Developmental Stages in Chinese: The Case of Chinese Heritage Speakers

The Topic Hypothesis posits that Chinese language learners progress through a developmental sequence comprising five stages (Gao, 2009; Wang, 2011), which includes the Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) structure at stage 4 and the ba-construct at stage 5. According to this hypothesis, learners typically master the OSV structure before acquiring the ba-construction. However, the ba-construction is notably more prevalent in Chinese discourse than the OSV structure. Consequently, extensive exposure to the more commonly used structure may result in a developmental trajectory diverging from the predictions of the Topic Hypothesis. The present study identified evidence from two heritage speakers of Chinese supporting the potential deviation from the predictions of the Topic Hypothesis.