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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 8:4 (2018) ► pp.411–445

Bidirectional cross-linguistic influence in late bilingualism

Evidence from the container-content relation

| University of Arizona, USA
| University of Texas at Austin, USA

The container-content relation represents a set of nominal configurations unexplored in the acquisition literature. Whereas in English the switch from a noun-noun compound (water bottle) to a noun-prepositional phrase (bottle of water) is associated with a semantic shift from container to content, Spanish and Arabic adopt single canonical configurations for both conditions, noun-prepositional phrase and noun phrase, respectively. Importantly, Spanish, Arabic, and English display structural overlap in the content condition maintained by head-first isomorphic strings. In the container condition, they show structural dissimilarity; whereas English uses a head-final construction, Arabic and Spanish consistently use head-first constructions. Results from an elicited sentence-reordering task demonstrate that advanced late learners pattern native speakers when tested in Spanish but not when tested in English. Additionally, when tested in English, Arabic-speaking and Spanish-speaking learners overextend their L1 canonical configurations to both conditions. Furthermore, bilingual native speakers do not perform at ceiling, suggesting bidirectional cross-linguistic influence.

Keywords: bidirectional cross-linguistic influence, structural overlap, syntax-semantics interface, container-content relation
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Background
    • Structural phenomenon under consideration
    • The container-content relation as a syntax-semantics interface property
    • Nominal compounding in SLA studies
    • Interface phenomena in SLA studies
  • The present study
    • Research questions and predictions
    • Participant profile
    • Methods and design
    • Results
      • Spanish-English bilinguals
      • Arabic-English bilinguals
      • Comparison between Spanish-English and Arabic-English bilinguals
      • English monolingual group
  • Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 6 February 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.15012.aza
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