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Chapter 10. Null subjects in the early acquisition of English by child heritage speakers of Spanish

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Abstract

This paper investigates the development of English and Spanish subject production in 8 heritage bilingual children (age range: 4;1–5;3; mean age: 4;7). Oral production of overt and null subjects was assessed using a picture-based story re-telling task and a description task. Subjects were coded according to type (overt or null), and pragmatic function (new information, topic continuation, recovery, contrast and change of topic). Results indicate a robust distribution of pragmatically appropriate subjects in Spanish; however, non adult-like null subjects were also found in a subset of the English utterances. We propose that cross-linguistic influence from Spanish encouraged children to have more than one grammar available (Amaral & Roeper 2014), with the option to treat English as a null-subject language.

Abstract

This paper investigates the development of English and Spanish subject production in 8 heritage bilingual children (age range: 4;1–5;3; mean age: 4;7). Oral production of overt and null subjects was assessed using a picture-based story re-telling task and a description task. Subjects were coded according to type (overt or null), and pragmatic function (new information, topic continuation, recovery, contrast and change of topic). Results indicate a robust distribution of pragmatically appropriate subjects in Spanish; however, non adult-like null subjects were also found in a subset of the English utterances. We propose that cross-linguistic influence from Spanish encouraged children to have more than one grammar available (Amaral & Roeper 2014), with the option to treat English as a null-subject language.

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Syntax-semantics
  5. Chapter 1. Embedding verbs and subjunctive mood 9
  6. Chapter 2. Towards a unified treatment of Spanish copulas 33
  7. Chapter 3. How French sheds new light on scalar particles 53
  8. Chapter 4. Pluralities of events 77
  9. Part II. Morphosyntax
  10. Chapter 5. Laísmo and “le-for-les” 101
  11. Chapter 6. The morphological markedness of φ 127
  12. Chapter 7. Partial subject paradigms and feature geometry in Northern Occitan dialects 147
  13. Chapter 8. Automatic detection of syntactic patterns from texts with application to Spanish clitic doubling 169
  14. Part III. Bilingualism and language acquisition
  15. Chapter 9. Voice quality transfer in the production of Spanish heritage speakers and English L2 learners of Spanish 191
  16. Chapter 10. Null subjects in the early acquisition of English by child heritage speakers of Spanish 209
  17. Chapter 11. Return to Frenchville 229
  18. Chapter 12. The processing of intrasentential anaphoric subject pronouns in L2 Spanish 247
  19. Index 265
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 11
Ein Kapitel aus dem Buch Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 11
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.11.10aus

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part I. Syntax-semantics
  5. Chapter 1. Embedding verbs and subjunctive mood 9
  6. Chapter 2. Towards a unified treatment of Spanish copulas 33
  7. Chapter 3. How French sheds new light on scalar particles 53
  8. Chapter 4. Pluralities of events 77
  9. Part II. Morphosyntax
  10. Chapter 5. Laísmo and “le-for-les” 101
  11. Chapter 6. The morphological markedness of φ 127
  12. Chapter 7. Partial subject paradigms and feature geometry in Northern Occitan dialects 147
  13. Chapter 8. Automatic detection of syntactic patterns from texts with application to Spanish clitic doubling 169
  14. Part III. Bilingualism and language acquisition
  15. Chapter 9. Voice quality transfer in the production of Spanish heritage speakers and English L2 learners of Spanish 191
  16. Chapter 10. Null subjects in the early acquisition of English by child heritage speakers of Spanish 209
  17. Chapter 11. Return to Frenchville 229
  18. Chapter 12. The processing of intrasentential anaphoric subject pronouns in L2 Spanish 247
  19. Index 265
Heruntergeladen am 1.5.2026 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/rllt.11.10aus/html?lang=de
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