during
Years 3 and 4, and a single session during Year 5. Each
session lasted about 4 hr and consisted of five basic activ-
ities: language tasks, child interview, parental interview,
language background questionnaire, and observations of
the child’s language use. All sessions were conducted by
the first author, a fluent Mandarin–English bilingual.
Because of some problems of scheduling and recording,
Anna (f5), Carl (m7), and Eric (m9) each missed two, one,
and one testing session(s), respectively. The current ar-
ticle reports results from a total of 156 data sessions
across all participants.
Target morpheme production measures. Production
of all the target morphemes was coded from spontaneous
speech and additionally with an elicitation task for pro-
gressive aspect. Spontaneous speech samples were col-
lected through conversations between the interviewer
and the participants about their activities in school and
at home, their language use in various situations, and
undirected story telling prompted by a series of picture
scripts. The length of the samples of each session ranged
from about 30 to 45 min. Only for the progressive aspect,
an additional elicitation task was used. Participants
were shown a set of eight pictures, each depicting a per-
son(s) doing something. Participants were asked to “use
a complete English sentence to describe what is happen-
ing.” A different set of pictures was used for each testing
session. The appropriate pictures were first selected and
then randomly assigned to different testing sessions. As
exploratory statistical analysis did not show differences
in the performance on the elicitation task and during
spontaneous speech, the data from both sources were com-
bined for the progressive aspect structure.
Language environment measures. Participants’ lan-
guage environment was evaluated by (a) an annual parental
questionnaire written in Chinese, (b) child and parent in-
terviews, and (c) the interviewer’s observations of the par-
ticipants’ language use at home with their family members
and peers. At the end of each year, parents filled out a
questionnaire to report their children’s language use in
various situations over the previous year. In the question-
naire, parents reported (a) the number of hours of TV their
children watched in each language during each week,
(b) the number of books they read in each language dur-
ing each school semester and the two school breaks, (c) the
number of friends they had who predominantly spoke ei-
ther Chinese or English during the entire year, and (d) the
pecentage of time that they spoke each language at home
during the year. These four aspects were combined to yield
an English L2 environment composite score for each par-
ticipant for each year of the study (see Jia & Aaronson,
2003, for details of this measure). Each score ranges from
0 to 100, and a higher score indicates a richer L2 environ-
ment and a poorer L1 environment. The parent ques-
tionnaire data were highly consistent with data obtained
from child interviews and observations. To summarize the
findings, throughout the 5 years of the study, a younger
AoAr predicted a significantly richer L2 environment and
poorer L1 environment. From the third year on, early arrivals
Jia & Fuse: L2 English Grammatical Morphology Acquisition 1285
used English on average 57% of the time (vs. 15% for late
arrivals) with their parents at home, 90% of the time with
their friends in school (vs. 24% for late arrivals), and 95% of
the time for leisure reading (vs. 11% for late arrivals).
Transcriptions
Participants’ performance on the elicitation task and
in spontaneous speech was audiotaped and then tran-
scribed. Transcripts were made by the first author and
three transcribers, and all were double-checked by a
fifth transcriber. All transcribers were fluent Chinese–
English bilinguals with college or graduate degrees who
were trained for the task. Most disagreements were re-
solved by consensus agreement, and ambiguous cases,
due to unclear recording, were not included in the anal-
yses. Intertranscriber agreement was assessed over the
middle four rounds of measurement (7, 8, 9, and 10) for
all participants. Among the total number of words pro-
duced in the entire interview, the second rater made
several types of changes, including adding, deleting, or
changing a word or a morpheme. The intertranscriber
agreement rate is indicated by percentages of judg-
ments unchanged by the second rater. The rates ranged
from 97.1% to 99.3%, with an average of 98.0% across
all participants.
Coding of Spontaneous Speech
General coding rules. First, participants’ use of the
target morphemes was coded. Consistent with past re-
search, several types of productions were not coded:
1. Imitations of the interviewer ’s speech, immediate
self-repetitions, and formulaic speech were not coded
(see examples for each morpheme later).
2. Reading of a story from a book, of participants’ own
writing, and memorized stories (determined by the
interviewer on the basis of probes immediately after
the story) were not coded.
3. Incomplete sentences such as “There are four, umm I”
and “ The family was so, umm I” were not coded.
4. Utterances followed by spontaneous self-corrections
were not coded, but the corrected forms were coded
and counted.
Second, the obligatory contexts of each morpheme
were decided. Productions in obligatory contexts were
coded either as correct, omission errors, or commis-
sion errors. Commission errors were further coded for
the specific types. Descriptions of the two error types are
provided in subsequent sessions for each morpheme. A
percentage correct score for each morpheme per data
session was calculated for each participant by taking the
percentage of the correct responses out of the total number
of obligatory contexts. The number of obligatory contexts
1286 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 50 • 1280–1299 • October 2007
produced by each participant for each structure averaged
across all data sessions are also listed in the following
sessions. These data show some individual differences
in the amount of obligatory contexts generated in each
data session—but independently of AoAr or morphological
structures. If, in a given session, a participant produced
fewer than five obligatory contexts for a particular mor-
pheme, the data for that session were excluded from
analyses.
Coding of past tense in the obligatory context. The
criteria for the obligatory context for past tense consisted
of both linguistic and contextual cues. The linguistic cues
included adverbial time phrases such as “yesterday” and
“last week.” The use of past tense indicated by these ad-
verbial time phrases usually occurred after the inter-
viewer asked the participants of their activities on the
previous day or during a past vacation or a break. The
contextual cues were used when no explicit adverbial
time phrases appeared for a past event. Participants also
were asked or they themselves took initiative to tell
