Silence is difficult: On missing elements in bilingual grammars

Abstract

Near-native speakers (heritage speakers and adult second language learners alike) experience difficulty in interpreting and producing linguistic constructions that contain morphologically null elements. We dub this phenomenon the Silent Problem. The bulk of literature on the Silent Problem in near-native speakers has concentrated on the identification and interpretation of null pronominals. In this paper we expand our understanding of the Silent Problem in three ways. First, we show that the range of the problem extends well beyond the grammar of null pronominals. Second, we argue that the various manifestations of the Silent Problem all follow from a typical aspect of near-native grammars: difficulty in recovering missing elements that have discourse antecedents. Third, although heritage and second language speakers show similar difficulties in the recovery of discourse-licensed silent elements, the two speaker populations differ in their evaluation of zero-marked forms in contrastive contexts. We account for this difference by the fact that heritage speakers differ from second language speakers in the comprehension of contrastive material. This comprehension requires good control of the interface between syntax and information structure (including prosodic knowledge), and heritage speakers have an advantage over second language learners in that area.

Object clitic use and intuition in the Spanish of heritage speakers from Brazil

“…It is possible that adults may have overcome those syntactic challenges and their difficulties stem from the process of reassembling of semantic features instead. The overextension of overt clitics in this study is also consistent with Laleko and Polinsky’s (2017) ‘silent problem’, which refers to the ‘difficulty in interpreting and producing linguistic constructions that contain morphologically null elements’ (p. 135), often related to discourse antecedents.…”

Understanding heritage languages

“…Heritage speakers have quite a bit of difficulty associating meaning with the absence of form, or silence. This difficulty in producing and interpreting linguistic segments that contain null, unpronounced elements is referred to as the Silent Problem (Laleko & Polinsky, 2017; Polinsky, 2018b). The Silent Problem is observed across the board, in a number of domains including phonology, morphology, and syntax.…”

“…Laleko and Polinsky (2013, 2016, 2017) examined the production and comprehension of different types of wa -topics in baseline and heritage Japanese. The crucial finding is that heritage speakers are native-like in their production and comprehension of the contrastive topic, but perform essentially at chance when it comes to identifying the proper role of thematic topics.…”

“… 6 Evidence for prosodic deficits comes primarily from heritage speakers’ production. As of yet, little is known about their abilities in the comprehension of prosody (but see Laleko & Polinsky, 2017; Sekerina & Trueswell, 2011; Yang, 2015; and the short summary in Polinsky, 2018b: 158–162).…”

When covert modality sneaks into your grammar: wh-infinitives in American Norwegian

“…The adaptation of wh -infinitives in AmNo requires the introduction of a covert element (modality) into the heritage grammar, which is incorporated into the wh -item itself, forming a complex syntactic element, or a span. This analysis avoids the postulation of a silent, or empty, head, which is generally dispreferred in heritage language syntax (Laleko and Polinsky, 2017).…”