Alejandro Cuza

Clitic Placement in Spanish-English Bilingual Children.

Can transfer occur in child bilingual syntax when surface overlap does not involve the syntax-pragmatics interface? Twenty-three Spanish/English bilingual children participated in an elicited imitation study of clitic placement in Spanish restructuring contexts, where variable word order is not associated with pragmatic or semantic factors. Bilingual children performed poorly with preverbal clitics, the order that does not overlap with English. Distinct bilingual patterns emerged: backward repositioning, omissions (for simultaneous bilinguals) and a reduction in forward repositioning bias. We conclude that transfer should be defined in lexical terms as the result of priming effects leading to shifts in lexical items.

Crosslinguistic influence at the syntax proper: Interrogative subject-verb inversion in heritage Spanish

This study examines the potential effects of crosslinguistic influence in the acquisition of subject–verb inversion in Spanish matrix and embedded wh-questions among Spanish heritage language learners living in the United States. The results from an acceptability judgment task and a written production task administered to 17 US-born heritage speakers indicate crosslinguistic influence effects. The effects are more evident with embedded interrogatives than with matrix questions. A follow-up study with the heritage speakers also shows less inversion behavior with embedded questions in oral production but higher performance levels than in written production. The findings are discussed in relation to interface vulnerability approaches and current debates on the selective nature of crosslinguistic influence in L2 and bilingual development.

THE ROLE OF SEMANTIC TRANSFER IN CLITIC DROP AMONG SIMULTANEOUS AND SEQUENTIAL CHINESE-SPANISH BILINGUALS

This study examines the acquisition of the featural constraints on clitic and null distribution in Spanish among simultaneous and sequential Chinese-Spanish bilinguals from Peru. A truth value judgment task targeted the referential meaning of null objects in a negation context. Objects were elicited via two clitic elicitation tasks that targeted anaphoric contexts and left-dislocated topics. An acceptability task tested sensitivity to left-dislocated object drop. Although simultaneous bilinguals were mostly undistinguishable from monolinguals, the late learners differed from both of these groups across tasks. Age of arrival led to different outcomes, with late learners showing more deficits than the child learners. Late learners avoided using clitics and relied on lexical and null objects. Residual transfer effects were observed among the child learners in the form of insensitivity to the features that serve as the basis for null argument identification and clitic deficits in production. It is also argued that transfer persists despite early and intense exposure to the second language in a natural environment because of the existence of an unmarked argument identification option in the first language.

Grammatical gender selection and phrasal word order in child heritage Spanish: A feature re-assembly approach ¤∗

The present study examines the development of grammatical gender assignment, agreement, and noun-adjective word order in child heritage Spanish among thirty-two Spanish–English bilingual children born and raised in the United States. A picture-naming task revealed significant overextension of the masculine form and high levels of ungrammatical word order strings. There were no significant differences by age regarding gender concord or noun-adjective word order. We argue that the differences found can be accounted for in terms of a re-assembly of gender features leading to both morphological and syntactic variability. This approach allows for subsequent morphosyntactic shifts during early childhood depending on patterns of language use, and conceptualizes heritage language variation along the lines of current linguistic theorizing regarding the role of innate linguistic principles and language experience in language development.

On the Role of Experience and Age-Related Effects: Evidence from the Spanish CP.

The present study examines and compares the extent to which advanced L2 learners of Spanish and Spanish heritage speakers acquire the syntactic and semantic properties that regulate the grammatical representation of double complementizer questions in Spanish, a CP-related structure not present in English. Results from an aural sentence completion task, an acceptability judgment task, and a preference task indicate significant differences between the two experimental groups and the monolingual controls. However, the heritage speakers outperformed the L2 learners in their target use and interpretation, which suggests a linguistic benefit for earlier exposure and use of Spanish during childhood. We propose that the differences observed among the L2 learners and the heritage speakers can be accounted for in terms of cross-linguistic influence from the dominant language as well as language experience and age of onset of bilingualism as an interrelated dimension in L2 and heritage language development.

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.

Structure complexity effects in child heritage Spanish: The case of the Spanish personal a

Aims and objectives: This study examines the acquisition of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in heritage Spanish children born in the USA and the potential role of structure complexity and chronological age. Design: Bilingual children were compared with monolingual children matched by age and long-term immigrants (children’s parents) via an Elicited Production task. We elicited the distribution of personal a in simple and Clitic Left Dislocated (CLLD) structures. Data and analysis: Results were entered into repeated analyses of variance measure with type of structure and group as dependent variables and chronological age as a covariate. Conclusions: Results show decreased production of personal a among the bilingual children, especially in CLLD contexts. We also found strong correlations between target use and type of structure, but no correlations with developmental age among the bilingual children. Parents and monolingual children behaved at ceiling with matrix questions but showed variable behavior with CLLD structures. We argue for incomplete specification of the animacy and specificity features constraining DOM and structure complexity effects affecting child bilingual grammars. Originality: This study highlights that heritage speakers do not necessarily become less native-like with age and increased exposure to English. The comparison of the bilingual children to both monolingual children and their parents was essential to mitigate the effects of dialect and cognitive development. Implications: Given that age was not the determining factor in bilingual children’s production of DOM in Spanish, it would seem that exposure to and use of the heritage language play a larger role. Additionally, for theories of language acquisition, these findings suggest that an early age of onset of acquisition is not a sufficient condition for native-like attainment, especially when input is lacking.

A pragmatic analysis of L2 Spanish requests: Acquisition in three situational contexts during short-term study abroad

Abstract This study examines pragmatic acquisition of requests for English-speaking learners of Spanish. This research expands upon previous work by investigating the acquisition of second language requests during a short-term immersion program (6 weeks) in Madrid, Spain and in three situational contexts: food and drink, general merchandise, and familial. Data were collected using an experimental computerized oral discourse completion task. Requests made by learners (501 requests) and native speakers (224 requests) were compared considering personal deictic orientation and directness of the requests. For learners, shifts from speaker-oriented to hearer-oriented requests indicated greater pragmatic development in food and drink and familial contexts. Results are discussed considering pragmatic developmental stages and differential results in the three contexts.

On the production of differential object marking and wh-question formation in native and non-native Spanish

The present study explores the elicited production of differential object marking and subject-verb inversion in matrix and embedded wh- questions in Spanish among 16 English-speaking L2 learners and 17 Spanish-speaking immigrants serving as control baseline. Results from an elicited production task show high levels of variability among the L2 learners, crucially with differential object marking in animate and specific contexts and with obligatory inversion in embedded wh- questions. Furthermore, our data show overall more difficulty with inversion in embedded questions than with differential object marking, suggesting that structural complexity, frequency and transfer from English may cause a structure not on an interface level to present more difficulties for advanced L2 learners in this case. The results are discussed along the lines with previous research on vulnerable domains, and the role crosslinguistic influence, structural complexity and surface overlap in language development.