stories. In such narratives, either past or present tense
can be used, because native English speakers, when re-
counting past events, alternate between present (named
historical present tense) and past tenses in conversational
narratives (Wolfson, 1979). Therefore, verbs in such nar-
ratives were not coded for tense. Main verbs “do” and
“have” were counted as irregular forms. Auxiliary and
copula BE and auxiliary DO were coded for tense but not
counted in the percentage correct of past tense. Formulaic
expressions such as “I forgot” and “I told you” were not
coded.
Past tense morpheme productions in obligatory con-
texts were coded as correct, omission errors, and com-
mission errors, separately for regular and irregular verbs.
Omission errors included cases in which the infinite verb
forms were used (e.g., “look” instead of “looked,” and
“ break ” instead of “broke”). Commission errors for regu-
lar verbs only involved the use of third person singular –s
instead of past tense –ed (e.g., “looks” instead of “looked”).
Commission errors for irregular verbs involved the use of
third person instead of past tense (e.g., “breaks” instead of
“broke”), and the use of regular form instead of irregular
form (e.g., “breaked” instead of “broke”). Overextension
errors in nonobligatory contexts were coded but not in-
cluded in the analyses as our report focuses on the use of
grammatical morphemes in obligatory contexts.
One source of the differences in possible differential
performance on regular and irregular verbs could be word
frequency. Existing word frequency dictionaries are
based on either an adult reading corpus (Francis &
Ku*era, 1982), preschool speech corpus (Hall, Nagey, &
Linn, 1984), or school-age (Grades 3–9) reading corpus
(across 22 subject areas) (Carroll, Davies, & Richman,
1971). For the current study, Carroll et al. (1971) was
used because its corpus age samples are closest to those Table 1. Number of obligatory contexts (averaged across all testing
of the participants in the current study. One of its fre- sessions) for each participant.
quency value indictors, U, that is scaled in terms of
frequency-per-million was used as the frequency index Participant 3rd PT (r) PT (ir) DO BE –ING
for the past tense verbs.
Anna (f5) 12 29 50 11 27 22
Coding of third person singular in the obligatory con- Betty (f6) 18 15 31 12 20 17
text. The criterion for the obligatory context for third per- Carl (m7) 8 8 16 8 10 17
son singular is the simultaneous presence of a verb in a Dianna (f8) 30. 16 41 30 36 30
present tense context with a third person subject. Cor- Eric (m9) 13 18 24 13 11 16
rect productions included the regular form of adding of Frank (m9) 19 5 17 19 6 19
“s” to a verb, and the irregular form of changing “ have” Gary (m12) 24 10 30 24 18 17
Hua-lei (f12) 10 6 10 10 7 18
into “ has.” Omission errors included the absence of the
Jing-lan (f15) 12 9 19 12 14 21
third person singular morpheme “s,” or not changing
Kang-da (m16) 13 14 21 13 14 22
“ have” into “ has.” The only commission errors were the
use of past tense to indicate third person singular form, Note. 3rd = third person singular; PT (r) = past tense regular; PT (ir) =
as in “She is checking if she had any money.” Formulaic past tense irregular; DO = auxiliary DO; BE = copula BE; –ING =
expressions such as “ Who cares?” were not coded. progressive aspect –ing.
Coding of auxiliary DO in the obligatory context. The
criterion for the obligatory DO context is the presence of
interrogative and negative sentences with a main verb. Intercoder agreement rates ranged from 80.2% to 95.4%,
Correct use of DO refers to the use of DO with correct with an average of 88.2% for morpheme counting based
tense and person agreement with the subject. Omission on evaluations of the middle four rounds of data (7, 8, 9,
errors refer to the absence of DO or DOES in these con- and 10) of each participant. Most disagreements were
texts. Commission errors refer to the use of DO with the resolved by consensus agreement involving a third na-
wrong agreement (all cases involved using “DO” for tive English speaker and the first author. When agree-
“DOES”) or with the wrong tense. Only one instance of ment could not be reached, the items were excluded from
an additional commission error occurred in which the analysis.
use of DO was mistakenly substituted with “ BE” (“I’m
not like the movie”). Formulaic expressions such as “I
don’t know” were not coded. Results
Coding of copula BE. The criteria for the obligatory To address the first goal of the study, age-related dif-
copula BE context is the presence of a subject and its pred- ferences were assessed by (a) examining whether the
icate (an adjective or noun phrase that denotes some number of morphemes mastered by participants varied
properties of the person(s) or things(s) referred to by the according to AoAr, and (b) examining at what time point
subject). Correct use of BE refers to the use of BE with of L2 immersion significant negative correlations be-
correct tense and person agreement with the subject. tween AoAr and performance on each morpheme (indi-
Omission errors refer to the absence of BE in these con- cating a younger learner advantage) started to emerge.
texts. Commission errors refer to the use of BE with Further, growth curve analysis was conducted to com-
wrong agreement (e.g., “She are late”) or with wrong pare the growth rates and trajectories of individual mor-
tense (e.g., “Yesterday she is late”). Formulaic expres- phemes of each participant and investigate whether AoAr
sions such as “It’s like” and “I’m like” were not coded. uniquely explained a significant portion of performance
Coding of progressive aspect –ing. The progressive as- variance when language environment was taken into ac-
pect denotes an ongoing action. In obligatory context, cor- count. To address the second goal of the study, perfor-
rect cases refer to a verb inflected with –ing. Omission mance across individuals (thus AoAr) was assessed by
errors were bare verb stems without –ing (e.g., “He was do comparing scores on tense- and non-tense-related mor-
something”). No commission errors were found. phemes, and on regular and irregular morphemes, as well
as by analyzing the error types (i.e., commission vs. omis-
Table 1 lists the number of obligatory context for each
sion errors) made.
structure averaged across all the testing sessions for each
participant. The correlations between AoAr and number of
obligatory contexts for all structures were not statistically Mastery of the Morphemes
significant, indicating that differences in number of oblig- This section of the data analyses examined the ac-
atory contexts for all structures were not related to AoAr. quisition profiles of individual morphemes shown by each
Intercoder reliability. The coding was conducted in- participant using mastery of morpheme as an indicator of
dependently by two trained native English speakers. proficiency. Figures 1–6 present the percentage correct in

