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, this article reports 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. Implications for language intervention and planning concerning minority languages in rural China are discussed.