Skip to main content Skip to journal navigation menu Skip to site footer
contact@ukscip.com
Article

Aspectual Production in Preschool Mandarin‑Speaking Autistic Children Plus Language Impairment

Lijun Chen ORCID ,  Weizhe Qiu ORCID
    Received: 2 January 2026; Revised: 23 February 2026; Accepted: 27 February 2026; Published: 24 March 2026

    Abstract

    Aiming to determine whether the linguistic deficits observed in autistic children with language impairment (ALI) represent a qualitative deviance or a quantitative delay in grammatical development, this study adopted a priming picture-description task to examine the production of four Mandarin aspect markers (zai-, -zhe, -le, -guo) among 4- to 6-year-old preschool autistic children with ALI (mean age = 5;5 years), with age-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age = 5;4 years) serving as a control group. The results showed that children with ALI produced significantly fewer utterances with -zhe and -guo than TD peers, while both groups used zai-, -zhe, and -le far more frequently than -guo. Unlike TD children who preferred verb-final -le, children with ALI showed a pronounced tendency to use sentence-final -le (a developmentally earlier form than the verb-final -le). Additionally, children with ALI had a stronger inclination to collocate -le with Achievement verbs, which represent the prototypical combinations of aspect markers and verbs. Further correlation analysis indicated that their difficulties in producing -zhe and -guo were not significantly associated with general language production ability or non-verbal intelligence. All these linguistic features demonstrate that the acquisition of aspect markers in children with ALI is characterized by developmental delay rather than qualitative deviance. This research provides empirical evidence and useful implications for targeted clinical language intervention focusing on aspect markers for Mandarin-speaking children with ALI.

