The use of null subjects by Greek-Italian bilingual
children
Identifying cross-linguistic effects
It has been shown that Greek and Italian vary in the use of null
subjects (Torregrossa, Bongartz
& Tsimpli 2015; Torregrossa, Andreou & Bongartz 2020): while
Italian null subjects tend to refer to the subject of the preceding
clause, Greek null subjects show a less restricted distribution. The
aim of this study is to show how this cross-linguistic difference is
reflected in the use of null subjects by Greek-Italian bilingual
children. Thirty-seven (N = 37) children ranging in age from 8;0 to
12;0 participated in the study. The production of null subjects was
observed in narrative context and analyzed according to syntactic
and discourse factors. The results show that the Greek pattern of
use of null subjects is transferred to Italian and this effect is
modulated by dominance, as measured by means of a sentence
repetition task administered in both languages and background
questionnaires.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Referring expressions: the case of null subjects in Greek and
Italian
- 3.Reference management in bilingual children: The role of
cross-linguistic effects and dominance
- 4.The present study: research questions and predictions
- 5.Method
- 5.1Participants
- 5.2Screening tasks
- 5.2.1Expressive vocabulary tests
- 5.2.2Sentence repetition task
- 5.3Narrative oral retelling task
- 5.3.1Transcription and coding
- 6.Results
- 7.Discussion
-
Acknowledgments
-
Notes
-
References