Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The topic of cross-linguistic influence regarding the overt or null expression of arguments has been frequently considered regarding bilinguals acquiring language pairs in which the null option is licensed by one and not both of the two languages. The goal of this study is to investigate whether simultaneous and sequential bilinguals differ from monolinguals in the case of the acquisition of Polish and German; that is, languages which both license null subjects and null objects, but in which the nature of the null arguments clearly differs. We focus on the acquisition of null arguments as silent but syntactically active bundles of features. Design/methodology/approach: We compare the use of null subjects and null objects by 72 bilingual and 45 monolingual children in experimental setting: acceptability judgement and sentence repetition. Data and analysis: The distribution of null arguments in production and judgement data of simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals was compared to the data of monolinguals. Findings/conclusions: The study has revealed that early sequential Polish-German bilinguals avoid null subjects in L2 German at an advanced stage of acquisition, even though null subjects are quite frequent in their L1. The slower acquisition of null subjects in early L2 German in comparison to null objects in the case of Polish-German bilinguals demonstrates that the dissimilarity between the null subjects in both languages may lead to the delay effect in the acquisition. The findings suggest that the cross-linguistic influence is due to the increased complexity inherent to the integration of syntactic and pragmatic information in case of null arguments. Originality: Unlike previous studies, we focus on the acquisition of null arguments in a language pair, Polish and German, in which the null option is licensed by both grammars, and in which the nature of the null arguments clearly differ.

This article investigates the acquisition of verb placement in German as a foreign language at an advanced stage of development. The main objective of the investigation is to analyse written and spoken language production in terms of the use of subject-verb-inversion, verbal bracket, and verb-final placement in subordinate clauses. The results reveal a discrepancy between written and spoken language production with respect to correct usage of the verb placement rules. While correctness in the written production task exceeded 97% for all phenomena, the oral translation task generated less correct sentences, but only for inversion and verb-final placement. The non-target usage of inversion and verb-final pattern in spoken production points to processing problems when translating from Polish into German, which are further confirmed by lower accuracy for these two phenomena. At the moment of testing, the verbal bracket has already been acquired, which is in line with the universal developmental sequence in the acquisition of German syntax.

Although previous research has observed a facilitative influence of the first language (L1) on the acquisition and processing of gender agreement in a second language (L2), particularly in language pairs with similar gender agreement marking, the question of whether knowledge of two languages with gender can confer an additional advantage for L3/Ln (third or additional language) learners has not yet been addressed. The present study aimed to fill this research gap by examining the processing of gender agreement in intermediate and advanced L3/Ln Swedish among two groups of Polish native speakers: 30 L2 English / L3 Swedish learners, and 30 L2 English / L3 German / L4 Swedish learners. Participants were tested by means of a speeded grammaticality judgment task, in which they judged the correctness of indefinite noun phrases that either agreed or did not agree in gender. They also completed an untimed gender assignment task to control for their lexical knowledge of gender. Accuracy and response time data were submitted to Generalized Linear Models. The analysis shows that L4 Swedish learners process noun phrases faster than L3 Swedish learners, but only at the intermediate proficiency level; however, the groups do not differ in their judgment accuracy. This advantage is interpreted in terms of a surface transfer of similar gender agreement marking, which helps the learners automatize gender agreement processes earlier, but does not increase their sensitivity to gender-agreement violations. Moreover, the results accord with previous L2 studies in showing that learners of Swedish as L3/Ln develop sensitivity to ungrammaticality with advancing proficiency and benefit substantially from their gender assignment knowledge in processing gender agreement. Crucially, the present study provides preliminary evidence of a multilingual advantage in processing morphosyntactic features in L3/Ln.

This case study examines transfer effects in the acquisition of grammatical gender in L3/Ln. A learner of L3 Swedish, who had previously acquired two grammatical gender systems: one in his native Polish and the other in his non-native Norwegian, participated in three tasks: an online gender decision task, an offline gender decision task, and a speeded acceptability judgement task on determiner phrases (indefinite article + noun). Accuracy scores in all three tasks reveal robust transfer from Norwegian, but not from Polish. The transfer from Norwegian determines two processes inherent to grammatical gender, i.e. gender assignment and gender concord. However, response latencies in the online gender decision task point to competition between the Norwegian and Swedish gender systems at the level of gender retrieval, suggesting that target-like gender representations in Swedish are developing. Since transfer is traditionally claimed to be situated at the level of linguistic representation, it is assumed that the learner in this study temporarily developed a shared grammatical gender system for Norwegian and Swedish.