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- Volume 7, Issue, 2017
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism - Volume 7, Issue 1, 2017
Volume 7, Issue 1, 2017
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Restrictions on definiteness in the grammars of German-Turkish heritage speakers
Author(s): Tanja Kupisch, Alyona Belikova, Öner Özçelik, Ilse Stangen and Lydia Whitepp.: 1–32 (32)More LessThis paper reports on a study investigating restrictions on definiteness (the Definiteness Effect) in existential constructions in the two languages of Turkish heritage speakers in Germany. Turkish and German differ in how the Definiteness Effect plays out. Definite expressions in German may not occur in affirmative or negative existentials, whereas in Turkish the restriction applies only to affirmative existentials. Participants were adults and fell into two groups: simultaneous bilinguals (2L1) who acquired German before age 3 and early sequential bilinguals (2L1) who acquired German after age 4; there were also monolingual controls. The tasks involved acceptability judgments. Subjects were presented with contexts, each followed by a sentence to be judged, including grammatical and ungrammatical existentials. Results show that the bilinguals, regardless of age of acquisition, make judgments appropriate for each language. They reject definite expressions in negative existentials in German and accept them in Turkish, suggesting distinct grammars.
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Reexamining the acquisition of null subject pronouns in a second language
Author(s): Maria Clements and Laura Domínguezpp.: 33–62 (30)More LessThis study re-examines the L2 acquisition of referential and pragmatic properties of null and overt subject pronouns by advanced English learners of Spanish under the assumption that both forms display levels of complexity at the syntax–pragmatics interface. Our main hypothesis is that null subjects should be as difficult to acquire as overt subjects, challenging current generative accounts (e.g., the Interface Hypothesis) in which the acquisition of null subjects is problem-free. Data obtained by a group of 20 advanced English speakers of Spanish in a Picture Verification Task and a Context-Matching Preference Task corroborate this hypothesis. Results show that L2 speakers over-accept null subjects and find it difficult to reject them when an overt pronoun is preferred by the controls. We propose that they may be using null subjects as a default form as they have an incomplete knowledge of the pragmatic constraints governing the use of pro in context.
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Narrow presentational focus in heritage Spanish and the syntax‒discourse interface
Author(s): Bradley Hootpp.: 63–95 (33)More LessThe grammars of bilinguals have been found to differ from those of monolinguals especially with regard to phenomena that involve the interface of syntax and discourse/pragmatics. This paper examines one syntax‒discourse interface phenomenon – presentational focus – in the grammars of heritage speakers of Spanish. The results of a contextualized acceptability judgment task indicate that lower proficiency heritage speakers show some variability in the structures they accept to realize focus, whereas higher proficiency heritage bilinguals pattern with monolinguals. These results suggest that some explanations of domain-specific vulnerability in bilingual grammars, including the Interface Hypothesis ( Sorace, 2011 ), may need to be revised.
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Cross-linguistic lexical and syntactic co-activation in L2 sentence processing
Author(s): Holger Hopppp.: 96–130 (35)More LessThis study investigates under which conditions the L1 syntax is activated in L2 on-line sentence comprehension. We study whether cross-linguistic syntactic activation of the L1 word order is affected by lexical activation of the first language (L1) by virtue of cognate words. In two eye-tracking experiments, German-English bilinguals and English natives read English sentences containing reduced relative clauses whose surface word order partially overlaps with German embedded clauses. The verbs used were either German-English cognates or matched control verbs. The results show lexical cognate facilitation and syntactic co-activation of L1 word order, with the latter being moderated by proficiency and cognate status. Critically, syntactic co-activation is found only with English control words. We argue that fleeting co-activation of the L1 syntax becomes measurable under higher demands of lexical processing, while cognate facilitation frees resources for inhibition of the L1 syntax and target-like syntactic processing.
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