711028281 03 01 01 JB John Benjamins Publishing Company 01 JB code BPA 18 Eb 15 9789027246929 06 10.1075/bpa.18 13 2024011122 DG 002 02 01 BPA 02 2352-0531 Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 18 01 bpa.18 01 https://benjamins.com 02 https://benjamins.com/catalog/bpa.18 1 B01 Vicenç Torrens Torrens, Vicenç Vicenç Torrens National University of Distance Learning 01 eng 316 viii 308 LAN009070 v.2006 CFDC 2 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.LA Language acquisition 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.PSYLIN Psycholinguistics 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.ROM Romance linguistics 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.THEOR Theoretical linguistics 06 01 The research presented in this volume covers first language acquisition, second language acquisition, language heritage and language impairment. Papers in this collection use a variety of experimental methods, such as eye-tracking, elicitation tasks, production tasks administered off-line and untimed, transcriptions of spontaneous speech, production elicitation, Truth Value Judgement tasks, standardized tests and multiple choice tasks. The studies included in this book try to cover most of the methods used in first and second language acquisition in typical and atypical populations. This book will be useful for linguists, speech therapists, and psycholinguists working on first, second and impaired language acquisition. 04 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475/bpa.18.png 04 03 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475_jpg/9789027214799.jpg 04 03 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475_tif/9789027214799.tif 06 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/1200_front/bpa.18.hb.png 07 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/125/bpa.18.png 25 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/1200_back/bpa.18.hb.png 27 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/3d_web/bpa.18.hb.png 10 01 JB code bpa.18.toc vii viii 2 Table of contents 1 10 01 JB code bpa.18.intro 1 9 9 Chapter 2 1 A01 Vicenç Torrens Torrens, Vicenç Vicenç Torrens National University of Distance Learning 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s1 Section header 3 10 01 JB code bpa.18.01mad 12 33 22 Chapter 4 1 A01 Ana Madeira Madeira, Ana Ana Madeira NOVA University of Lisbon 2 A01 Alexandra Fiéis Fiéis, Alexandra Alexandra Fiéis NOVA University of Lisbon 3 A01 Joana Teixeira Teixeira, Joana Joana Teixeira NOVA University of Lisbon 20 anaphora resolution 20 animacy 20 European Portuguese 20 Italian 20 L1 influence 20 L2 acquisition 20 position of the antecedent 01 This study investigates the interpretation of subject pronouns in L1 Italian – L2 European Portuguese, considering animacy effects and the position of the antecedent. Participants were 25 adult EP native speakers, 25 upper-intermediate, 25 advanced, and 19 near-native Italian adult learners of L2 EP. They were administered two multiple-choice tasks (speeded and untimed) with a 2 x 2 design crossing the following variables: animacy of the matrix object (animate vs. inanimate) and type of embedded pronominal subject (overt vs. null). Results indicate that L2 learners show problems only in the areas where the L1 and the L2 differ, namely: the resolution of overt subjects in the presence of [−animate] object antecedent and the resolution of null subjects. Learners’ performance in these areas remains unstable even at the near-native level. These findings challenge the ideas that only overt subjects are persistently problematic in L2 acquisition and that the L1 plays a minor role in anaphora resolution. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.02gui 34 55 22 Chapter 5 1 A01 Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes University of the Balearic Islands 2 A01 Iria Bello Viruega Bello Viruega, Iria Iria Bello Viruega 3 A01 Melania S. Masià Masià, Melania S. Melania S. Masià 20 direct object expression 20 language dominance 20 Majorcan Catalan-Spanish bilinguals 20 mode of bilingualism 01 This paper studies structural convergence between two Romance languages that are in close contact. More specifically, it analyzes the differences in clitic realization and object omission in Spanish and Catalan. While in Spanish it is possible to omit phrases corresponding to direct objects based on their definiteness (Campos, 1986; Clements, 2006) and not to their syntactic position, Catalan does not regularly omit object pronouns but requires the use of the partitive <i>en</i> with indefinite antecedents. A five-point Likert scale grammaticality judgment task adapted from Bruhn de Garavito &#38; Guijarro-Fuentes (2002) was designed to measure the acceptability of different object expressions in 70 different constructions in Spanish by monolingual native speakers (n = 44) and Catalan-Spanish bilingual speakers (n = 34). In the task, participants read a short dialogue containing a question and a short answer and were asked to rate the naturalness of the answer. Linguistic variables included the type of syntactic structure (simple or complex clauses), the semantic properties of the referent (+/- definite), and the grammaticality of the utterance. Stimuli were replicated seven times per condition. Results indicated significant differences between monolinguals and bilinguals, as the latter systematically accept ample optionality concerning null direct objects. Conversely, differences according to language dominance in the bilingual group could not be verified. Our data allow us to discuss views on the realization of interpretable features and on bilingual variability. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s2 57 1 Section header 6 10 01 JB code bpa.18.03ber 58 85 28 Chapter 7 1 A01 Karina Bertolino Bertolino, Karina Karina Bertolino University of São Paulo 20 Borer-Chomsky conjecture 20 Brazilian Portuguese 20 null subject 20 parameter setting 01 This chapter examines how Brazilian Portuguese (BP)-speaking children acquire a critical property associated with partial null-subject languages, generic null subjects. The purpose is to investigate whether the data about the acquisition of generic null subjects are compatible with the idea that parametric variation is caused by the cross-linguistic distribution of features in functional heads (known as the Borer-Chomsky conjecture). To acquire the distribution of (null) subjects, the child should pay close attention to <i>ϕ</i>-features on T and D. Studies have shown that children become sensitive to the presence of verbal inflections and determiners before their first words (Dye et al., 2019), which leads to the prediction that children should not show evidence of parameter misssetting. We found that generic null subjects emerge as early as 1;9 in BP, which is consistent with the prediction of early parameter setting. However, generic null subjects did not appear frequently in spontaneous production and they increase as the child grows older. As generic null subjects are used to talk about rules, patterns and generalizations, not about specific individuals, the production of generic null subjects increases as children’s conversational topics become less egocentric. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.04gui 86 113 28 Chapter 8 1 A01 Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes University of the Balearic Islands 20 L1 German 20 L2 Spanish 20 object drop 20 subjacency 01 This study investigates the use of null objects in adult L1 German-L2 Spanish speakers. Spanish null objects are licensed under two conditions: (i) semantically, null objects must be [-definite, -specific] (Franco, 1993; Sánchez, 2004), and (ii) syntactically, null objects cannot be generated within an island or Phase Impenetrability in recent minimalist conceptions (Chomsky, 2001), as they involve A’-movement (triggered by [+ Top] feature). Object topic drop in German, on the other hand, does not exhibit the same semantic restrictions as Spanish (Müller &#38; Hulk, 2001). Using a production task, the predictions of two competing models of L2 acquisition are tested. While the <i>Interpretability Hypothesis</i> (e.g., Hawkins &#38; Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli &#38; Dimitrakopoulou, 2007) claims that interpretable features can be fully acquired by adult L2ers, uninterpretable features not instantiated in the L1 are no longer available to adult learners, the <i>Feature Reassembly Hypothesis</i> (Lardiere, 2009) proposes that L2 speakers transfer features that share the same morpholexical expressions in the L1 and L2, and when they do not, learners must (re)assemble them into new configurations. Unlike the IH, FRH does not predict special difficulties with uninterpretable features. The results from the native speaker group show that they respect the semantic constraints in great measure, but show some variability with the syntactic restrictions by producing (unpredicted) null objects under some of the islands tested. Moreover, the results from the L2ers show sensitivity to the semantic constraint, although it is not as categorical as in the native group. Similarly, L2ers show sensitivity to the syntactic constraints in that they generally prefer explicit objects when these are generated inside islands, but it varies by island (not in the same way as in the NS group) and by speaker (group). In light of our results, we conclude that the results are more in line with the <i>Feature Reassembly Hypothesis</i>. Ultimately, these results show that adult L2ers are able to make distinctions which would not be expected if second language acquisition were fundamentally different from L1 acquisition and UG were inoperative in this population. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.05mul 114 143 30 Chapter 9 1 A01 Natascha Müller Müller, Natascha Natascha Müller University of Wuppertal1 20 acceleration 20 language dominance 20 null-argument hierarchy 20 null-subject 20 parameter 20 postverbal subject 20 Rizzi-Chomsky cluster applied to French 01 Linguistic theorizing has revised the switch metaphor of parameters as being part of Universal Grammar. Within an epigenetic approach to language (Biberauer et al., 2014; Roberts, 2019), parameters result from the interaction of innate (linguistic) knowledge and universal non-language-specific cognitive optimization strategies, which are set in relation to the child’s experience. Languages vary at different levels of granularity (Baker, 2014), which is expressed in a parameter taxonomy, more particularly in parameter hierarchies (Roberts, 2019) distinguishing macro-, meso-, micro-, and nanoparameters (Biberauer et al., 2014). In the context of multilingualism, Mac Swan (2000) has argued that some components of the architecture of the language faculty are duplicated in multilingual children, while others are not. Parameter hierarchies, defined as previously, belong to the non-duplicated components. Therefore, multilingual children set the parameters simultaneously for all their different languages at the relevant level of variation. Taken together, these assumptions can account for acceleration effects exceeding monolingual limits in multilingual French as a non-null-subject language, if (one of) the other language(s) is a null-subject language like Italian or Spanish for example. The results reported come from longitudinal studies of balanced as well as unbalanced multilingual children during early stages of language development (from 1;6 until the age of 5) and cross-sectional studies of multilingual children at similar ages. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s3 145 1 Section header 10 10 01 JB code bpa.18.06lir 146 167 22 Chapter 11 1 A01 Thainá Amador Lira Lira, Thainá Amador Thainá Amador Lira Rio de Janeiro State University 2 A01 Marina Augusto Augusto, Marina Marina Augusto Rio de Janeiro State University 20 Brazilian Portuguese 20 intervention 20 person features 20 Relative clauses 01 The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the presence of pronoun elements as intervening subjects in the elicitation of object relative clauses (ORCs) by children and adults (as a control group). It has been argued that the presence of a full DP intervening subject in ORCs brings difficulties for young children and that a significant improvement is obtained when the intervening subject lacks a lexical restriction. In this study, the elicitation of subject RCs, ORCs displaying a full DP, ORCs displaying third person pronouns, and ORCs displaying second person pronouns is contrasted. It is hypothesized that the person feature plays a role in helping to distinguish the moved object from the intervening subject and subsequently producing ORCs with first or second pronouns should be facilitated. Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speakers participated in the study: 14 younger 4-year-old children; 14 older 6-year-old children; and 21 adults. Results show better performance for ORCs displaying second person pronouns, suggesting that the person feature matters. Alternative and non-adequate responses are evaluated. So far, adults appear, despite the presence of a lexical restriction, to mostly benefit from the presence of an indexical pronoun as intervener, and children demonstrate a developmental trend in the same direction; it seems that processing capacities as an explanatory hypothesis are at stake. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.07avr 168 196 29 Chapter 12 1 A01 Larisa Avram Avram, Larisa Larisa Avram University of Bucharest 2 A01 Alexandru Mardale Mardale, Alexandru Alexandru Mardale INALCO – SeDyl, CNRS 3 A01 Elena Soare Soare, Elena Elena Soare University Paris 8 – SFL, CNRS 20 child heritage Romanian 20 direct object relatives 20 input 20 schooling effect 20 subject relatives 01 This study investigates the production of subject and object restrictive relatives in child heritage Romanian in contact with French. The main goal is to evaluate the effect of schooling in the societal language, over a longer period of time, on the acquisition of these complex syntactic structures. Thirty-two child Romanian heritage speakers (ages 5–15), divided into two groups who – at testing time – had been in a French school for 1 to 3 years and for 5 to 8 years, respectively, completed an elicited production task. Their responses were compared to those of 32 age-matched monolingual Romanian children and 20 Romanian adults living in the homeland. The results indicated overall progress after onset of schooling. Child heritage speakers who had been in a French school for a longer period of time produced more relative clauses than the younger ones and the number of errors decreased with age. They went through the same qualitative stages as age-matched monolinguals but at a slower pace, with object relatives being more problematic than subject relatives. This vulnerability was reflected in a preference for less computationally costly but target-like structures and in the relatively prolonged use of non-target-like structures whose elimination from the grammar requires inspection of a higher amount of input. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s4 197 1 Section header 13 10 01 JB code bpa.18.08mos 198 211 14 Chapter 14 1 A01 Vincenzo Moscati Moscati, Vincenzo Vincenzo Moscati University of Siena 20 eye-tracking 20 Italian 20 negative concord 20 universal quantifiers 01 The paper presents novel findings on young children’s processing of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in Italian in preverbal position. This is a syntactic environment in which their interpretation is equivalent to the English Negative pronouns “Nobody/Nothing”. Eye movements show that by the age of 5 children have little troubles in accessing the correct interpretation of preverbal NCIs. However, their processing time lags behind positive universal quantifiers used as controls. This result is discussed in relation to a documented overgeneralization of Negative Concord in early grammars. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.09rod 212 229 18 Chapter 15 1 A01 Erica Rodrigues Rodrigues, Erica Erica Rodrigues Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro 2 A01 Renê Forster Forster, Renê Renê Forster Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro 3 A01 Letícia M. Sicuro Corrêa Sicuro Corrêa, Letícia M. Letícia M. Sicuro Corrêa Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro 20 Brazilian Portuguese 20 extra-object visual effect 20 eye-tracking 20 language comprehension 20 sentence-picture verification task 20 universal quantifier 01 Universal quantifiers are complex for children to comprehend, and over-exhaustive errors can occur even with adults in sentence-picture verification tasks. This paper addresses visual design factors that may explain these difficulties. We examine what we call the “single extra object attraction hypothesis” (SEOH), according to which the visual prominence of a uniquely unpaired extra object compromises attentional resources during these tasks. We manipulated the type of extra-object – single or double – in an eye-tracking experiment with adult speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Contrary to the SEOH prediction, double objects gave rise to earlier and longer fixations than single objects. There was no difference in accuracy. We discuss the implications of these results for developmental research. