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Chapter 8. On the nature of crosslinguistic influence

Root infinitives revisited
  • Juana M. Liceras and Raquel Fernández Fuertes
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L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning
This chapter is in the book L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning

Abstract

Root Infinitives (RI) in Spanish have an infinitival marker, while in English they are bare forms. For languages like English, the RI stage has been said to be longer and to have a higher incidence than in Spanish. Within Liceras, Bel, and Perales’ (2006) typology of an RI universal stage, Spanish is a [+Person (P), +Infinitival marker (R)] language while English is [−P, −R]. Our analysis of the English and Spanish RIs produced by English-Spanish bilingual children and English and Spanish monolingual children reveals no interfering influence from English into Spanish and no positive influence from Spanish into English, which suggests that the degree of lexical transparency of the [+P, +R] features of Spanish is not strong enough to trigger acceleration in overcoming the bilingual English RI stage.

Abstract

Root Infinitives (RI) in Spanish have an infinitival marker, while in English they are bare forms. For languages like English, the RI stage has been said to be longer and to have a higher incidence than in Spanish. Within Liceras, Bel, and Perales’ (2006) typology of an RI universal stage, Spanish is a [+Person (P), +Infinitival marker (R)] language while English is [−P, −R]. Our analysis of the English and Spanish RIs produced by English-Spanish bilingual children and English and Spanish monolingual children reveals no interfering influence from English into Spanish and no positive influence from Spanish into English, which suggests that the degree of lexical transparency of the [+P, +R] features of Spanish is not strong enough to trigger acceleration in overcoming the bilingual English RI stage.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part 1. Syntactic complexity and intervention effects in the L1 acquisition of Romance
  5. Chapter 1. Acquisition of clitic climbing by European Portuguese children 13
  6. Chapter 2. Strategies in the production of PP relative clauses in Brazilian Portuguese 39
  7. Chapter 3. Cost-reducing strategies in the production of Brazilian Portuguese relative clauses 67
  8. Chapter 4. Some thoughts on (the acquisition of) control 83
  9. Chapter 5. The production of variable number agreement in Brazilian Portuguese 109
  10. Chapter 6. Assessing children’s syntactic proficiency through a sentence repetition task 133
  11. Part 2. Crosslinguistic influence in 2L1 acquisition and L2 learning
  12. Chapter 7. L1 effects in the L2 acquisition of long-distance binding in European Portuguese 173
  13. Chapter 8. On the nature of crosslinguistic influence 203
  14. Chapter 9. Can explicit instruction help L2 learners overcome persistent L1 interference? 229
  15. Part 3. Language acquisition at the interface in various learning settings
  16. Chapter 10. Combining Focus VS and Topic constructions 259
  17. Chapter 11. Gender marking in L1 and L2 French 289
  18. Chapter 12. The acquisition of disjunction under negation and recursive ni in French 315
  19. Chapter 13. Deriving scalar implicatures with quantifiers by Romanian children 331
  20. Chapter 14. The acquisition of mood in child Spanish 355
  21. Index 379
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.65.08lic

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part 1. Syntactic complexity and intervention effects in the L1 acquisition of Romance
  5. Chapter 1. Acquisition of clitic climbing by European Portuguese children 13
  6. Chapter 2. Strategies in the production of PP relative clauses in Brazilian Portuguese 39
  7. Chapter 3. Cost-reducing strategies in the production of Brazilian Portuguese relative clauses 67
  8. Chapter 4. Some thoughts on (the acquisition of) control 83
  9. Chapter 5. The production of variable number agreement in Brazilian Portuguese 109
  10. Chapter 6. Assessing children’s syntactic proficiency through a sentence repetition task 133
  11. Part 2. Crosslinguistic influence in 2L1 acquisition and L2 learning
  12. Chapter 7. L1 effects in the L2 acquisition of long-distance binding in European Portuguese 173
  13. Chapter 8. On the nature of crosslinguistic influence 203
  14. Chapter 9. Can explicit instruction help L2 learners overcome persistent L1 interference? 229
  15. Part 3. Language acquisition at the interface in various learning settings
  16. Chapter 10. Combining Focus VS and Topic constructions 259
  17. Chapter 11. Gender marking in L1 and L2 French 289
  18. Chapter 12. The acquisition of disjunction under negation and recursive ni in French 315
  19. Chapter 13. Deriving scalar implicatures with quantifiers by Romanian children 331
  20. Chapter 14. The acquisition of mood in child Spanish 355
  21. Index 379
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