Jia & Fuse: L2 English Grammatical Morphology Acquisition 1287

 Figure 1. The scatterplot of length of second language (L2) immersion and the third person singular
(3rd) morpheme production accuracy of the younger arrivals (top) and older arrivals (bottom).

obligatory contexts per participant over the 16 testing
sessions by token counts for each of the six morphologi-
cal structures. For clarity, data for each structure were
charted on two separate panels, one for the 6 younger and
one for the 4 older participants. Mastery of a structure is
defined by over 80% correct use of the morpheme in ob-
ligatory contexts across three consecutive testing sessions
as is traditional in monolingual literature (e.g., Lahey,
Liebergott, Chesnick, Menyuk, & Adams, 1992). Table 2
lists the time at which participants mastered the six struc-
tures, with the data on plurals adopted from a previously
published report (Jia, 2003).
The number of participants who mastered each struc-
ture varied dramatically. Present progressive –ing was
mastered by all participants, followed by plural (by 7 par-
ticipants), auxiliary DO (by 6 participants), and copula BE
(by 5 participants). Third person singular and irregular
past tense were mastered by only 3 and 4 participants, re-
spectively, and regular past tense –ed by none.
Individual differences also existed in the mastery of
the seven structures. The number of structures each
participant mastered ranged from six (Betty [f 6] and
Dianna [f 8]) to one (Kang-da [m16]). The correlation be-
tween AoAr and the number of structures mastered was
not statistically significant, r(8) = –.53. The correlations
between AoAr and performance on various structures
were obtained for each data session, with significant neg-
ative correlations indicating AoAr effects. Though most of
the correlations were not statistically significant, the
trend was consistent. Across the structures, over time,
the correlations changed from positive to negative. Ini-
tially, there were consistently positive values (indicat-
ing an older learner advantage). Then, between the 1st
and 2nd year of L2 immersion, the values became and
stayed consistently negative (indicating a younger learner
advantage). It was not till the end of the study that a
younger AoAr predicted significantly better average per-
formance on third person singular, r(8) = –.87, p < .01, and

1288 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 50 • 1280–1299 • October 2007
 Figure 2. The scatterplot of length of second language (L2) immersion and the progressive aspect
(–ing) production accuracy of the younger arrivals (top) and older arrivals (bottom).
the correlations approached a significant level for past
tense regular, r(8) = –.60, p = .09, and for the average per-
formance on all structures, r(8) = –.59, p = .08.
Growth Curve Analyses
To further examine the developmental trajectories
of the structures, growth curve analyses were conducted
to answer the following questions: (a) Did the accuracy of
participant’s morpheme production grow linearly or non-
linearly? (b) Were there individual differences in the rate
and type of growth? (c) How were such individual dif-
ferences predicted by variables such as age and language
environment?
The analyses were done using hierarchical linear mod-
eling (HLM) procedures that analyze individual differences
in growth and change processes (Bryk & Raudenbush,
1992). HLM models investigate whether there are sta-
tistically significant departures among participants in
their initial statuses and/or their rates of change from
the group mean. In the present study, this was accom-
plished through the use of a mixed model approach that
allows one to obtain intercept and slope coefficients unique
to each participant. These are then compared with the
average intercept and slope characterizing the sample
as a whole. Differences between the average trajectory
and developmental trajectories of each child were sum-
marized in single estimates of the variability of individual
intercepts and slopes around the sample averages. The
software used to conduct the analyses was SAS PROC
MIXED, a program for fitting multilevel models, hierar-
chical linear models, and individual growth models
(Singer, 1998; Singer & Willett, 2003).
Three nested models were used. Model 1 examined
whether the overall growth trajectory was linear or non-
linear, and whether there were significant intercept and
slope differences in the individual growth trajectories.
The existence of linear and nonlinear (quadratic) changes
over time varied across the structures (see Table 3). Reg-
ular past tense –ed showed no linear or quadratic growth.
Jia & Fuse: L2 English Grammatical Morphology Acquisition 1289
 Figure 3. The scatterplot of length of second language (L2) immersion and auxiliary DO (DO)
production accuracy of the younger arrivals (top) and older arrivals (bottom).