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s5 231 1 Section header 16 10 01 JB code bpa.18.10cer 232 252 21 Chapter 17 1 A01 Sara Cerutti Cerutti, Sara Sara Cerutti Ca Foscari University of Venice 2 A01 Anna Cardinaletti Cardinaletti, Anna Anna Cardinaletti Ca Foscari University of Venice 3 A01 Francesca Volpato Volpato, Francesca Francesca Volpato Ca Foscari University of Venice 20 clitic pronouns 20 Italian 20 learning difficulties 20 omission 01 This paper investigates the production of third person singular dative (3DAT) and accusative clitic pronouns (3ACC) in Italian children diagnosed with Learning Difficulties (LD), compared to a group of typically developing (TD) age peers (mean age 9;1). Results show that 3DAT clitics are produced in significantly higher percentages than 3ACC clitics by both children with LD and TD children. We claim that for children with LD, the invariable dative clitic <i>gli</i> is easier to retrieve than 3ACC clitics, as suggested for TD school-age children by Cardinaletti et al. (2021) and replicated here. With 3ACC clitics, feature sharing with the extra-clausal antecedent contributes to complexity in addition to the derivation by syntactic movement (Tuller et al., 2011). The two groups also did not differ in the production of DPs and PPs instead of 3ACC and 3DAT clitics, respectively, but children with LD omitted more clitics (both 3ACC and 3DAT) than TD age peers. After removing from the analysis the children who scored more than 1.5 SD below the mean of age-matched controls, as was done in the study by Vender et al. (2018), the performance of the group with LD no longer differed from that of controls. Results suggest that at school age, omission of both 3ACC and 3DAT clitics differentiate typical development from children with LD and oral language difficulties, presumably due to an unrecognized Developmental Language Disorder (Guasti, 2013; Arosio et al., 2016). 10 01 JB code bpa.18.11gar 253 282 30 Chapter 18 1 A01 Estela García-Alcaraz García-Alcaraz, Estela Estela García-Alcaraz University of the Balearic Island 2 A01 Juana M. Liceras Liceras, Juana M. Juana M. Liceras University of Ottawa 20 bilingualism 20 genetic disorders 20 macrostructure 20 microstructure 20 narrative abilities 20 Prader–Willi syndrome 01 This study investigates the narrative abilities of seven Spanish monolinguals and six Spanish – Catalan bilinguals with Prader–Willi syndrome. All participants were asked to narrate <i>A boy, a dog, and a frog</i> (Mayer, 1967) in Spanish. Additionally, bilinguals were also asked to narrate <i>Frog, where are you?</i> (Mayer, 1969) in Catalan. Both narrative corpora were analyzed according to their macrostructure (<i>Narrative Scoring System</i>) and microstructure (<i>Mean Length per Utterance</i> and <i>Type-Token Ratio</i> measures). Monolinguals and bilinguals showed similar macrostructural abilities as well as comparable morphosyntactic language development; however, a positive effect of bilingualism was detected when evaluating participants’ lexical variability. Bilingual speakers showed comparable narrative abilities in both Spanish and Catalan. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.12san 283 305 23 Chapter 19 1 A01 Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla University of the Balearic Islands 2 A01 Alberto Sánchez Pedroche Sánchez Pedroche, Alberto Alberto Sánchez Pedroche University of the Balearic Islands 3 A01 Lucía Buil-Legaz Buil-Legaz, Lucía Lucía Buil-Legaz University of the Balearic Islands 4 A01 Josep A. Pérez-Castelló Pérez-Castelló, Josep A. Josep A. Pérez-Castelló University of the Balearic Islands 5 A01 Daniel Adrover-Roig Adrover-Roig, Daniel Daniel Adrover-Roig University of the Balearic Islands 20 codemixing 20 codeswitching 20 Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) 20 Spanish-Catalan child bilingualism 01 This study focuses on a specific bilingual context to study code-switching and code-mixing in Spanish-Catalan simultaneous bilingual children with and without language difficulties with similar exposure to these close languages. We aimed to know whether children with DLD showed different code-switching and code-mixing patterns compared to children without language difficulties and explored the role of some variables that could affect their use, such as the language spoken by their parents and children’s ages. Fifteen Spanish-Catalan bilingual children with DLD and their age controls were followed from 8 to 12 years of age. Children were audio-recorded while they produced an oral narrative task in the language chosen by the child. Results indicated that children whose parents spoke both languages at home also use more code-mixing at 12 than parents that only spoke one language. Besides bilingual children with DLD showed more code-switching only at an earlier age (i.e., 8) but not more code-mixing than their age-matched peers. We discuss these results considering several explanaitions. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.index 307 308 2 Index 20 02 JBENJAMINS John Benjamins Publishing Company 01 John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia NL 04 20240725 2024 John Benjamins B.V. 02 WORLD 13 15 9789027214799 01 JB 3 John Benjamins e-Platform 03 jbe-platform.com 09 WORLD 21 01 00 120.00 EUR R 01 00 101.00 GBP Z 01 gen 00 156.00 USD S 777028280 03 01 01 JB John Benjamins Publishing Company 01 JB code BPA 18 Hb 15 9789027214799 13 2024011121 BB 01 BPA 02 2352-0531 Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 18 01 bpa.18 01 https://benjamins.com 02 https://benjamins.com/catalog/bpa.18 1 B01 Vicenç Torrens Torrens, Vicenç Vicenç Torrens National University of Distance Learning 01 eng 316 viii 308 LAN009070 v.2006 CFDC 2 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.LA Language acquisition 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.PSYLIN Psycholinguistics 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.ROM Romance linguistics 24 JB Subject Scheme LIN.THEOR Theoretical linguistics 06 01 The research presented in this volume covers first language acquisition, second language acquisition, language heritage and language impairment. Papers in this collection use a variety of experimental methods, such as eye-tracking, elicitation tasks, production tasks administered off-line and untimed, transcriptions of spontaneous speech, production elicitation, Truth Value Judgement tasks, standardized tests and multiple choice tasks. The studies included in this book try to cover most of the methods used in first and second language acquisition in typical and atypical populations. This book will be useful for linguists, speech therapists, and psycholinguists working on first, second and impaired language acquisition. 04 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475/bpa.18.png 04 03 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475_jpg/9789027214799.jpg 04 03 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/475_tif/9789027214799.tif 06 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/1200_front/bpa.18.hb.png 07 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/125/bpa.18.png 25 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/1200_back/bpa.18.hb.png 27 09 01 https://benjamins.com/covers/3d_web/bpa.18.hb.png 10 01 JB code bpa.18.toc vii viii 2 Table of contents 1 10 01 JB code bpa.18.intro 1 9 9 Chapter 2 1 A01 Vicenç Torrens Torrens, Vicenç Vicenç Torrens National University of Distance Learning 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s1 Section header 3 10 01 JB code bpa.18.01mad 12 33 22 Chapter 4 1 A01 Ana Madeira Madeira, Ana Ana Madeira NOVA University of Lisbon 2 A01 Alexandra Fiéis Fiéis, Alexandra Alexandra Fiéis NOVA University of Lisbon 3 A01 Joana Teixeira Teixeira, Joana Joana Teixeira NOVA University of Lisbon 20 anaphora resolution 20 animacy 20 European Portuguese 20 Italian 20 L1 influence 20 L2 acquisition 20 position of the antecedent 01 This study investigates the interpretation of subject pronouns in L1 Italian – L2 European Portuguese, considering animacy effects and the position of the antecedent. Participants were 25 adult EP native speakers, 25 upper-intermediate, 25 advanced, and 19 near-native Italian adult learners of L2 EP. They were administered two multiple-choice tasks (speeded and untimed) with a 2 x 2 design crossing the following variables: animacy of the matrix object (animate vs. inanimate) and type of embedded pronominal subject (overt vs. null). Results indicate that L2 learners show problems only in the areas where the L1 and the L2 differ, namely: the resolution of overt subjects in the presence of [−animate] object antecedent and the resolution of null subjects. Learners’ performance in these areas remains unstable even at the near-native level. These findings challenge the ideas that only overt subjects are persistently problematic in L2 acquisition and that the L1 plays a minor role in anaphora resolution. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.02gui 34 55 22 Chapter 5 1 A01 Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes University of the Balearic Islands 2 A01 Iria Bello Viruega Bello Viruega, Iria Iria Bello Viruega 3 A01 Melania S. Masià Masià, Melania S. Melania S. Masià 20 direct object expression 20 language dominance 20 Majorcan Catalan-Spanish bilinguals 20 mode of bilingualism 01 This paper studies structural convergence between two Romance languages that are in close contact. More specifically, it analyzes the differences in clitic realization and object omission in Spanish and Catalan. While in Spanish it is possible to omit phrases corresponding to direct objects based on their definiteness (Campos, 1986; Clements, 2006) and not to their syntactic position, Catalan does not regularly omit object pronouns but requires the use of the partitive <i>en</i> with indefinite antecedents. A five-point Likert scale grammaticality judgment task adapted from Bruhn de Garavito &#38; Guijarro-Fuentes (2002) was designed to measure the acceptability of different object expressions in 70 different constructions in Spanish by monolingual native speakers (n = 44) and Catalan-Spanish bilingual speakers (n = 34). In the task, participants read a short dialogue containing a question and a short answer and were asked to rate the naturalness of the answer. Linguistic variables included the type of syntactic structure (simple or complex clauses), the semantic properties of the referent (+/- definite), and the grammaticality of the utterance. Stimuli were replicated seven times per condition. Results indicated significant differences between monolinguals and bilinguals, as the latter systematically accept ample optionality concerning null direct objects. Conversely, differences according to language dominance in the bilingual group could not be verified. Our data allow us to discuss views on the realization of interpretable features and on bilingual variability. