Interactions between pragmatic and syntactic knowledge in the first language acquisition of Spanish null and overt pronominals

The role of discourse pragmatics in the acquisition of subjects in Italian

“…With few exceptions (Austin, Blume, Parkinson, Núnez del Prado, & Lust, 1996;Paradis & Navarro, 2003), research on the distribution of subjects in the acquisition of Romance null-subject languages has not focused on the relationship between syntax and pragmatics, but rather on the impact of performance limitations and the availability of case-assigning functional categories (Grinstead, 2000;Valian, 1991;Valian & Eisenberg, 1996). Nevertheless, regardless of the theoretical explanations proposed for the distribution of overt and null subjects in acquisition, the empirical facts so far indicate that the output of children acquiring null-subject languages is characterized by an initial phase in which subjects are altogether absent, followed by an incremental use of overt arguments, in particular pronominal forms.…”

Dominance, Language Experience, and Increased Interaction Effects on the Development of Pragmatic Knowledge in Heritage Bilingual Children

“…Research in monolingual acquisition has noted a period of omitted subjects in both overt and null subject languages, although the production of null subjects in the early stages of child English is much less frequent than in "true" null subject languages such as Spanish or Italian, which is close to 100% at early stages (Austin et al, 1997;Valian, 1991). In null subject languages like Spanish, the production of pragmatically-felicitous pronouns emerges by age 4;0, (Grinstead, 2000;Montrul, 2004b;Serratrice, 2005;Austin et al, 2017), but the ability to master their discourse-pragmatic distribution does not appear until much later in development, as late as 12 years old (Shin & Cairns, 2012).…”

“…In contrast, children acquiring English go through a stage of overproduction of null subjects. Austin et al (1996) and Austin et al (1997) found that children between 2;0 and 3;0 years old use null subjects in English in approximately 30% of their sentences. By age 3;6, children's pronoun use converges with adult-like production (Bloom, 1990;Valian, 1991;Orfitelli & Hyams, 2008, 2012.…”

“…Children are assumed to continue fine-tuning their pragmatic abilities long after they consistently produce target-like syntax and morphology (e.g., Cekaite, 2013). Research examining natural speech samples from preschoolers learning Spanish and English found that while young children produced verbal agreement at adult-like rates, they produced non-target null subjects in both languages (Austin et al, 1996(Austin et al, , 1997. A recent study looking at the comprehension of null and overt subjects in bilingual Spanish/English children aged 4-7 years found a correlation between the acquisition of verbal morphology and the acquisition of the distribution of null and overt subjects (Goldin, 2020).…”

El español, una lengua con omisión de sujeto. Una aproximación a la comprensión de uso del pronombre personal en el discurso

“…También se han llevado a cabo estudios donde no solo se han determinado los componentes lingüísticos como posibles factores determinantes en la elección del interlocutor por el uso u omisión del sujeto, sino que se ha estudiado desde la sociolingüística si la frecuencia de utilización del sujeto puede ser atribuida a elementos como el género, la edad, la educación o la localización geográfica. Autores como Austin. (1998), Bel (2003), Silva-Corvalán y Sánchez-Walker (2007), Shin y Cairns (2009), y Shin (2012) han estudiado el uso del sujeto explícito en la niñez para determinar si su uso puede estar determinado por el género o la edad.…”