Auxiliary DO showed linear but nonquadratic growth.
Irregular past tense, present progressive –ing, copula BE,
and third person singular showed both linear and qua-
dratic growth (including marginally significant results).
Significant and marginally significant slope differences
were found for third person singular and progressive –ing,
respectively. Significant intercept was found for all six
morphological structures (marginally significant for reg-
ular past tense), reflecting the fact that, at the third month
of L2 immersion, participants already showed different
levels of accuracy.
Model 2 examined whether the slope differences ex-
isted for only the nonlinear part of the function or both
the nonlinear and linear part by eliminating the linear
term and the quadratic term of the function separately
(see Table 3). For progressive –ing, eliminating the linear
term of the function still resulted in significant slope dif-
ferences, whereas eliminating the quadratic term of the
function resulted in nonsignificant slope differences. This
indicates that the significant slope differences detected in
Model 1 existed only for the quadratic part of the function.
That is, during the early period of accelerated growth,
participants did not differ in their speed of development.
When growth approached asymptotic levels as a group,
the developmental functions started to vary in trajecto-
ries. The case for the third person singular was the op-
posite. Mere elimination of the quadratic function left
the slope significant. This indicates that the slope dif-
ferences for this structure existed during the early growth
of the structure but not when the growth reached asymp-
totic levels.
Model 3 examined whether the differences in the in-
tercept and slope found for five of the six structures were
predicted by age-related and language environment–
related variables (see Table 3). The two explanatory var-
iables entered included AoAr and L2 environment score
averaged across all the testing sessions. L2 environment
was a significant predictor of the intercept differences for
past tense irregular and the slope and intercept differences
of third person singular. Performance on auxiliary DO and

1290 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 50 • 1280–1299 • October 2007
 Figure 4. The scatterplot of length of second language (L2) immersion and copula BE (BE)
production accuracy of the younger arrivals (top) and older arrivals (bottom).
copula BE were not accounted for by any of the two var-
iables (see Table 3).
Tense-Related and Non-Tense-Related
Morphemes
One approach to compare participants’ performance
on the tense- and non-tense-related morphemes is to ob-
tain the average percentage correct scores separately for
all the five tense-related structures and the two non-
tense-related structures for each data session and for
each participant. However, as the current study only in-
cluded two non-tense-related morphemes (i.e., progressive
aspect –ing and plural) in contrast to five tense-related
morphemes, such a comparison lacks sufficient validity.
Therefore, we chose to conduct a mixed two-way analysis
of variance, with a 2 (age group) × 7 (structure) design,
using percentage correct as the dependent variable. In
this analysis, each morpheme was treated individually,
and performance was contrasted across the morphemes
(within-subjects variable), and between the younger and
older group (between-subjects variable). With this lay-
out of analysis, we can observe performance on the two
non-tense-related morphemes in relation to performance
on the other five tense-related morphemes at individual
morpheme level.
There was a significant main effect of structure,
F(6, 48) = 35.27, effect size = .82, p < .001. This reflects the
finding that average percentage correct scores (collapsed
across participants) varied significantly across structures.
The ranking order of the percentage correct scores
(from the highest to lowest) is the following: auxiliary
DO (83.87%), progressive –ing (83.13%), copula BE
(71.36%), plural (68.97%), past tense irregular (65.65%),
third person singular (44.82%), and past tense regular
(40.26%).
There was no main effect of age, indicating no sta-
tistically significant differences between the average scores
(collapsed across structures) of the younger and older group
(69.52% for the older vs. 61.35% for the younger).
Jia & Fuse: L2 English Grammatical Morphology Acquisition 1291
 Figure 5. The scatterplot of length of second language (L2) immersion and regular past tense
morpheme production accuracy of the younger arrivals (top) and older arrivals (bottom).

