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1. Subjects in early dual language development

A case study of a Spanish-English bilingual child
  • Carmen Silva-Corvalán and Noelia Sánchez-Walker
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Spanish in Contact
This chapter is in the book Spanish in Contact

Abstract

The acquisition by monolingual children of the knowledge of whether their language requires overt subjects is one of the most studied phenomena in the language acquisition literature, but this phenomenon has not received the same degree of attention in bilingual children. The present study contributes to closing this gap by focusing on subject use in an overt subject language, English, and a null subject language, Spanish, by a child acquiring these two languages from birth. We determine the frequency of subject usage at five MLUw stages between the ages of 1;5:8 and 2;8:9, and examine discourse-pragmatic and processing factors that may account for the variable realization of subjects in each language. The analysis shows that the child realizes at a very early age that English requires overt subjects and Spanish does not. The results also indicate that in regard to subject use in Spanish, there does not exist an immature interface between grammar and the discourse-pragmatic domain. The child expresses subjects in contexts where monolingual speakers would also use them: contrastive and focal subjects are expressed, and coreferential subjects are not. With respect to the issue of interlinguistic influence, the study leaves no doubt that Spanish and English develop autonomously with respect to subject expression. The child seems to be matching the input he receives in English and Spanish without showing any effect of one language on the other.

Abstract

The acquisition by monolingual children of the knowledge of whether their language requires overt subjects is one of the most studied phenomena in the language acquisition literature, but this phenomenon has not received the same degree of attention in bilingual children. The present study contributes to closing this gap by focusing on subject use in an overt subject language, English, and a null subject language, Spanish, by a child acquiring these two languages from birth. We determine the frequency of subject usage at five MLUw stages between the ages of 1;5:8 and 2;8:9, and examine discourse-pragmatic and processing factors that may account for the variable realization of subjects in each language. The analysis shows that the child realizes at a very early age that English requires overt subjects and Spanish does not. The results also indicate that in regard to subject use in Spanish, there does not exist an immature interface between grammar and the discourse-pragmatic domain. The child expresses subjects in contexts where monolingual speakers would also use them: contrastive and focal subjects are expressed, and coreferential subjects are not. With respect to the issue of interlinguistic influence, the study leaves no doubt that Spanish and English develop autonomously with respect to subject expression. The child seems to be matching the input he receives in English and Spanish without showing any effect of one language on the other.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction ix
  4. Part I. Heritage Spanish in the United States
  5. 1. Subjects in early dual language development 3
  6. 2. Interpreting mood distinctions in Spanish as a heritage language 23
  7. 3. Anglicismos en el léxico disponible de los adolescentes hispanos de Chicago 41
  8. Part II. Education and policy issues
  9. 4. Teaching Spanish in the U.S. 61
  10. 5. The politics of English and Spanish aquí y allá 81
  11. 6. Language attitudes and the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian 101
  12. 7. Are Galicians bound to diglossia? 119
  13. Part III. Pragmatics and contact
  14. 8. Addressing peers in a Spanish-English bilingual classroom 135
  15. 9. Style variation in Spanish as a heritage language 153
  16. 10. “Baby I'm Sorry, te juro, I'm Sorry” 173
  17. 11. Cross-linguistic influence of the Cuzco Quechua epistemic system on Andean Spanish 191
  18. 12. La negación en la frontera domínico-haitiana 211
  19. Part IV. Variation and contact
  20. 13. On the development of contact varieties 237
  21. 14. Linguistic and social predictors of copula use in Galician Spanish 253
  22. 15. Apuntes preliminares sobre el contacto lingüístico y dialectal en el uso pronominal del español en Nueva York 275
  23. 16. Is the past really the past in narrative discourse? 297
  24. 17. The impact of linguistic constraints on the expression of futurity in the Spanish of New York Colombians 311
  25. 18. Quantitative evidence for contact-induced accommodation 329
  26. 19. Está muy diferente a como era antes 345
  27. Part V. Bozal Spanish
  28. 20. Where and how does bozal Spanish survive? 359
  29. 21. The appearance and use of bozal language in Cuban and Brazilian neo-African literature 377
  30. Index 395
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.22.03sil

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction ix
  4. Part I. Heritage Spanish in the United States
  5. 1. Subjects in early dual language development 3
  6. 2. Interpreting mood distinctions in Spanish as a heritage language 23
  7. 3. Anglicismos en el léxico disponible de los adolescentes hispanos de Chicago 41
  8. Part II. Education and policy issues
  9. 4. Teaching Spanish in the U.S. 61
  10. 5. The politics of English and Spanish aquí y allá 81
  11. 6. Language attitudes and the lexical de-Castilianization of Valencian 101
  12. 7. Are Galicians bound to diglossia? 119
  13. Part III. Pragmatics and contact
  14. 8. Addressing peers in a Spanish-English bilingual classroom 135
  15. 9. Style variation in Spanish as a heritage language 153
  16. 10. “Baby I'm Sorry, te juro, I'm Sorry” 173
  17. 11. Cross-linguistic influence of the Cuzco Quechua epistemic system on Andean Spanish 191
  18. 12. La negación en la frontera domínico-haitiana 211
  19. Part IV. Variation and contact
  20. 13. On the development of contact varieties 237
  21. 14. Linguistic and social predictors of copula use in Galician Spanish 253
  22. 15. Apuntes preliminares sobre el contacto lingüístico y dialectal en el uso pronominal del español en Nueva York 275
  23. 16. Is the past really the past in narrative discourse? 297
  24. 17. The impact of linguistic constraints on the expression of futurity in the Spanish of New York Colombians 311
  25. 18. Quantitative evidence for contact-induced accommodation 329
  26. 19. Está muy diferente a como era antes 345
  27. Part V. Bozal Spanish
  28. 20. Where and how does bozal Spanish survive? 359
  29. 21. The appearance and use of bozal language in Cuban and Brazilian neo-African literature 377
  30. Index 395
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