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This study explores the omission of the passive participle in passive sentences in simultaneously bilingual children who speak both Mandarin and English. The research investigates whether bilingual children produce passive sentences in a manner consistent with Unitary Systems Hypothesis (USH) or Separate Systems Hypothesis (SSH). An experiment was conducted using a passive sentence production task with children aged 4-8. Data analysis revealed that simultaneously bilingual children tend to produce passive sentences more like USH, resembling monolingual English speakers, especially when compared to sequential bilinguals. Although differences between simultaneous and monolingual groups were not statistically significant, they differed significantly from sequential bilingual children. The findings suggest that bilingual language processing may favor a unified system, supporting USH, challenging the initial hypothesis that simultaneous bilinguals would align more with SSH.

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The development of bilingual language processing remains a significant area of inquiry within psycholinguistics, particularly concerning the nature of grammatical representation and the interplay between different languages in the bilingual brain. One focal point is the production of passive sentences, which often pose difficulties for children due to their syntactic complexity. This study investigates how bilingual children who speak Mandarin and English omit passive participles in passive sentences, aiming to uncover whether their production patterns align with the Unitary Systems Hypothesis (USH) or the Separate Systems Hypothesis (SSH).

Typically, active sentences follow a straightforward structure such as “A did B,” while passive sentences construct a different form, exemplified by “B was done by A,” which involves syntactic transformation and the use of passive participles. Past research has demonstrated that monolingual children acquire passive forms at varying ages, and bilingual children often show additional challenges. The debate centers on whether bilingual children process and produce these structures using a unified grammatical system (USH), where both languages share the same underlying representations, or separate systems (SSH), where each language maintains distinct grammatical rules.

This study employed a qualitative experimental design, focusing on a passive sentence production task administered to children aged 4-8 who are bilingual in Mandarin and English. The sample consisted of three groups: children who acquired Mandarin first and later learned English (sequential bilinguals), those who learned both languages simultaneously (simultaneous bilinguals), and monolingual English speakers as a control. The primary measure was the frequency and correctness of passive participle omission in produced sentences. Data were analyzed using a one-way ANOVA, supplemented with Welch’s F test to account for potential variance differences.

The results revealed that the error rate in passive sentence production was highest among sequential bilinguals and lowest among monolinguals, with simultaneous bilinguals showing intermediate performance. Statistical analysis indicated no significant difference between simultaneous and monolingual groups (p = 0.193), but both groups differed significantly from sequential bilinguals (p

In conclusion, the findings suggest that bilingual children's syntactic processing of passive sentence structures may lean towards a shared system, aligning more with USH. These results contribute to ongoing debates about the nature of bilingual grammatical architecture and have implications for language acquisition theories, clinical assessment, and language education. Future research should explore larger samples and longitudinal designs to further clarify how bilinguals develop syntactic competence in passive constructions across different language pairings.

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