This article assesses the impact of bilingualism on the acquisition of pronominal direct objects in French and English (clitics in French and strong pronouns in English). We show that, in comparison to monolingual children, bilingual children omit more pronominal objects for a longer period in both languages. At the same time, the development in each language spoken by the bilinguals follows the developmental asymmetry found in the language of their monolingual counterparts: there are more omissions in French than in English. It is also shown that language dominance affects the rate of omissions as there are fewer omissions in the language in which children receive more exposure, i.e. the dominant language. We analyze these results as reflecting a bilingual effect based on the retention of a default null object representation. This in turn is supported by reduced overall input for bilingual children and by language-internal input ambiguity.

Abstract.  The interaction among pragmatics, semantics, and grammar and their shared responsibility for interpretation are essential factors in linguistic analysis. This paper explores the interpretation of null objects (NOs) in French from this perspective. Previous accounts have determined two major classes based on the referentiality of the NO; however, these analyses end up, paradoxically, with a semantically vague description of the difference, resorting to undefined notions of identifiability, topic/focus, or probable reference. Starting from the assumption that all NOs are syntactically represented, we tease apart the contributions of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, which turn out to be simple and straightforward. We propose a typology comprising two syntactic types of NO; further nuances are a function of the varying contributions of verbal semantics and pragmatics.

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This study looked at the effects of feedback (explicit correction) on the learning of morphological generalizations in an experimental setting. Subjects were 79 adult native speakers of English with intermediate (39) and advanced (40) levels of proficiency in French. All subjects were individually trained on two rules of French suffixation. Experimental subjects received correction if they gave erroneous responses to stimuli in a "feedback" session. Afterward, all subjects "guessed" responses to novel stimuli and were retested (twice) on the feedback items. Comparison subjects dealt with the same stimuli but were never corrected. Analyses of feedback responses indicated differences in favor of the experimental groups, but comparisons of guessing responses between experimental and comparison groups showed no evidence of learned generalizations. The learning of absolute exceptions was more likely among advanced learners.The subject of feedback and its role in language acquisition has recently undergone a revival in interest. In the heyday of behaviorism, there were numerous studies of correction as a form of behavioral conditioning. With the advent of information-processing theories of mind, correction was discussed in terms of "feedback," and the latter term stuck. The focus of much of this information-processing research covers nonlinguistic learning, however. There is, for example, an extensive literature on feedback and its effects on memory for content (see the reviews in Kulhavy, 1977, andLysakowski &Walberg, 1982). By "content" we mean the information expressed by language or the propositional content of sentences. (Therefore,

Where do the two languages of the bilingual child interact? The literature has debated whether bilingual children have delays in the acquisition of direct objects. The variety of methods and languages involved have prevented clear conclusions. In a transitivity-based approach, null objects are a default structural possibility, present in all languages. Since the computation of lexical and syntactic transitivity depends on lexical acquisition, we propose a default retention hypothesis, predicting that bilingual children retain default structures for aspects of syntactic development specifically linked to lexical development (such as objects). Children acquiring French (aged 3;0–4;2, N = 34) in a monolingual context and a French/English bilingual context participated in a study eliciting optional and obligatory direct objects. The results show significant differences between the rates of omissions in the two groups for both types of objects. We consider two models of how the bilingual lexicon may determine the timetable of development of transitivity.