Acrisio Pires

Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across heritage grammars

This article brings to light an important variable involved in explaining a type of competence divergence in an instance of bilingual acquisition: heritage speaker (HS) bilingualism. We present results of experiments with European Portuguese (EP) heritage speakers (HSs), showing that they have full morpho-syntactic and semantic competence of inflected infinitives, similar to EP monolinguals. We show this constitutes clear evidence of competence mismatches between heritage speakers of European and Brazilian Portuguese, comparing our results to Rothman’s (2007) experimental evidence that Brazilian Portuguese (BP) heritage speakers lack knowledge of inflected infinitives. These comparative results are especially relevant because inflected infinitives were argued (Pires, 2002, 2006) to have been lost in colloquial BP dialects, although educated monolinguals demonstrate target competence. Neither incomplete acquisition nor attrition hinders the acquisition of inflected infinitives by European Portuguese HSs, raising questions regarding

The minimalist syntax of defective domains : gerunds and infinitives

This book unifies the analysis of certain non-finite domains, focusing on subject licensing, agreement, and Case and control. It proposes a minimalist analysis of English gerunds which allows only a null subject PRO (TP-defective gerunds), a lexical subject (gerunds as complements of perception verbs), or both types of subjects (clausal gerunds). It then analyzes Portuguese infinitives, showing that the morphosyntactic properties of non-inflected and inflected infinitives correlate with distinct treatments of obligatory and non-obligatory control. It explores these and other phenomena to show that tense and event binding do not correlate with the contrast between control and raising/exceptional case marking (ECM), against null Case theories of control. A Probe-Goal approach to Case and agreement is adopted in combination with a movement analysis of control. The book then investigates diachronic morphosyntactic phenomena involving infinitives, verb movement and cliticization in Portuguese, exploring a cue-based theory of syntactic change grounded in language acquisition.

Minimalist Inquiries into Child and Adult Language Acquisition: Case Studies across Portuguese

The volume is a collection of original articles that present new research on first and second language acquisition from the perspective of current generative linguistics, using a detailed case study of Portuguese as a first, second and third language. The book focuses on studies exploring both empirical/experimental and theoretical aspects of the acquisition of syntax and its interfaces with morphology, with semantics/pragmatics, and language change. The volume includes chapters on the child and adult acquisition of European and Brazilian Portuguese, and several chapters that also compare and contrast the two varieties from these different perspectives.

ON THE (UN)-AMBIGUITY OF ADJECTIVAL MODIFICATION IN SPANISH DETERMINER PHRASES: Informing Debates on the Mental Representations of L2 Syntax

This study contributes to a central debate within contemporary generative second language (L2) theorizing: the extent to which adult learners are (un)able to acquire new functional features that result in a L2 grammar that is mentally structured like the native target (see White, 2003 ). The adult acquisition of L2 nominal phi-features is explored, with focus on the syntactic and semantic reflexes in the related domain of adjective placement in two experimental groups: English-speaking intermediate ( n = 21) and advanced ( n = 24) learners of Spanish, as compared to a native-speaker control group ( n = 15). Results show that, on some of the tasks, the intermediate L2 learners appear to have acquired the syntactic properties of the Spanish determiner phrase but, on other tasks, to show some delay with the semantic reflexes of prenominal and postnominal adjectives. Crucially, however, our data demonstrate full convergence by all advanced learners and thus provide evidence in contra the predictions of representational deficit accounts (e.g., Hawkins & Chan, 1997; Hawkins & Franceschina, 2004; Hawkins & Hattori, 2006).

The Syntax-Semantics of Bare and Definite Plural Subjects in the L2 Spanish of English Natives

This study investigates the extent to which advanced native-English L2 learners of Spanish come to acquire restrictions on bare plural preverbal subjects in L2 Spanish (e.g. gatos “cats” vs. definite plurals such as los gatos “the cats”). It tests L2 knowledge of available semantic readings of bare plurals and definite plurals in Spanish, where [+specific] and [+generic] interpretations are syntactically represented differently from English. Assuming L1 transfer, and in view of a potential subset/superset relationship of the two grammars, the learning task in this domain is not a straightforward one. Target acquisition requires both grammatical expansion and retraction; Spanish definite plural subjects require the addition of an L1-unavailable [+generic] reading, while a loss of an L1-available [+generic] reading for preverbal subject bare plurals is required. The results and analysis show that advanced L2 learners of Spanish (English L1) can circumvent a superficial subset/superset learnability problem by means of feature resetting in line with the Nominal Mapping Parameter.