There was a significant interaction effect between
age group and structure, F(6, 48) = 2.47, effect size = .24,
p < .05. Inspection of the percentage scores for each struc-
ture separately for the younger and older group indicates
that the same structures fell into the low, high, and me-
dium accuracy levels for both age groups. More specifi-
cally, for both groups, the structure with the lowest
accuracy was regular past tense (younger group: 47.03%;
older group: 33.48%), followed by third person singular
(younger group: 51.48%; older group: 38.16%). The two
easiest structures were progressive –ing (younger group:
78.83%; older group: 87.41%) and auxiliary DO (younger
group: 85.11%; older group: 82.63%). With medium level
accuracy were plural ( younger: 71.68%; older: 66.26%),
past tense irregular ( younger: 74.46%; older: 56.84%),
and copula BE (younger: 78.05%; older: 64.67%). The sig-
nificant interaction stemmed from the fact that, within
each of the three performance levels (i.e., low, high, and
medium), the specific ranking orders of the structure
varied between the younger and older groups. However,
as these ranking order differences are not relevant to the
tense and nontense issue we intended to address, no fur-
ther analysis was conducted to find out exactly which
pairs of structures were significantly different from each
other within each age group.
Error Analysis
Participants made two types of errors. One type in-
cluded omission errors for which the required morpheme
was dropped, and the other type included commission er-
rors for which the required morpheme was substituted
by another morpheme. Table 4 lists the averaged ratio of
omission errors out of the total number of errors for each
data session. Evidently, for all six morphemes, omission
errors constituted most of the errors, though the omission
error rates varied dramatically. Four of the structures
(regular and irregular past tense, third person singular,
and progressive –ing) had over 90% of omission errors.
Similarly, the rate of omission errors for plurals was also

1292 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 50 • 1280–1299 • October 2007
 Figure 6. The scatterplot of length of second language (L2) immersion and irregular past tense
morpheme production accuracy of the younger arrivals (top) and older arrivals (bottom).
very high, from 84.0% to 97.2% (M = 92.5, SD = 4.0; Jia,
2003). However, for copula BE and auxiliary DO, the
percentage of omission errors was lowered by almost
30%.
Regular and Irregular Past Tense
For each participant, performance on regular and
irregular past tense forms was compared with paired
sample t tests (see Table 5). For 7 of the 10 participants,
performance on irregular verbs was significantly better
than on regular verbs. Two older arrivals and 1 younger
arrival showed the same though insignificant trend.
To examine how the performance on regular and ir-
regular past tense forms was related to word frequency,
for each data session for each participant, an average score
of frequency (U values) was obtained for the correctly reg-
ularized and irregularized past tense verbs separately.
Paired sample t tests were conducted to compare the
frequencies of correctly produced regular and irregular
verbs, and the incorrectly produced regular and irreg-
ular verbs. For 8 of the 10 participants, the average fre-
quency value for the correctly produced regular verbs
was significantly lower than the irregular verbs (see
Table 5). The remaining 2 participants showed nonsignifi-
cant but similar trends.
Discussion
The current study examined the acquisition of six
English grammatical morphemes by 10 native Mandarin-
speaking children and adolescents over their first 5 years
of residence in the United States. We charted and com-
pared the acquisition trajectories and levels of mastery
of the morphemes by each participant. By the end of
the 5th year of English immersion, only one structure
(progressive aspect –ing) was mastered by all participants
Jia & Fuse: L2 English Grammatical Morphology Acquisition 1293
Table 2. Time (in months) after the beginning of English immersion Table 3. Growth curve modeling results for morpheme production
when morphological structures were mastered. accuracy.

Participant 3rd PT (r) PT (ir) DO BE Plur – ING Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Anna (f5) 39 15 27 18 12 Third person singular

Betty (f6) 27 27 33 33 33 15 Linear 13.75** 1.78*
Carl (m7) 18 21 15 Quadratic 4.75yy
Dianna (f8) 18 18 7 5 8 5 Intercept 1.81*
Eric (m9) 27 7 12 Slope 1.81*
Frank (m9) 27 12 Environment 14.31***
Gary (m12) 27 27
Regular past tense
Hua-lei (f12) 27 9
Intercept 1.50y
Jing-lan (f15) 39 33 21 3 3
Kang-da (m16) 39 Irregular past tense
Linear 22.93**
Note. Plur = Plural. Blank cells indicate that a structure was not mastered Quadratic 7.83*
by a participant during the study period. Intercept 1.86*
Environment 15.56***

Auxiliary DO
(defined as over 80% accuracy across three consecutive Linear 9.67*
testing sessions), and one structure (regular past tense –ed) Intercept 2.14*
was mastered by none of the participants. Performance
Copula BE
on other structures fell in between. In other words, all
Linear 10.35*
participants still spoke English with various degrees of Quadratic 4.70yy
morphological errors, after having lived in an English- Intercept 1.66*
speaking country for 5 years. None of them used regular
Present progressive –ING
past tense correctly over 80% of the time when it was re-
Linear 67.61***
quired, and most of them could not pass this criterion
Quadratic 44.98*** 1.94*
when using irregular past tense and third person sin- Intercept 1.87*
gular. In contrast, typically developing monolingual En- Slope 1.61yyy
glish speakers can produce these morphemes with at least
80% accuracy (over 90% for most morphemes) in sponta- Blank cells represent values of nonsignificant results.
neous productions by the age of 5 years (Rice & Wexler, y
p = .07. yyp = .06. yyyp = .05. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
1996; Rice, Wexler, & Hershberger, 1998). These results
reinforce previous findings of long-term attainment stud-
ies (e.g., Bialystok & Miller, 1999; Birdsong & Molis, structure, showed a clear upward trend that did not pla-
2001; Flege et al., 1999; Jia et al., 2002) or of longitudinal teau during the 5-year period. The most difficult struc-
studies (e.g., Hakuta, 1978; Lardiere, 1998; Paradis, ture, regular past tense, showed no significant growth
2005), indicating the difficulty of morphological acquisi- over time, with its acquisition trajectories characterized
tion by L2 learners. by tremendous fluctuations. However, visual inspections
The morphemes were mastered by drastically differ- of the graphs indicate that the younger arrivals might be
ent numbers of participants, and the acquisition trajectories at the beginning of a growth curve that will take more
of the morphemes also varied substantially. Progressive
aspect –ing, on average the easiest structure to acquire, Table 4. The averaged ratio of omissions errors over the total number
showed accelerated improvement in the beginning fol- of errors for each data session.
lowed by a period of leveling off. When findings of plural
morpheme acquisition from Jia (2003) with the same Variable M SD Range
participants are incorporated, plural was the second eas-
iest, with 7 out of 10 participants having mastered the Third person 92.80 12.45 50 –100
structure. The growth trajectories of plurals and –ing Regular past tense 95.58 9.12 55.56–100
also resembled each other. Auxiliary DO, copula BE, and Irregular past tense 92.30 12.76 50 –100
Auxiliary DO 62.60 36.73 16.67–100
irregular past tense presented medium level difficulty,
Copula BE 59.71 30.21 5.88–100
each mastered by 6, 5, and 4 participants, respectively.
Progressive aspect –ING 100.00 N/A N/A
Growth curve analysis showed a general pattern of accel-
erated growth in the beginning of the study followed by N/A = not applicable.
a plateau. Third person singular, the second hardest

