Zetao Xu and Prof Victor Pan published "Different Behaviours of The Chinese Plural Marker under Different Contact Scenarios (漢語複數標記在不同接觸模式下的不同演變特徵)" in Current Research in Chinese Linguistics (中國語文通訊)

The article Ph.D candidate Steven Zetao Xu (First author) and Prof Victor Pan, 徐澤韜 潘俊楠 (2026) ‘漢語複數標記在不同接觸模式下的不同演變特徵’ (Different Behaviours of The Chinese Plural Marker under Different Contact Scenarios), has been published in 中國語文通訊 (Current Research in Chinese Linguistics), Volume 105, Issue 2: 463-487 (CSSCI) (Open Access)

Abstract From the perspective of language contact, the current research adopts corpus method to examine whether Chinese plural marking of Chinese-English bilingual children is influenced by English. The results show that unlike Mandarin speakers from Gan-Qing areas and Mandarin learners, the Chinese plural marking in bilingual children is almost not influenced by English. This is because at the age of 1–4, children have not yet acquired the rule of adding plural affixes to nouns to indicate plurality, but instead have acquire words as whole lexical items. The current study also compares the expression of plurality in Ganqing Mandarin, Jin Chinese, Southwestern Mandarin, Mandarin as a second language, and Chinese in Chinese-English bilingual children, further revealing the micro-level changes that have occurred in Chinese spoken in Ganqing area during its contact with Altaic languages. Keywords: plural marker, language contact, language acquisition, Chinese dialect, corpus