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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 30, Frankfurt
Edited by Ingo Feldhausen, Martin Elsig, Imme Kuchenbrandt and Mareike Neuhaus
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15] 2019
► pp. 255–274

Chapter 13
From a Romance null subject grammar to a non-null subject grammar

The syntax of pronominal subjects in advanced and near-native English

ORCID logo | Universidade Nova de Lisboa

This study investigates the acquisition of pronominal subjects by advanced and near-native speakers of English whose L1s are European Portuguese (EP), a null subject language (NSL), and French, a non-NSL (NNSL). Two experimental tasks were used: a drag-and-drop task and a speeded acceptability judgement task. Results show that the EP speakers who have an advanced level of English fail to reject expletive and [ animate] null subjects in the speeded task. In contrast, those who are at a near-native level behave native-like across all tasks, just as French speakers do. These findings indicate that the syntax of subjects is acquirable in L1 NSL-L2 NNSL pairings, despite giving rise to significant developmental delays. Developmental problems are argued to result from input misanalysis.

Keywords: second language acquisition, ultimate attainment, null subject parameter, antecedent animacy, interface hypothesis, input misanalysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Referential and expletive subjects in (non-) null subject languages
  • 3.Previous studies on the L2 acquisition of null and non-null subject languages
  • 4.The present study
    • 4.1Research questions and predictions
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Experimental design
    • 4.4Data analysis
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Follow-up study
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.15.13tei
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