1294 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 50 • 1280–1299 • October 2007
 Table 5. Percentage correct and word frequency values for regular and irregular past tense.

Average performance Average word frequency

Participant Regular Irregular df t Regular Irregular df t

Anna (f5) 65.41 86.89 7 –4.40*** 188.79 490.78 7 –6.78***

Betty (f6) 68.34 80.86 8 –1.40 215.46 604.24 8 –9.27***
Carl (m7) 43.37 86.19 8 –5.51*** 132.24 499.99 8 –5.42**
Dianna (f8) 53.26 83.64 11 –4.93*** 55.84 155.22 10 –8.69***
Eric (m9) 47.57 72.86 8 –6.04*** 157.66 633.15 7 –4.36*
Frank (m9) 23.33 64.12 6 –3.83** 342.54 516.46 6 –1.02
Gary (m12) 7.58 38.87 12 –6.41*** 462.64 661.29 6 –1.35
Hua-lei (f12) 23.63 54.14 7 –5.40*** 88.16 539.35 7 –5.06**
Jing-lan (f15) 60.55 76.18 12 –2.13y 348.00 650.03 12 –4.58**
Kang-da (m16) 47.79 64.31 12 –1.76 174.30 532.92 11 –3.81**

y
p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

years to complete, whereas the older arrivals were on a
flat curve with no discernable advancing pattern. Thus,
only a longitudinal study of more than 5 years may be
long enough to capture the full growth trajectories of the
more difficult morphological structures.
The relative difficulty levels and acquisition order
of the morphemes indicated by these growth patterns
are generally consistent with past research with na-
tive Chinese speakers and speakers of other languages.
They basically conform to the order posited by Krashen’s
(1977) natural order hypothesis and those findings from
long-term attainment studies (e.g., Flege et al., 1999; Jia
et al., 2002). Importantly, the current study uncovered the
approximate growth trajectories that delineate the acqui-
sition rate and pattern for each morpheme. When a large
enough database like this is developed by future re-
search, progress in L2 morphological acquisition will be
able to be predicted on the basis of the specific morphemes
under consideration, a learner’s age at initial L2 expo-
sure, his/ her native language background, and language
environment.
Age-Related Differences in L2
Morphological Acquisition: When They
Emerge During the Learning Process
The first goal of the current study was to identify
the time at which age-related differences occurred and to
examine how much of the performance variance among par-
ticipants could be predicted by AoAr when language envi-
ronment was taken into account. By including a sample
with a wide range of AoAr, and systematically document-
ing their language environment over the entire 5-year
period of L2 immersion, the current study obtained two
sets of findings that address the first goal of the study
and illuminate the nature of the AoAr effects.
First, the age-related differences took time to emerge
and only existed for the relatively difficult morphemes. It
was not until the end of the study that younger AoAr pre-
dicted significantly better performance on third person
singular, and close to significantly better performance
on regular past tense. That is, with time, early arrivals
gained an edge over late arrivals in acquiring the most
difficult morphological structures. This pattern resem-
bles that of phonological acquisition by native Mandarin
(Jia et al., 2006) and Korean speakers (Flege, Birdsong,
Bialystok, Mack, Sung, & Tsukada, 2005). For example,
Jia et al. (2006) found that an early arrival advantage
gradually emerged in L2 (English) vowel perception and
production after 3–5 years of English immersion. No-
tably, results from this study were obtained from a much
larger sample size (more than 200 participants) with a
much wider AoAr range (from under 10 to over 40 years
of age) than those of the current study.
The Critical Period account and the Environmental
account both predict a long-term younger learner ad-
vantage. Both accounts postulate that younger learners
have some advantages over older learners: a richer L2
environment according to the Environmental account, or
an intact language learning mechanism (operated within
a sensitive time window) according to the Critical Period
account. However, the nature of the younger learner ad-
vantage leads to different predictions of the timing of the
occurrence of the age effects. A richer L2 environment,
the advantage of younger learners proposed by the Envi-
ronmental account, is by nature cumulative. We do not
expect that greater L2 use by younger learners immedi-
ately confers greater L2 proficiency. Therefore, the En-
vironmental account is fully consistent with findings of
the gradual emergence of a younger learner advantage
with increasing L2 acquisition experiences. In contrast,
the Critical Period account is challenged to explain this

