Instability and age effects at the lexicon-syntax interface
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Tihana Kraš
Abstract
This paper addresses the instability of the lexicon-syntax interface in bilingual L1 and L2 acquisition, as well as the effects of the age of first exposure to the L2 on the ultimate attainment of this interface. The phenomenon under scrutiny is auxiliary selection with intransitive verbs in Italian, whose orderly gradience is captured by the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy. Child and adult Croatian advanced/near-native L2 speakers, Croatian-Italian simultaneous bilinguals and Italian L1 speakers performed an acceptability-judgment task. Bilingual L1 and L2 speakers proved to be sensitive to the gradience in auxiliary selection with intransitive verbs, but to have less determinate intuitions than monolingual L1 speakers, which is interpreted as evidence for the instability of the lexicon-syntax interface in non-monolingual development. In addition, adult L2 speakers proved to be less sensitive to the gradience than child L2 speakers, pointing to an interaction between the age of first exposure to the L2 and the acquisition of the lexicon-syntax interface.
Abstract
This paper addresses the instability of the lexicon-syntax interface in bilingual L1 and L2 acquisition, as well as the effects of the age of first exposure to the L2 on the ultimate attainment of this interface. The phenomenon under scrutiny is auxiliary selection with intransitive verbs in Italian, whose orderly gradience is captured by the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy. Child and adult Croatian advanced/near-native L2 speakers, Croatian-Italian simultaneous bilinguals and Italian L1 speakers performed an acceptability-judgment task. Bilingual L1 and L2 speakers proved to be sensitive to the gradience in auxiliary selection with intransitive verbs, but to have less determinate intuitions than monolingual L1 speakers, which is interpreted as evidence for the instability of the lexicon-syntax interface in non-monolingual development. In addition, adult L2 speakers proved to be less sensitive to the gradience than child L2 speakers, pointing to an interaction between the age of first exposure to the L2 and the acquisition of the lexicon-syntax interface.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Foreword v
- Table of contents vii
- The quirky case of participial clauses 1
- Answering strategies: A view from acquisition 19
- Transfer in periphrastic causatives in L2 English and L2 Spanish 39
- Clitic omission, null objects or both in the acquisition of European Portuguese? 59
- Metrical structure, tonal association and focus in French 73
- On affixal scope and affix-root ordering in Italian 99
- Scope economy in positive polarity: Extreme degree quantification 115
- The acquisition of aspect in L2 Portuguese and Spanish. Exploring native / non-native performance differences 131
- Mechanisms of scope resolution in child Italian 149
- When scope meets modality: The scope of indefinites in subjunctive environments 165
- Listen to the sound of salience: Multichannel syntax of Q particles 185
- Instability and age effects at the lexicon-syntax interface 201
- On the ambiguity of N-words in French 213
- Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children: The case of dislocation 229
- Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan 259
- Mismatches between phonology and syntax in French DP acquisition 281
- Pragmatic solutions for syntactic problems: Understanding some L2 syntactic errors in terms of discourse-pragmatic deficits 299
- A poverty-of-the-stimulus argument for the innateness of the identification conditions on VP ellipsis 321
- Index 335
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Foreword v
- Table of contents vii
- The quirky case of participial clauses 1
- Answering strategies: A view from acquisition 19
- Transfer in periphrastic causatives in L2 English and L2 Spanish 39
- Clitic omission, null objects or both in the acquisition of European Portuguese? 59
- Metrical structure, tonal association and focus in French 73
- On affixal scope and affix-root ordering in Italian 99
- Scope economy in positive polarity: Extreme degree quantification 115
- The acquisition of aspect in L2 Portuguese and Spanish. Exploring native / non-native performance differences 131
- Mechanisms of scope resolution in child Italian 149
- When scope meets modality: The scope of indefinites in subjunctive environments 165
- Listen to the sound of salience: Multichannel syntax of Q particles 185
- Instability and age effects at the lexicon-syntax interface 201
- On the ambiguity of N-words in French 213
- Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children: The case of dislocation 229
- Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan 259
- Mismatches between phonology and syntax in French DP acquisition 281
- Pragmatic solutions for syntactic problems: Understanding some L2 syntactic errors in terms of discourse-pragmatic deficits 299
- A poverty-of-the-stimulus argument for the innateness of the identification conditions on VP ellipsis 321
- Index 335