O Sujeito, Ele Está Aqui! A Posição Variável dos Sujeitos Preverbais

This paper analyzes preverbal overt subjects, comparing Brazilian Portuguese to (other) null-subject languages, especially within Romance. It explores syntactic and semantic properties, including resumption, ellipsis, quantifiers and scope, variable binding, ordering restrictions, pronominal distinctions, minimality violations, bare nouns and definiteness. It concludes that preverbal subjects in Brazilian Portuguese can be realized both in argumental positions (Specifier of the Inflectional or Tense Phrase) and non-argumental positions (Topic Phrase specifiers), with the possibility that both types of positions are filled by the subject in the same clause, incorporating properties that have been argued not to be found together in other languages. KEY-WORDS: Portuguese; minimalism; subjects; comparative syntax.

Delay in the acquisition of Differential Object Marking by Spanish monolingual and bilingual teenagers

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This study investigated the acquisition of Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM) by bilingual and monolingual Spanish teenagers, evaluating to which extent their knowledge of DOM can be explained by different theories of acquisition. Design/Methodology/Approach: Two experiments with bilingual and monolingual Spanish teenagers (ages 10 to 15) were conducted. The experiments included an Elicited Production Completion Task, in which a space was to either be filled with an object marker or left blank, and a Context-Matching Acceptability Judgment Task. Data and Analysis: 54 subjects (44 bilinguals and 10 monolinguals) were tested. For both tasks, there were 6 conditions testing different syntactic–semantic features that trigger DOM (test items n = 42 in each task). The data were analysed with linear regressions and repeated measures analyses of variance. Findings/Conclusions: This study’s results show that bilingual teenagers do not demonstrate significant differences from age-matched monolinguals in their competence regarding the syntactic–semantic properties of DOM. Both groups are below ceiling in showing evidence of knowledge about all the syntactic–semantic features involved in DOM, indicating the possibility of a significant delay beyond childhood in their acquisition. Originality: There are few previous studies on the acquisition of DOM, and none which consider the full range of features and specific population considered here. Work by Montrul focuses on the animacy feature, while Guijarro-Fuentes considers the full range of features, but for adult L2 learners of Spanish. Significance/Implications: This study shows that the Interface Vulnerability Hypothesis, the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis, the Full Access/Full Transfer Hypothesis and the Interpretability Hypothesis have limitations in explaining its results. Instead, a feature-based approach is proposed in which the specification of features beyond animacy raises difficulties for the acquisition of DOM until late childhood.

Bilingualism and language change: the case of pronominal clitics in Catalan and Spanish

ABSTRACT This study investigates the knowledge of bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish regarding the production of object pronominal clitics (excluding non-reflexive third-person clitics), with a focus on: (i) their morphology, considering the variants that coexist for each form, and (ii) their syntactic placement (proclitic or enclitic) with respect to the verb. We present results from a study of thirty-nine simultaneous bilingual Catalan-Spanish speakers, residents of several geographic areas of Majorca, Spain, including the capital, Palma, and several villages. The speaker data came from a spontaneous oral production task carried out separately in each one of the two languages. We also analyze historical data from a diachronic corpus of Catalan to evaluate whether clitic properties of the Catalan produced by bilinguals constitute grammatical innovations in the language. The results indicate that bilingual speakers of Majorcan Catalan mostly acquire archaic forms for clitics (proclitics and enclitics) that also match the corresponding form of Majorcan Spanish clitics. We interpret these results as showing an effect of bilingualism with Spanish that has contributed to the preservation of archaic forms in the grammar of bilingual speakers of Catalan in Majorca because these forms partially match the ones found in Spanish.

Integrating Linguistic Theory and Experimentation in L2 Acquisition: Learning of Spanish Differential Object Marking by Portuguese and English speakers

Abstract This paper focuses on consequences for linguistic theory of a set of experiments on the L2 acquisition of Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM), with three experimental groups: a native control group, a group of L2 learners whose L1 is English, and a group of L2 learners whose L1 is Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The results of the experiments shed light on two questions of theoretical import: (a) how best to characterize the syntax of Spanish DOM, and (b) whether BP should be classified as a DOM language. We argue that our results support López’s (2012, Indefinite objects: Scrambling, choice functions, and differential marking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) syntactic theory account of DOM over that of Torrego (1998, The dependencies of objects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), in particular due to the more fine-grained distinctions between non-specific objects made by López (2012) compared to Torrego (1998). We also argue that although BP is a DOM language (as suggested by Schwenter 2014, Two kinds of differential object marking in Portuguese and Spanish. In Patricia Amaral & Ana Maria Carvalho (eds.), Portuguese-Spanish interfaces: Diachrony, synchrony, and contact, 237–260. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), our BP subjects do not show a clear acquisitional advantage over English speakers with regard to Spanish DOM, due to independent reasons that include the morphological realization of DOM in Spanish.