The emergence of perfective aspect in Cantonese-English bilingual children is examined from the perspective of contact-induced grammaticalization, focusing on the novel use of already to mark perfective aspect. While this function resembles that of the Cantonese perfective marker, other model constructions suggest that the function of already may combine those of several Cantonese particles. The results suggest that a new category in the replica language may be based on multiple different but related categories in the model language. Adopting an ecology-based approach, we discuss how the study of bilingual acquisition can contribute to contact linguistics.
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