Multilingual Competence Influences Answering Strategies in Italian–German Speakers

Abstract

The present study aims at analyzing the role of nativeness, the amount of input in L1 acquisition and the multilingual competence in the performance of Italian–German bilingual speakers. We compare novel data from the performance of adult L2 learners (L1: Italian; late L2: German) and that of heritage speakers (heritage language: Italian; majority language: German) to previous data from monolingual speakers of Italian. The comparison deals with the produced word order at the syntax-discourse interface in sentences containing New Information Subjects in answers to questions that prompt the identification of the clausal subject. Overall, adult L2 speakers and heritage speakers perform alike but crucially differently from Italian monolinguals. These data reveal that multilingual proficiency determines an increased variety in the adopted answering strategies; in particular, the German-like strategy is active in Italian. Nativeness alone is thus no guarantee for a homogeneous performance across groups, nor do we find similar patterns of performance in speakers who grew up as monolinguals. Data also show heritage speakers’ sensitivity to verb classes, with answering strategies varying in accordance with the verb argument structure. Participants’ productions reveal an interesting relation in sentences with transitive verbs between subject position (pre-/postverbal) and object form (lexical DP/clitic pronoun).

First Language Attrition and Dominance: Same Same or Different?

“…Looking at more research on pronominal use in L1 attrition, similarly deviant performance has been attested for other language combinations and various interface phenomena (e.g., Tsimpli, 2007 ; Perpiñán, 2013 ; Caloi et al, 2018 ; Di Dimenico and Baroncini, this issue). For instance, Tsimpli (2007) discusses data from two studies on the interpretation and production of postverbal subjects as well as the alternation of null and overt subjects by L1 Greek speakers with a near-native competence of English, Swedish and German 3 .…”

“…No effects were found for postverbal subjects in wh -matrix questions (considered purely syntactic) but for the same type of subjects in embedded sentences, in which discourse plays a role (focus interpretation in particular), attrition effects were attested. Caloi et al (2018) and Di Dimenico and Baroncini (this issue) also investigated the use of postverbal subjects in relation to the realization of new information focus in L1 Italian L2 German speakers, attesting residual optionality in the competence of attrited and heritage speakers of this language combination. Two of the rare attrition studies providing some results on reexposure also focus on the use of null subjects (see Chamorro et al, 2016 ; Genevska-Hanke, 2017 , mentioned above).…”

Null and overt subject pronouns in topic continuity and topic shift: An investigation of the narrative productions of Italian Natives, Greek Natives and near-native second language speakers of Italian with Greek as a first language

“…26 Similarly, whenever over-use of overt pronouns is reported, a null subject language is involved. Assuming that cross-linguistic 'influence' is an option which L2ers and bilinguals may resort to (Di Domenico 2015), due to the possibilities made available by their multilingual competence (Caloi, Belletti & Poletto 2018), some speakers may choose overt-pronouns, while other speakers may choose lexical DPs when they need a more explicit form. So, as we have seen in the previous sections, the choice of overt pronouns is documented for the L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers studied by Lozano (2016), for the L1 Italian-L2 English speakers studied by Tsimpli et al (2004) and for the L1 English-L2 Italian studied by Belletti et al (2007), while the choice of lexical DPs is documented for German learners of Italian (Chini 2005), L1 Mandarin-L2 English speakers (Ryan 2015), and German-Italian bilingual adolescents (Torregrossa & Bongartz 2018).…”

Some notes on the nature of L1-attrition and its modeling

“…Returning to the retainment of L1 grammatical options, it receives further support by the recent suggestion that heritage grammars could be viewed as ‘wider’ rather than ‘incomplete’ (Caloi et al, 2018). This further ties in interestingly with the rarity of grammatical attrition, which should not exist if the language faculty allows for the computational system alone to be modular so that interference is ascribed to the interfaces due to their interactive nature.…”