Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 11:2 (2021) ► pp.192–221

Cross-linguistic influence in the development of null arguments in early successive bilingual acquisition

| Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

The main goal of this study is to investigate the nature of null elements used in German by early successive bilingual Polish-German children. The language pair offers the opportunity to investigate the possibility of cross-linguistic influence in the area of null arguments between two languages which differ significantly in the nature of the null arguments allowed in the grammars. Longitudinal data from four bilingual children who were first exposed to L2 German between the ages of 2;6 and 4;7 years is used in the investigation. The results show that early successive bilinguals have no underlying grammatical representation involving pro in their L2. Neither are the null elements exclusively a result of topic drop, as they are in German, or of discourse drop, as they are in adult Polish grammar. The findings suggest that early bilinguals transfer an L1 strategy of linking null elements to general pragmatic contexts.

Keywords: early L2 German, null arguments, C/edge linking
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Null arguments in adult language
    • 2.1Null arguments in German and Polish
    • 2.2On the nature of null arguments
  • 3.Null arguments in L1 acquisition: German and Polish
    • 3.1Findings in L1 German
    • 3.2Findings in L1 Polish
    • 3.3Theoretical accounts of the nature of null arguments in child language
  • 4.Previous studies on cross-linguistic influence in early successive bilingual acquisition
  • 5.The study
    • 5.1Research questions and hypotheses
    • 5.2Participants
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Null subjects
    • 6.2Null objects
  • 7.Discussion
    • 7.1Mechanisms of argument drop and cross-linguistic influence
    • 7.2Age effect and cross-linguistic influence
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.18016.sop
References
Ariel, M.
(1990) Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Campbell, A., Brooks, P. & Tomasello, M.
(2000) Factors affecting young children’s use of pronouns as referring expressions. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 431, 1337–1349. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H.
(1991) Constraints on parameter setting: A grammatical analysis of some acquisition stages in German child language. Language Acquisition, 11, 361–391. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Costa, J., & Lobo, M.
(2007) Clitic omission, null objects or both in the acquisition of European Portuguese? In S. Baauw, F. Drijkonongen & M. Pinto (Eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory, pp. 59–72. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Costa, J., Lobo, M., & Silva, C.
(2012) Which category replaces an omitted clitic? The case of European Portuguese. In P. Larranaga, & P. Guijarro-Fuentes (Eds.), Pronouns and clitics in early language, pp. 105–129. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deuchar, M.
(2016) Cross-language effects in bilingual production and comprehension: some novel findings. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 191, 706–709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erteschik-Shir, N., Ibnbari, L., & Taube, S.
(2013) Missing objects as topic drop. Lingua, 1361, 145–169. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grüter, T., & Crago, M.
(2012) Object clitics and their omission in child L2 French: The contributions of processing limitations and L1 transfer. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 151, 531–549. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hamann, C.
(1996) Null Arguments in German Child Language. Language Acquisition, 51, 155–208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huang, C.-T. J.
(1984) On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry, 151, 531–574.Google Scholar
Hyams, N.
(1992) A reanalysis of null subjects in child language. In J. Weissenborn, H. Goodluck, & T. Roeper (Eds.), Theoretical issues in language acquisition: Continuity and change in development, pp. 249–267. Hillsdale, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Google Scholar
Kupisch, T.
(2007) Determiners in bilingual German – Italian children: What they tell us about the relation between language influence and language dominance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 101, 57–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. M.
(2011) First and second language acquisition: Parallels and Differences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, N., & Hulk, A.
(2001) Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 41, 1–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mykhaylyk, R. & Sopata, A.
(2016) Object pronouns, clitics, and omissions in child Polish and Ukrainian. Applied Psycholinguistics, 371, 1051–1082. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y.
(2008) Null Objects in Child Language: Syntax and the Lexicon. Lingua, 1181, 370–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pirvulescu, M., Perez-Leroux, A., Roberge, Y., Strik, N., & Thomas, D.
(2014) Bilingual effects: Exploring object omission in pronominal languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 171, 495–510. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothman, J.
(2009) Pragmatic deficits with syntactic consequences?: L2 pronominal subjects and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics, 411, 951–973. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ruppenhofer, J.
(2018) Anaphoric omissions in multiple German corpora. In H. C. Boas & A. Ziem (Eds.), Constructional approaches to argument structure in German, pp. 204–242. Berlin: Mouton DeGruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmitz, K., Patuto, M. & Müller, N.
(2012) The null-subject parameter at the interface between syntax and pragmatics: Evidence from bilingual German–Italian, German–French and Italian–French children. First Language, 321, 205–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sigurðsson, H. A.
(2011) Conditions on argument drop. Linguistic Inquiry, 421, 267–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Context-linked grammar. Language Sciences, 461, 175–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sopata
(2016) Null objects in adult and child Polish: Syntax, discourse and pragmatics. Lingua, 1831, 86–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsimpli, I. M.
(2014) Early, late or very late? Timing acquisition and bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 41, 283–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weist, R. M. & Witkowska-Stadnik, K.
(1986) Basic relations in child language and the word order myth. International Journal of Psychology 211, 363–381. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Witkoś, J.
(1998) The syntax of clitics: Steps towards a Minimalist Account. Poznań: Motivex.Google Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S.
(2000) Syntactic transfer in a Cantonese–English bilingual child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 31, 193–208. DOI logoGoogle Scholar