Jia & Fuse: L2 English Grammatical Morphology Acquisition 1295

late emerging feature of the age effects. Given that the
early arrivals have an intact language acquisition mech-
anism, we would expect some immediate advantage of
these younger learners. However, this account can resort
to the less developed cognitive skills of younger learners
to explain the late emerging feature of the age effects.
That is, late arrivals, with a “degenerated” language learn-
ing mechanism, may compensate for this deficit by using
their stronger cognitive skills, such as memory and meta-
linguistic abilities, and this may lead to the later emerg-
ing feature of the AoAr effects. The challenge, then, is to
specify how the cognitive skills of late arrivals make the
task easier.
One may argue that older participants’ exposure to
English prior to their arrival in the United States might
have given them an advantage. However, the role of pre-
vious exposure, if any, may be limited. First, measures of
morphological proficiency in the current study, or mea-
sures of phonological proficiency in the cited studies
(Flege et al., 2005; Jia et al., 2006), tackled spontane-
ous speech or accuracy of pronunciation. These are
precisely the skills least practiced during English instruc-
tion in regions where these participants came from (i.e.,
mainland China and Taiwan). Second, in an early longi-
tudinal study of native English speakers learning Dutch
as L2 in the Netherlands, older learners who had no pre-
vious exposure to Dutch also showed an initial learning
advantage (Snow & Hoefnagel-Höhle, 1987).
Third, language environment was a stronger predictor
of performance variance than AoAr. An ideal way to test
AoAr effects is to study L2 learners of different AoAr who
have exactly the same amount of L2 exposure during the
learning process. However, in the immigration setting in
which all the long-term attainment studies were con-
ducted, it is difficult to find such participants because
of the inherent differences in the demands of the envi-
ronment for immigrants of different ages. Therefore, we
utilized the natural variation in L2 environment and
teased apart its influence from that of AoAr in statistical
analysis. Growth curve analysis indicated that, when L2
environment, measured concurrently with L2 morpho-
logical proficiency, was incorporated into the analysis
together with AoAr, L2 environment won out as a sig-
nificant predictor over AoAr. More specifically, for the
structures for which significant predictors emerged (i.e.,
past tense irregular and third person singular), the av-
erage language environment across the years of L2 im-
mersion, rather than AoAr, was the significant predictor.
This indicates that the independent contributions of
AoAr (e.g., as an indicator of neurological and cognitive
maturation) became insignificant when its covariate,
language environment was partialed out. Thus, the AoAr
effects can be largely attributed to differences in language
environment associated with age.
1296 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 50 • 1280–1299 • October 2007
Age-Related Differences in L2
Morphological Acquisition: The Forms
That They Take
The second goal of the study was to investigate
whether age-related differences existed along specific
dimensions of morphological acquisition. We focused on
three dimensions. One dimension concerned whether
learners had more difficulties with tense-related than
non-tense-related morphemes. Monolingual children
with SLI (Rice & Wexler, 1996; Rice, Wexler, & Cleave,
1995), as well as typically developing child English L2
learners (Paradis, 2005), have all been shown to exhibit
tense-related difficulties. The current findings indicate
that this discrepancy may also exist among L2 speak-
ers with a wider age range of L2 exposure. If mea-
sured by the number of children who mastered each
morpheme, the two non-tense-related morphemes pro-
gressive –ing and plural showed the highest level of mas-
tery. If counting by average percentage correct across all
testing sessions, progressive –ing and plural, respectively,
elicited the highest and the next highest level of accuracy.
Two tense-related morphemes, regular past tense and
third person singular, elicited the lowest level of perfor-
mance. Notably, this pattern was the same for both the
younger and older learners. These findings indicate that,
along the tense- and non-tense-related dimension, no sig-
nificant age-related differences existed. In other words,
some tense-related morphemes are the hardest to learn,
and both younger and older learners face the same level of
challenge.
One current finding suggests that the theoretically
motivated tense versus nontense division needs to be
taken with caution in relation to the L2 populations.
Auxiliary DO and copula BE, though both were classified
as tense-related structures, elicited better performance
than the other three tense-related structures (regular
and irregular past tense and third person singular) and
showed growth trajectories resembling those of non-tense-
related structures. Similarly, other studies of L2 learn-
ers of Chinese, Cantonese, Spanish (Paradis, 2005), or
Russian (Ionin & Wexler, 2001) backgrounds have shown
that auxiliary and copula BE and auxiliary DO elicited a
significantly higher level of performance than the most
difficult regular past tense –ed and third person singular.
Therefore, the exact tense- versus non-tense-related divi-
sion proposed on the basis of some findings in monolingual
literature is not yet illuminating in understanding the
particular difficulties of this L2 population or the nature of
AoAr effects.
The second aspect in which age-related differences
were examined was the error types. Across the partici-
pants, most errors made were omissions: 100% for pro-
gressive aspect; over 90% for regular and irregular past
tense, and third person singular; and around 60% for
auxiliary DO and copula BE. This finding is consis-
tent with that from child L2 learners (Paradis & Crago,
2000). Importantly, the current findings indicate that
