Overt subjects and copula omission in the Spanish and the English grammar of English–Spanish bilinguals: On the locus and directionality of interlinguistic influence

Abstract

The presence of non-adult patterns of omission/production of functional categories has occupied a central place in both monolingual and bilingual child language acquisition research. In bilingual acquisition a central learnability issue has been to determine whether interlinguistic influence would interact with those patterns. In this article, the authors analyse the omission/production of subject pronouns in the developing Spanish grammar and of copula be in the developing English grammar of two EnglishSpanish simultaneous bilingual children in order to address the issues of the locus and directionality of interlinguistic influence. The authors argue that the directionality of interlinguistic influence is determined by the need to implement core operations of the computational system and that the lexical-semantic interface is an area of the grammar where interlinguistic influence occurs.

Teasing Apart the Effects of Dominance, Transfer, and Processing in Reference Production by German–Italian Bilingual Adolescents

“…Therefore, cross-linguistic influence should occur from Italian (the most transparent system) to German (the least transparent one with respect to the phenomenon at stake), and not vice versa (see Section 1 for further details), contrary to what is predicted by the accounts reviewed previously. In support of this hypothesis, Liceras et al (2012) found no overuse of overt subjects in Spanish by English-Spanish simultaneous bilinguals. Rather, the authors show that among young simultaneous English-Spanish bilinguals, the transparency of the Spanish system favors the acquisition of sentential subjects in English.…”

“…Structural account (e.g., Müller and Hulk 2001) overuse of overt pronouns in subject position and production of null objects (alias, clitic omissions) b. Morphosyntactic complexity account (e.g., Liceras et al 2012).…”

“…The two theories differ only in how they analyze overt pronouns, i.e., as cross-linguistic structures or default options, respectively. Another possibility is that the production of subjects in Italian is not affected by cross-linguistic influence from German, as predicted by the morphosyntactic complexity account (Liceras et al 2012). For object position, the picture is more complex.…”

Early null and overt subjects in the Spanish of simultaneous English-Spanish bilinguals and Crosslinguistic Influence

“…As Serratrice and Hervé (2015) note, the studies conducted by Juan-Garau and Pérez-Vidal (2000), , SilvaCorvalán (2014), and Zwanziger et al (2005) did not find evidence in support of CLI based on the relative proportion of null and overt subjects in children's naturalistic productions (see also Gutiérrez-Clellen, Simon-Cerejido, andWagner, 2008 andLiceras et al, 2012); their performance regarding the rate of non-overt and lexical subjects was reminiscent of that of monolinguals, challenging the CLI hypothesis. Nonetheless, Serratrice and Hervé (2015) emphasize the need to investigate the issue of whether subjects are pragmatically appropriate, since CLI is tightly connected to the interface between syntax and semantics/pragmatics, a consideration that was indeed taken into account by some studies.…”

Genericity and the Interpretation of the Copulas by Spanish-Speaking Children

“…Children's acquisition of the Spanish copulas ser and estar has been the focus of a number of recent studies (Alonqueo & Soto, 2011;Alonqueo, 2007;Holtheuer et al, 2011;Holtheuer & Rendle-Short, 2013;Holtheuer, 2009;Holtheuer, 2013;Liceras, Fernández-Fuertes & Alba de la Fuente, 2012;Requena et al, 2014;Schmitt & Miller, 2007;Silva-Corvalán & Montanari, 2008). The primary aim of this previous research has been to determine the age at which children show adultlike distributions of the copulas in production and the age at which they make the temporary v. inherent distinction of certain copula + adjective combinations in comprehension.…”