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s2 57 1 Section header 6 10 01 JB code bpa.18.03ber 58 85 28 Chapter 7 1 A01 Karina Bertolino Bertolino, Karina Karina Bertolino University of São Paulo 20 Borer-Chomsky conjecture 20 Brazilian Portuguese 20 null subject 20 parameter setting 01 This chapter examines how Brazilian Portuguese (BP)-speaking children acquire a critical property associated with partial null-subject languages, generic null subjects. The purpose is to investigate whether the data about the acquisition of generic null subjects are compatible with the idea that parametric variation is caused by the cross-linguistic distribution of features in functional heads (known as the Borer-Chomsky conjecture). To acquire the distribution of (null) subjects, the child should pay close attention to <i>ϕ</i>-features on T and D. Studies have shown that children become sensitive to the presence of verbal inflections and determiners before their first words (Dye et al., 2019), which leads to the prediction that children should not show evidence of parameter misssetting. We found that generic null subjects emerge as early as 1;9 in BP, which is consistent with the prediction of early parameter setting. However, generic null subjects did not appear frequently in spontaneous production and they increase as the child grows older. As generic null subjects are used to talk about rules, patterns and generalizations, not about specific individuals, the production of generic null subjects increases as children’s conversational topics become less egocentric. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.04gui 86 113 28 Chapter 8 1 A01 Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes University of the Balearic Islands 20 L1 German 20 L2 Spanish 20 object drop 20 subjacency 01 This study investigates the use of null objects in adult L1 German-L2 Spanish speakers. Spanish null objects are licensed under two conditions: (i) semantically, null objects must be [-definite, -specific] (Franco, 1993; Sánchez, 2004), and (ii) syntactically, null objects cannot be generated within an island or Phase Impenetrability in recent minimalist conceptions (Chomsky, 2001), as they involve A’-movement (triggered by [+ Top] feature). Object topic drop in German, on the other hand, does not exhibit the same semantic restrictions as Spanish (Müller &#38; Hulk, 2001). Using a production task, the predictions of two competing models of L2 acquisition are tested. While the <i>Interpretability Hypothesis</i> (e.g., Hawkins &#38; Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli &#38; Dimitrakopoulou, 2007) claims that interpretable features can be fully acquired by adult L2ers, uninterpretable features not instantiated in the L1 are no longer available to adult learners, the <i>Feature Reassembly Hypothesis</i> (Lardiere, 2009) proposes that L2 speakers transfer features that share the same morpholexical expressions in the L1 and L2, and when they do not, learners must (re)assemble them into new configurations. Unlike the IH, FRH does not predict special difficulties with uninterpretable features. The results from the native speaker group show that they respect the semantic constraints in great measure, but show some variability with the syntactic restrictions by producing (unpredicted) null objects under some of the islands tested. Moreover, the results from the L2ers show sensitivity to the semantic constraint, although it is not as categorical as in the native group. Similarly, L2ers show sensitivity to the syntactic constraints in that they generally prefer explicit objects when these are generated inside islands, but it varies by island (not in the same way as in the NS group) and by speaker (group). In light of our results, we conclude that the results are more in line with the <i>Feature Reassembly Hypothesis</i>. Ultimately, these results show that adult L2ers are able to make distinctions which would not be expected if second language acquisition were fundamentally different from L1 acquisition and UG were inoperative in this population. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.05mul 114 143 30 Chapter 9 1 A01 Natascha Müller Müller, Natascha Natascha Müller University of Wuppertal1 20 acceleration 20 language dominance 20 null-argument hierarchy 20 null-subject 20 parameter 20 postverbal subject 20 Rizzi-Chomsky cluster applied to French 01 Linguistic theorizing has revised the switch metaphor of parameters as being part of Universal Grammar. Within an epigenetic approach to language (Biberauer et al., 2014; Roberts, 2019), parameters result from the interaction of innate (linguistic) knowledge and universal non-language-specific cognitive optimization strategies, which are set in relation to the child’s experience. Languages vary at different levels of granularity (Baker, 2014), which is expressed in a parameter taxonomy, more particularly in parameter hierarchies (Roberts, 2019) distinguishing macro-, meso-, micro-, and nanoparameters (Biberauer et al., 2014). In the context of multilingualism, Mac Swan (2000) has argued that some components of the architecture of the language faculty are duplicated in multilingual children, while others are not. Parameter hierarchies, defined as previously, belong to the non-duplicated components. Therefore, multilingual children set the parameters simultaneously for all their different languages at the relevant level of variation. Taken together, these assumptions can account for acceleration effects exceeding monolingual limits in multilingual French as a non-null-subject language, if (one of) the other language(s) is a null-subject language like Italian or Spanish for example. The results reported come from longitudinal studies of balanced as well as unbalanced multilingual children during early stages of language development (from 1;6 until the age of 5) and cross-sectional studies of multilingual children at similar ages. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s3 145 1 Section header 10 10 01 JB code bpa.18.06lir 146 167 22 Chapter 11 1 A01 Thainá Amador Lira Lira, Thainá Amador Thainá Amador Lira Rio de Janeiro State University 2 A01 Marina Augusto Augusto, Marina Marina Augusto Rio de Janeiro State University 20 Brazilian Portuguese 20 intervention 20 person features 20 Relative clauses 01 The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the presence of pronoun elements as intervening subjects in the elicitation of object relative clauses (ORCs) by children and adults (as a control group). It has been argued that the presence of a full DP intervening subject in ORCs brings difficulties for young children and that a significant improvement is obtained when the intervening subject lacks a lexical restriction. In this study, the elicitation of subject RCs, ORCs displaying a full DP, ORCs displaying third person pronouns, and ORCs displaying second person pronouns is contrasted. It is hypothesized that the person feature plays a role in helping to distinguish the moved object from the intervening subject and subsequently producing ORCs with first or second pronouns should be facilitated. Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speakers participated in the study: 14 younger 4-year-old children; 14 older 6-year-old children; and 21 adults. Results show better performance for ORCs displaying second person pronouns, suggesting that the person feature matters. Alternative and non-adequate responses are evaluated. So far, adults appear, despite the presence of a lexical restriction, to mostly benefit from the presence of an indexical pronoun as intervener, and children demonstrate a developmental trend in the same direction; it seems that processing capacities as an explanatory hypothesis are at stake. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.07avr 168 196 29 Chapter 12 1 A01 Larisa Avram Avram, Larisa Larisa Avram University of Bucharest 2 A01 Alexandru Mardale Mardale, Alexandru Alexandru Mardale INALCO – SeDyl, CNRS 3 A01 Elena Soare Soare, Elena Elena Soare University Paris 8 – SFL, CNRS 20 child heritage Romanian 20 direct object relatives 20 input 20 schooling effect 20 subject relatives 01 This study investigates the production of subject and object restrictive relatives in child heritage Romanian in contact with French. The main goal is to evaluate the effect of schooling in the societal language, over a longer period of time, on the acquisition of these complex syntactic structures. Thirty-two child Romanian heritage speakers (ages 5–15), divided into two groups who – at testing time – had been in a French school for 1 to 3 years and for 5 to 8 years, respectively, completed an elicited production task. Their responses were compared to those of 32 age-matched monolingual Romanian children and 20 Romanian adults living in the homeland. The results indicated overall progress after onset of schooling. Child heritage speakers who had been in a French school for a longer period of time produced more relative clauses than the younger ones and the number of errors decreased with age. They went through the same qualitative stages as age-matched monolinguals but at a slower pace, with object relatives being more problematic than subject relatives. This vulnerability was reflected in a preference for less computationally costly but target-like structures and in the relatively prolonged use of non-target-like structures whose elimination from the grammar requires inspection of a higher amount of input. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s4 197 1 Section header 13 10 01 JB code bpa.18.08mos 198 211 14 Chapter 14 1 A01 Vincenzo Moscati Moscati, Vincenzo Vincenzo Moscati University of Siena 20 eye-tracking 20 Italian 20 negative concord 20 universal quantifiers 01 The paper presents novel findings on young children’s processing of Negative Concord Items (NCIs) in Italian in preverbal position. This is a syntactic environment in which their interpretation is equivalent to the English Negative pronouns “Nobody/Nothing”. Eye movements show that by the age of 5 children have little troubles in accessing the correct interpretation of preverbal NCIs. However, their processing time lags behind positive universal quantifiers used as controls. This result is discussed in relation to a documented overgeneralization of Negative Concord in early grammars. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.09rod 212 229 18 Chapter 15 1 A01 Erica Rodrigues Rodrigues, Erica Erica Rodrigues Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro 2 A01 Renê Forster Forster, Renê Renê Forster Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro 3 A01 Letícia M. Sicuro Corrêa Sicuro Corrêa, Letícia M. Letícia M. Sicuro Corrêa Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro 20 Brazilian Portuguese 20 extra-object visual effect 20 eye-tracking 20 language comprehension 20 sentence-picture verification task 20 universal quantifier 01 Universal quantifiers are complex for children to comprehend, and over-exhaustive errors can occur even with adults in sentence-picture verification tasks. This paper addresses visual design factors that may explain these difficulties. We examine what we call the “single extra object attraction hypothesis” (SEOH), according to which the visual prominence of a uniquely unpaired extra object compromises attentional resources during these tasks. We manipulated the type of extra-object – single or double – in an eye-tracking experiment with adult speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Contrary to the SEOH prediction, double objects gave rise to earlier and longer fixations than single objects. There was no difference in accuracy. We discuss the implications of these results for developmental research. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.s5 231 1 Section header 16 10 01 JB code bpa.18.10cer 232 252 21 Chapter 17 1 A01 Sara Cerutti Cerutti, Sara Sara Cerutti Ca Foscari University of Venice 2 A01 Anna Cardinaletti Cardinaletti, Anna Anna Cardinaletti Ca Foscari University of Venice 3 A01 Francesca Volpato Volpato, Francesca Francesca Volpato Ca Foscari University of Venice 20 clitic pronouns 20 Italian 20 learning difficulties 20 omission 01 This paper investigates the production of third person singular dative (3DAT) and accusative clitic pronouns (3ACC) in Italian children diagnosed with Learning Difficulties (LD), compared to a group of typically developing (TD) age peers (mean age 9;1). Results show that 3DAT clitics are produced in significantly higher percentages than 3ACC clitics by both children with LD and TD children. We claim that for children with LD, the invariable dative clitic <i>gli</i> is easier to retrieve than 3ACC clitics, as suggested for TD school-age children by Cardinaletti et al. (2021) and replicated here. With 3ACC clitics, feature sharing with the extra-clausal antecedent contributes to complexity in addition to the derivation by syntactic movement (Tuller et al., 2011). The two groups also did not differ in the production of DPs and PPs instead of 3ACC and 3DAT clitics, respectively, but children with LD omitted more clitics (both 3ACC and 3DAT) than TD age peers. After removing from the analysis the children who scored more than 1.5 SD below the mean of age-matched controls, as was done in the study by Vender et al. (2018), the performance of the group with LD no longer differed from that of controls. Results suggest that at school age, omission of both 3ACC and 3DAT clitics differentiate typical development from children with LD and oral language difficulties, presumably due to an unrecognized Developmental Language Disorder (Guasti, 2013; Arosio et al., 2016). 10 01 JB code bpa.18.11gar 253 282 30 Chapter 18 1 A01 Estela García-Alcaraz García-Alcaraz, Estela Estela García-Alcaraz University of the Balearic Island 2 A01 Juana M. Liceras Liceras, Juana M. Juana M. Liceras University of Ottawa 20 bilingualism 20 genetic disorders 20 macrostructure 20 microstructure 20 narrative abilities 20 Prader–Willi syndrome 01 This study investigates the narrative abilities of seven Spanish monolinguals and six Spanish – Catalan bilinguals with Prader–Willi syndrome. All participants were asked to narrate <i>A boy, a dog, and a frog</i> (Mayer, 1967) in Spanish. Additionally, bilinguals were also asked to narrate <i>Frog, where are you?</i> (Mayer, 1969) in Catalan. Both narrative corpora were analyzed according to their macrostructure (<i>Narrative Scoring System</i>) and microstructure (<i>Mean Length per Utterance</i> and <i>Type-Token Ratio</i> measures). Monolinguals and bilinguals showed similar macrostructural abilities as well as comparable morphosyntactic language development; however, a positive effect of bilingualism was detected when evaluating participants’ lexical variability. Bilingual speakers showed comparable narrative abilities in both Spanish and Catalan. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.12san 283 305 23 Chapter 19 1 A01 Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla University of the Balearic Islands 2 A01 Alberto Sánchez Pedroche Sánchez Pedroche, Alberto Alberto Sánchez Pedroche University of the Balearic Islands 3 A01 Lucía Buil-Legaz Buil-Legaz, Lucía Lucía Buil-Legaz University of the Balearic Islands 4 A01 Josep A. Pérez-Castelló Pérez-Castelló, Josep A. Josep A. Pérez-Castelló University of the Balearic Islands 5 A01 Daniel Adrover-Roig Adrover-Roig, Daniel Daniel Adrover-Roig University of the Balearic Islands 20 codemixing 20 codeswitching 20 Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) 20 Spanish-Catalan child bilingualism 01 This study focuses on a specific bilingual context to study code-switching and code-mixing in Spanish-Catalan simultaneous bilingual children with and without language difficulties with similar exposure to these close languages. We aimed to know whether children with DLD showed different code-switching and code-mixing patterns compared to children without language difficulties and explored the role of some variables that could affect their use, such as the language spoken by their parents and children’s ages. Fifteen Spanish-Catalan bilingual children with DLD and their age controls were followed from 8 to 12 years of age. Children were audio-recorded while they produced an oral narrative task in the language chosen by the child. Results indicated that children whose parents spoke both languages at home also use more code-mixing at 12 than parents that only spoke one language. Besides bilingual children with DLD showed more code-switching only at an earlier age (i.e., 8) but not more code-mixing than their age-matched peers. We discuss these results considering several explanaitions. 10 01 JB code bpa.18.index 307 308 2 Index 20 02 JBENJAMINS John Benjamins Publishing Company 01 John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia NL 04 20240725 2024 John Benjamins B.V. 02 WORLD 08 710 gr 01 JB 1 John Benjamins Publishing Company +31 20 6304747 +31 20 6739773 bookorder@benjamins.nl 01 https://benjamins.com 01 WORLD US CA MX 21 25 20 01 02 JB 1 00 120.00 EUR R 02 02 JB 1 00 127.20 EUR R 01 JB 10 bebc +44 1202 712 934 +44 1202 712 913 sales@bebc.co.uk 03 GB 21 20 02 02 JB 1 00 101.00 GBP Z 01 JB 2 John Benjamins North America +1 800 562-5666 +1 703 661-1501 benjamins@presswarehouse.com 01 https://benjamins.com 01 US CA MX 21 20 01 gen 02 JB 1 00 156.00 USD