there were no age-related differences in the degree of the
dominance of omission errors. Wexler (1998) explained
the dominance of the omission errors as evidence for the
possession of functional categories by L2 learners who
only have problems connecting the functional categories
with the surface morphological structures. If we adopt
this view, our findings indicate that younger and older
L2 learners all have the representations of the function-
al categories, and they resort to the same mechanisms to
reach the production targets.
Finally, we examined whether age-related differences
were manifested in the acquisition of regular versus
irregular past tense forms. The D/P model (Ullman, 2001)
predicts that older learners should learn irregular forms
better than regular forms by a large margin, and that such
superiority may be smaller or even nonexistent among
younger learners. In the current study, inconsistent with
these predictions, all participants performed better on the
irregular than on the regular past tense, and such a dif-
ference was statistically significant for 7 out of the 10 par-
ticipants. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, for
most of the participants, the correct irregular verbs all
had a significantly higher frequency than regular verbs.
Frequency of verb past tenses had been shown to predict
the production accuracy of both typically and atypically
developing monolingual English-speaking children (on
average 8 years of age) (Marchman, 1997; Marchman,
Wulfeck, & Weismer, 1999). Pairs of irregular past and
present tense verbs also show larger phonological var-
iations than pairs of regular past and present tense verbs
(–ed). Therefore, if we assume a dual-mechanism model
for morphological acquisition, the younger and older learn-
ers in the current study did not show a difference in the
extent to which they relied on one mechanism or the
other. Rather, a uniform set of factors, such as word fre-
quency and perceptual salience, seemed to influence all
participants.
These findings of no significant age-related differ-
ences in the three specific aspects of acquisition fail to
generate any evidence for the Critical Period account that
posits discontinuity of the language learning mechanism.
Further, the findings that learners of all ages (a) pre-
dominantly made omissions errors, (b) found the same
morphemes easier or more difficult to learn, and (c) per-
formed better on irregular than regular verbs to the same
degree lend support to a language learning mechanism
that is continuous in nature. Though the current study
does not have a large enough sample size to detect all dif-
ferences in the aspects of learning studied, these findings
build a foundation for future research of a more extensive
nature.
Taken together, the current study documented how
the acquisition of six English grammatical morphemes
by 10 native Mandarin speakers varied across structures
and individuals. The morphemes were mastered by dra-
matically different numbers of participants and showed
different growth trajectories. Variance in performance
variance across the participants was partially predicted
by AoAr in the United States, with early arrivals obtain-
ing greater proficiency in some morphological structures.
However, the AoAr effects took several years to occur,
whereas, considerably earlier than that, early arrivals all
switched their preference to using L2 and were, thus, ex-
posed to a significantly richer L2 environment than late
arrivals. Further, when AoAr and its documented covar-
iate, L2 environment, were incorporated in the same
growth curve analysis, language environment but not
AoAr was a significant predictor of individual differences.
From a theoretical perspective, these findings illu-
minate the nature of age-related differences in the L2
morphological acquisition mechanism. The study failed
to generate any evidence for the discontinuity of the lan-
guage learning mechanism that is predicted by the Crit-
ical Period account. Specifically, no age-related differences
were found regarding the three specific aspects of L2 mor-
phological acquisition (error types, regular vs. irregular
forms, tense- vs. non-tense-related). Further, the Critical
Period account is challenged to offer an explanation for the
late emerging feature of the AoAr effects. Regarding the
Environmental account, there is strong supporting evi-
dence from the finding that when AoAr was used in the
same analysis with its covariate, language environment,
variations in language environment were a better predictor
of performance. The finding of no age-related differences
in the three specific aspects of morphology is consistent
with the Environmental account postulating continuity
in the language learning mechanism.
From an applied point of view, even in an L2 immer-
sion setting, the acquisition of some grammatical mor-
phemes by school-aged immigrant children takes several
years to complete (if ever completed). Long-term systematic
and targeted instruction is necessary for this population.
As L2 learners exhibit some error types and difficulties
similar to monolingual children with SLI, these findings
also call for caution in interpreting and using morpho-
logical errors as indicators of speech, language, or learn-
ing disorders in the immigrant children population.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by Support of Continuous
Research Excellence/ National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development Grant 41353-11-19/20/21 to the first
author. We thank the following students for transcribing and
coding the data: Cynthia Hu, Siridatar Khalsar, Angela Wang,
Kim Wang, and Michael Young. Gary Winkel guided us through
Jia & Fuse: L2 English Grammatical Morphology Acquisition 1297
the longitudinal data analysis. We also thank Keith Happeny,
Jennifer Chen, Cody Merville, and Jason Greene for reading
drafts of this article. Finally, thanks are due to all the children
and their parents who participated in the study.
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