Crosslinguistic influence at the syntax–pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English–Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition

The findings from a number of recent studies indicate that, even in cases of successful bilingual first language acquisition, the possibility remains of a certain degree of crosslinguistic influence when the choice between syntactic options is affected by discourse pragmatics. In this study we focus...

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Veröffentlicht in:Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) Jg. 7; H. 3; S. 183 - 205
Hauptverfasser: SERRATRICE, LUDOVICA, SORACE, ANTONELLA, PAOLI, SANDRA
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.12.2004
Schlagworte:
Acquisition
Auditory Perception
Bilingualism
Candidates
Case Studies
Child Language
Children
Children & youth
Clitics
Debates
Discourse
English
English language
Evidence
Form Classes (Languages)
Grammar
Grammatical subject
Individualized Instruction
Inuktitut language
Italian
Italian language
Language Acquisition
Language Usage
Languages
Linguistic Interference
Listening Comprehension
Monolingualism
Morphology
Native language acquisition
Noun phrases
Nouns
Pragmatics
Predicate
Pro drop parameter
Pronouns
Romance Languages
Second Language Learning
Semiotics
Structural Analysis (Linguistics)
Structural Analysis (Science)
Subject
Syntactic Structures
Syntax
Syntax semantics relationship
Transfer of Training
United Kingdom > UK
ISSN:1366-7289, 1469-1841
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Zusammenfassung:The findings from a number of recent studies indicate that, even in cases of successful bilingual first language acquisition, the possibility remains of a certain degree of crosslinguistic influence when the choice between syntactic options is affected by discourse pragmatics. In this study we focussed on the use of referring expressions, prime candidates to test the interaction between syntax and pragmatics, and we compared the distribution of subjects and objects in the Italian and English of a bilingual child (1;10–4;6) with that of two groups of MLUw-matched monolinguals. All arguments were coded for syntactic function and for a number of discourse pragmatic features predicted to affect their realisation. Our main prediction was that unidirectional crosslinguistic influence might occur for the English–Italian bilingual child with respect to pronominal subject and object use after the instantiation of the C system. Specifically we predicted that in Italian the bilingual child might use overt pronominal subjects in contexts where monolinguals would use a null subject, and that he might use postverbal strong object pronouns in Italian instead of preverbal weak pronominal clitics. Conversely, we did not expect the overall proportion of overt objects, whether noun phrases or pronouns, to vary crosslinguistically as objects are always obligatorily overt in both languages regardless of discourse pragmatics. Our results confirmed these predictions, and corroborated the argument that crosslinguistic influence may occur in bilingual first language acquisition in specific contexts in which syntax and pragmatics interact.
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ISSN:1366-7289
1469-1841
DOI:10.1017/S1366728904001610