Cross-linguistic influence in word order

Abstract

The present study investigated cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in the word order of Dutch-English bilingual children, using elicited production and acceptability judgment tasks. The goal was to examine whether monolingual and bilingual children produced and/or accepted V2 word orders in English, as in * Yesterday painted she an apple. We investigated whether the likelihood of CLI was related to language dominance, age at testing, and the degree of surface overlap (i.e., V2 word orders with auxiliaries versus main verbs). Even though none of the participants produced V2 word orders in English, in the acceptability judgment task bilingual children were more likely to accept V2 word orders than monolingual peers. Whilst monolinguals sometimes accepted V2 word orders with auxiliaries, bilinguals did so significantly more often (constituting a quantitative difference) and with main verbs, too (implying a qualitative difference). Therefore, we conclude that CLI can occur independently of surface overlap and that it can lead to both quantitative and qualitative differences between bilinguals and monolinguals. The likelihood of CLI was predicted by language dominance, but not by age. Some bilinguals still accepted V2 word orders at age ten, suggesting that in some cases CLI may be more persistent than previously thought.

How (not) to cross a boundary: Crosslinguistic influence in simultaneous bilingual children's event construal

“…Although there is some recent evidence of developmental persistence of CLI in simultaneous bilingual acquisition (Bosch & Unsworth, 2020) there is to my knowledge no study reporting an age-related increase of CLI. In the present study, this was exactly what was found in relation to target-deviant satellites in bilingual children's French descriptions.…”

“…Amongst the studies that have investigated CLI as a function of age the results are inconclusive. Whilst there is some evidence for a decline of CLI and eventual convergence with L1 adults (e.g., Unsworth, 2012), other studies have reported prolonged CLI persisting into later stages of childhood (Argyri & Sorace, 2007;Bosch & Unsworth, 2020;. These findings pertain exclusively to the domain of morphosyntax, however, while to our knowledge there is to date no available research on the longevity of CLI in children's semantic and conceptual development.…”

Uyghur–Chinese early successive adult bilinguals’ construal of caused motion events

“…CLI is thus expected to be quantitative and unidirectional (from language A to language B), and developmental in that it will eventually phase out 3 . Subsequent studies extended the second condition to phenomena at the syntax-semantic interface (e.g., Liceras et al, 2012; Serratrice et al, 2009), but a growing body of research testing the hypothesis on noninterface phenomena showed that the second condition is not necessary for CLI to occur (e.g., Bosch & Unsworth, 2021; Foroodi-Nejad & Paradis, 2009; Nicoladis et al, 2010).…”

Resilience and vulnerability of discourse-conditioned word order in heritage Spanish

“…We used the Bilingual Language Profile (BLP; Birdsong et al, 2012) to collect information about participants' demographics, language acquisition history, language use, and attitudes. The BLP produces a dominance score (−218 to 218), indicating greater or lesser relative dominance in each language, so we analyze language dominance as a continuous independent variable.…”

“…Evidence pointing to transfer comes from cases in which word order flexibility is maintained when the dominant language is also flexible, such as heritage Russian in contact with German (Brehmer & Usanova, 2015) and heritage Spanish in contact with Dutch (van Osch & Sleeman, 2018). Even basic word order can be affected by transfer, as shown by V2 effects appearing in heritage English in contact with Dutch (Bosch & Unsworth, 2021). Conversely, many take Albirini et al’s (2011) findings—increased word order rigidity in heritage Arabic—as evidence against transfer effects because heritage Palestinian Arabic speakers overused VSO, despite having English as a majority language.…”