Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism - Volume 7, Issue 5, 2017

This study investigates the expression of Catalan clitics en and hi, which have no grammatical equivalent in Spanish, in the adult grammar of Catalan-Spanish early bilinguals. Participants (N = 57), born and raised in Catalonia, are divided into 3 groups according to their onset of acquisition and language use: Spanish-dominant (n = 20), Balanced Bilinguals (n = 15) and Catalan-dominant (n = 22). The results of an Acceptability Judgment Task and an Elicited Production Task indicated that Spanish-dominant bilinguals have a divergent grammar compared to that of the Catalan-dominant speakers, overaccepting ungrammatical omission and doubling of the clitics. The bilingual group patterned with the Catalan-dominant group in some of their judgments, but with the Spanish-dominant group in their production. It is argued that onset of acquisition cannot be the only explanation for the differences between the bilingual groups, and that quantity and quality of input play an important role in the acquisition process.

This study examines cross-linguistic influence of L1 on L2 and L2 on L1 and the extent to which age of L2 onset (L2 AoO) is linked to the acquisition of morpho-syntactic properties in both languages of bilingual children who acquire L1-Russian as a heritage language and L2-Hebrew as a majority language. Our investigation of L1-L2 influence focuses on morpho-syntactic features, whose configurations vary in Russian and Hebrew. Definiteness is realized in Hebrew (but not in Russian), aspect is selected in Russian (but not in Hebrew), and [ACC] case is realized in both languages (but the mapping is different across the two languages); finally, the features of [Person], [Number] and [Gender] are mapped onto verbal inflections in both languages. A total of 110 Russian-Hebrew bilingual children aged 5;5–6;5 with varying ages of L2-Hebrew onset (0–60 months), 20 Hebrew-speaking monolinguals and 20 Russian-speaking monolinguals participated. Results demonstrate cross-linguistic influence, showing that it is bi-directional (L1 on L2 and L2 on L1). The patterns of cross-linguistic influence were similar: bilinguals performed similarly to monolinguals on features, with similar configurations in L1 and L2 (i.e., subject-verb agreement) but performed lower for properties realized differently in L1 and L2 (i.e., [DEF] articles in L2-Hebrew; [PERF] aspect and [ACC] case inflections in L1-Russian). The results also showed an effect of L2 AoO on the acquisition of both L1 and L2. Children with earlier AoO to L2-Hebrew (before 24 months) achieve better mastery in L2-Hebrew and performed lower in L1-Russian. Conversely, later AoOs to L2, led to better mastery of L1 and weaknesses in the acquisition of L2. Findings are discussed in light of the Feature Re-assembly Hypothesis.

We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study investigating native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers’ real-time processing of antecedent-contained deletion (ACD), a type of verb phrase ellipsis in which the ellipsis gap forms part of its own antecedent. The resulting interpretation problem is traditionally thought to be solved by quantifier raising, a covert scope-shifting operation that serves to remove the gap from within its antecedent. Our L2 group comprised advanced, native German-speaking L2 learners of English. The analysis of the eye-movement data showed that both L1 and L2 English speakers tried to recover the missing verb phrase after encountering the gap. Only the native speakers showed evidence of ellipsis resolution being affected by quantification, however. No effects of quantification following gap detection were found in the L2 group, by contrast, indicating that recovery of the elided material was accomplished independently from the object’s quantificational status in this group.

The focus of the paper is a phenomenon well documented in both monolingual and bilingual English acquisition: argument omission. Previous studies have shown that bilinguals acquiring a null and a non-null argument language simultaneously tend to exhibit unidirectional cross-language interaction effects — the null argument language remains unaffected but over-suppliance of overt elements in the null argument language is observed. Here subject and object omission in both ASL (null argument) and English (non-null argument) of young ASL-English bilinguals is examined. Results demonstrate that in spontaneous English production, ASL-English bilinguals omit subjects and objects to a higher rate, for longer, and in unexpected environments when compared with English monolinguals and bilinguals; no effect on ASL is observed. Findings also show that the children differentiate between their two languages — rates of argument omission in English are different during ASL vs. English target sessions differ. Implications for the general theory of bilingual effects are offered.

Previous studies have consistently found an asymmetry where priming in the L1-L2 direction is stronger than that in the L2-L1 direction. However, some studies showed that an L2 immersion environment could attenuate bilingual speakers’ access to the L1 and result in a ‘bilingual disadvantage’. This study investigated how language immersion modulates the priming effects of late adult bilingual speakers. We compared late Chinese-English bilingual speakers with high L2 (English) proficiency in an L1 environment and those in an L2 immersion environment. Both semantic and translation priming in same-language and cross-language conditions were investigated. The results showed no ‘bilingual disadvantage’ of the immersed participants. The priming asymmetry was weakened for the immersed participants who were more comparable in their reaction time to different language conditions. Both semantic and translation priming were found in L1-L2 and L2-L1 directions, suggesting that both types of priming are similar in nature in the bilingual lexicon.