1887
Volume 151, Issue 1
  • ISSN 0019-0829
  • E-ISSN: 1783-1490
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

This study investigates the status of subject pronouns in the English interlanguage of Basque-Spanish bilinguals from a minimalist perspective. The oral production of 20 participants was analyzed at two different points in their acquisition of English (Time 1:396 hours of exposure; Time 2:564 hours of exposure). The pronoun he, systematicaily adjoined to the verb at Time 1 in sentences that already feature a DP subject, is interpreted as a place holder for the agreement morphemes in the subjects' L 1s. At Time 2 the entire pronominal system is acquired and English pronouns become independent. The reanalysis of pronouns, from agreement morphemes to free elements, is argued to have a direct impact on the distribution of inflection in the participants' English interlanguage.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.2143/ITL.151.0.2015223
2006-01-01
2024-12-10
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Alexiadou, A. and Anagnostopoulou, E.
    1998 Parametrizing AGR: Word order, V-moment and EPP checking. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory16: 491-539.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Berman, R.A. and Slobin, D.I.
    1994Relating Events in Narrative: A Crosslinguistic Developmental Study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Bottari, P. , Cipriani, P. and Chilosi, A.M.
    1993/1994 Protosyntactic devices in the acquisition of Italian free morphology. Language Acquisition3: 327-369.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Cenoz, J. and Valencia, J.
    1994 Additive trilingualism: Evidence from the Basque Country. Applied Psycholinguistics15(2): 195-207.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Chomsky, N.
    1995 The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  6. Clahsen, H.
    1990/1991 Constraints on parameter setting: A grammatical analysis of some acquisition stages in German child language. Language Acquisition1: 361-391.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Clahsen, H. and Penke, M.
    1992 The acquisition of agreement morphology and its syntactic consequences: New evidence on German child language from the Simone corpus. In J. Meisel (ed.) The Acquisition of Verb Placement: Functional Categories and V2 Phenomena in Language Acquisition. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Eubank, L.
    1993/1994 On the transfer of parametric values in L2 development. Second Language Research12: 73-106.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Felix, S. W. and Hahn, A.
    1985 Natural processes in classroom second language learning. Applied Linguistics6(3): 223-238.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Fleta, M.T.
    1999 La adquisición del ingles no nativo por niños: El desarrollo de la clausula. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Universidad Complutense de Madrid and I n s t i t u t o Universitario Ortega y Gasset.
  11. Fuller, J. and Gundel, G.
    1987 Topic prominence in interlanguage. Language Learning37: 1-18.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. García Mayo, M.P. and García Lecumberri, M.L.
    (eds.) 2003Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. García Mayo, M.P. , Lázaro Ibarrola, A. and Liceras, J.M.
    2001 La forma is y los pronobres débiles como morfemas de concordancia en la interlengua inglesa de niños bilingües castellano/euskera. In L. González Romero , M. Martinez Vázquez , B. Rodriguez Arrizabalaga y P. Ron Vaz (eds.). Recent Approaches to English Grammar (pp.77-89). Huelva: Universidad de Huelva.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. García Mayo, M. P. , Lázaro Ibarrola, A. and Liceras, J.M.
    2003 Comodines is y he en el ingles/ euskera-castellano. In M.R. Pérez and I. Doval (eds.) Adquisición y enseñanza delenguas, bilingüismo y traductión (pp.117-123). Vigo: Universidade de Vigo.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. García Mayo, M.P. , Lázaro Ibarrola, A. and Liceras, J.M.
    2005 Placeholders in the English interlanguage of bilingual (Basque/Spanish) children. Language Learning55 (3): 445-489.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Haegeman, L. and Guéron, J.
    1999English Grammar: A Generative Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Hilles, S.
    1991 Access to Universal Grammar in second language acquisition. In L. Eubank (ed.) Point Counterpoint: Universal Grammar in the Second Language (pp.305-338). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. lonin, T. and Wexler, K.
    2002 Why is 'is' easier that '-s'? Acquisition of tense /agreement morphology by child second language learners of English. Second Language Research18(2): 95-136.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Kato, M.A.
    1999 Strong and weak pronominals in the null subject parameter. Probus11:1-27.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Lakshmanan, U.
    1991 Morphological uniformity and null subjects in child second language acquisition. In L. Eubank (ed.) Point Counterpoint; Universal Grammar in the Second Language (pp.389-410). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. 1993/1994 The boy for the cookie: Some evidence for the non-violation of the Case filter in child second language acquisition. Language Acquisition3:51-97.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Lardiere, D. and Schwartz, B.D.
    1997 Feature-marking in the L2 development of deverbal compounds. Journal of Linguistics33: 327-353.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Lázaro Ibarrola, A.
    2002 La adquisición de la morfosintaxis del ingles por niños bilingües: Una perspectiva minimalista. Ph.D. dissertation. Vitoria: Universidad del Pals Vasco.
  24. Liceras, J. M. and Diaz, L.
    1999 Topic-drop versus pro-drop: null subjects and pronominal subjects in the Spanish L2 of Chinese, English, French, German and Japanese speakers. Second Language Research15(1): 1-40.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. MacWhinney, B.
    1991 The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. Hillsdale, NJ: Earlbaum.
  26. Mayer, M.
    1969 Frog, Where Are You?New York: Dial Press.
  27. Muñoz, C.
    2001 La sobre-explicitación de la referenda personal en las narrativas en segunda lengua. In A. I. Moreno and V. Cowell (eds.). Perspectivas recientes sobre el discurso. Leon: Universidad de León. CD-ROM document.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. 2005 The development of the personal pronoun system in learners of English. Paper presented atthe European Second Language Association (EUROSLA) Conference 15. Dubrovnik (Croacia), 14-17 September.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Radford, A.
    1988Transformational Grammar. A First Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. 1997 Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: A Minimalist Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  31. Roeper, T.
    1992 From the initial state to V2 acquisition principles in action. In J. M. Meisel (ed.) The Acquisition of Verb Placement (pp.333-370). Dordrecht:Kluwer.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Ruiz Zarobe, Y.
    2001 The age factor in trilingual language production: The case of subject pronouns in the acquisition of English. Paper presented atthe Second International Conference on Third Language Acquisition and Trilingualism. Fryske Akademy, 13-15 September.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. 2003 Edad y tipologia pronominal en la adquisición del ingles como tercera lengua. In I. M. Palacios Martinez , M. J. López Couso , P. Fra López and E. Seoane Posse (eds.) Fifty Years of English Studies in Spain (1952-2002). A Commemorative Volume (pp.417-428). Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.2143/ITL.151.0.2015223
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error