    Keywords

    References

    1. 1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed.; American Psychiatric Publishing: Arlington, VA, USA, 2013.
    2. 2. Silleresi, S.; Prévost, P.; Zebib, R.; et al. Identifying language and cognitive profiles in children with ASD via a cluster analysis exploration: Implications for the new ICD-11. Autism Res. 2020, 13, 1155–1167.
    3. 3. Tager-Flusberg, H. Defining language phenotypes in autism. Clin. Neurosci. Res. 2006, 6, 219–224.
    4. 4. Wittke, K.; Mastergeorge, A.M.; Ozonoff, S.; et al. Grammatical language impairment in autism spectrum disorder: Exploring language phenotypes beyond standardized testing. Front. Psychol. 2017, 8, 532.
    5. 5. Modyanova, N.; Perovic, A.; Wexler, K. Grammar is differentially impaired in subgroups of autism spectrum disorders: Evidence from an investigation of tense marking and morphosyntax. Front. Psychol. 2017, 8, 320.
    6. 6. Li, W. Temporal and aspectual references in Mandarin Chinese. J. Pragmat. 2012, 44, 2045–2066.
    7. 7. Comrie, B. Aspect; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1976.
    8. 8. Smith, C.S. Aspectual viewpoint and situation type in Mandarin Chinese. J. East Asian Linguist. 1994, 3, 107–146.
    9. 9. Lyu, S. 800 Words of Modern Chinese; The Commercial Press: Beijing, China, 1980. (in Chinese)
    10. 10. Xiao, Z.; McEnery, T. Aspect in Mandarin Chinese: A Corpus-Based Study; John Benjamins: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2004.
    11. 11. Chen, Q.; Hu, Y. The multifunctional pattern of verb-final le and sentence-final le. Lang. Teach. Linguist. Stud. 2016, 4, 66–74. (in Chinese)
    12. 12. Rao, H. Temporal progression and the aspectual properties of sentence-final le. Chinese Lang. Learn. 2018, 3, 74–82. (in Chinese)
    13. 13. Chao, Y. A Grammar of Spoken Chinese; University of California Press: Oakland, CA, USA, 1968.
    14. 14. Yang, X.; Shi, R.; Xu, K. Grammatical aspect in early child Mandarin: Evidence from a preferential looking experiment. J. Psycholinguist. Res. 2018, 47, 1301–1320.
    15. 15. Zhou, P.; Crain, S.; Zhan, L. Grammatical aspect and event recognition in children's online sentence comprehension. Cognition 2014, 133, 262–276.
    16. 16. Erbaugh, M. The acquisition of Mandarin. In The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition; Slobin, D.I., Ed.; Routledge: New York, NY, USA, 1992; pp. 373–455.
    17. 17. Li, H.; Liang, L.; Wu, D. Predicting Chinese preschoolers’ acquisition of aspect markers: A corpus-based study. Languages 2022, 7, 133. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020133
    18. 18. Liu, H. Acquisition of le in early Mandarin child language. J. Shanxi Norm. Univ. Soc. Sci. 2015, 42, 156–159. (in Chinese)
    19. 19. Li, P.; Bowerman, M. The acquisition of grammatical and lexical aspect in Chinese. First Lang. 1998, 18, 311–350.
    20. 20. Andersen, R.W.; Shirai, Y. The primacy of aspect in first and second language acquisition: The pidgin-creole connection. In Handbook of Second Language Acquisition; Ritchie, W.C., Bhatia, T.K., Eds.; Academic Press: San Diego, CA, USA, 1996; pp. 527–570.
    21. 21. Chen, J.; Shirai, Y. The development of aspectual marking in child Mandarin Chinese. Appl. Psycholinguist. 2010, 31, 1–28.
    22. 22. Kaiser, A.P.; Chow, J.C.; Baumingham, J.E. Untying the gordian knot of early language screening and improved developmental outcomes. JAMA Netw. Open 2024, 7, e2354529.
    23. 23. Chen, L.; He, X.; Durrleman, S. Acquisition of grammatical aspect by Mandarin-speaking preschool children with autism spectrum disorder. Int. J. Lang. Commun. Disord. 2023, 58, 1697–1716.
    24. 24. Su, Y.; Naigles, L.R. Comprehension of grammatical aspect markers le and zai in a diverse sample of Mandarin-exposed preschool children with autism spectrum disorder. Read. Writ. 2023, 36, 1369–1392.
    25. 25. Xie, Q.-Q.; Su, Y. Online Processing of Grammatical Aspect in Subsamples of Preschool Mandarin-acquiring Autistic Children. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 2026, 56, 2851–2866.
    26. 26. Chen, L.; An, S.; Dai, H.; et al. Use of aspect markers by Mandarin-speaking children with high-functioning autism plus language impairment and children with developmental language disorder. J. Commun. Disord. 2022, 99, 106245. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2022.106245
    27. 27. Chen, L.; Durrleman, S. Mandarin aspect production in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder plus language impairment. In Proceedings of the 47th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Somerville, MA, USA, 3–6 November 2022; pp. 92–103.
    28. 28. Iverson, J.M.; Williams, D.L. Annual Research Review: Developmental language disorder—A hidden condition with lifelong impact. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 2026, 67, 546–565.
    29. 29. Zhou, P.; Crain, S.; Gao, L.; et al. The use of grammatical morphemes by Mandarin-speaking children with high functioning autism. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 2015, 45, 1428–1436.
    30. 30. Li, Y.; Zhu, J. Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-IV (Chinese Version); King-May Psychological Assessment: Zhuhai, China, 2014.
    31. 31. Sang, B.; Miao, X. Revision of norms for Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised in Shanghai. Psychol. Sci. Commun. 1990, 5, 20–25. (in Chinese)
    32. 32. Lin, B.; Huang, Y.; Huang, G.; et al. Revised Rating Scale for Preschool Children with Language Disorders; National Taiwan Normal University: Taipei, China, 2008. (in Chinese)
    33. 33. Lin, B.; Huang, Y.; Huang, G.; et al. Revised Rating Scale for School Children with Language Disorders; National Taiwan Normal University: Taipei, China, 2009. (in Chinese)
    34. 34. Hopkins, Z. Syntactic priming and alignment in children with autism spectrum disorder. In Syntactic Priming in Language Acquisition: Representations, Mechanisms and Applications; Messenger, K., Ed.; John Benjamins Publishing Company: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2022; pp. 157–182.
    35. 35. Yeh, M. Analysis of experiential guo in Mandarin Chinese: A temporal quantifier. J. East Asian Linguist. 1996, 5, 151–182.
    36. 36. Yang, S.; Huang, Y. A survey of aspect marker distribution across different registers. Contemp. Linguist. 2013, 15, 268–283, 376. (in Chinese)
    37. 37. Chen, L.; Durrleman, S. Morphological salience matters to aspectual production: Evidence from Mandarin-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder. Lang. Acquis. 2025, 1–25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2025.2579283
    38. 38. Huang, R.L.; Fletcher, P.; Zhang, Z.; et al. Early grammatical marking development in Mandarin-speaking toddlers. Dev. Psychol. 2022, 58, 631–645.
    39. 39. Meng, Z.; Wang, L.; Hirai, H.W.; et al. Quantitative but Not Qualitative Differences: A Longitudinal Analysis of Grammatical Marker Development in Mandarin‐Speaking Autistic Children. Autism Res. 2026, 19, e70195. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.70195
    ×