Data from one English-Italian bilingual child (1;10-3;1) are presented in this study which challe... more Data from one English-Italian bilingual child (1;10-3;1) are presented in this study which challenge the hypothesis that the consistent realization of overt subjects in English is caused by the emergence of finite verbal morphology in the child's grammar. The argument is made for the emergence of subjects as an independent grammatical property of English, namely the marking of person deixis. Throughout the period of observation there is a significant proportion of overt subjects in the child's English utterances appearing both with finite and non-finite verb forms. Production of subjects stabilizes at 90% of obligatory contexts when no morphological correlates of finiteness have been acquired yet. While subjects are produced at significantly lower rates in Italian, we observe the consolidation of a number of inflected forms marking person agreement. The emergence of overt subjects in English on the one hand, and of subject-verb agreement in Italian on the other suggest that this bilingual child is grammaticalizing the all-important function of person deixis in language-specific ways: the same function is expressed by different forms in the child's two languages.
Abstract Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have well-known difficulties with the o... more Abstract Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have well-known difficulties with the obligatory use of verbal tense-marking morphology which they use optionally for a longer period of time than typically developing children. Copula BE and auxiliary BE are two tense markers that have been shown to be problematic for children with SLI, but their status as independent allomorphs is somewhat controversial in the literature. In the present study we argue for copula BE and auxiliary BE as two separate tense markers showing different ...
This study investigates the acceptability of Italian and English pronominal subject forms in −top... more This study investigates the acceptability of Italian and English pronominal subject forms in −topic shift [−TS] and +topic shift [+TS] contexts in English-Italian and Spanish-Italian bilingual children aged 6–7 and 8–10, age-matched monolingual children, and monolingual adults. The aim was to disentangle possible effects of cross-linguistic influence from the more general effects of bilingualism and the use of ‘default’ forms. A further aim of the study was to test the influence of input and exposure to Italian by comparing bilinguals living in Italy and bilinguals living in the UK. The results showed no statistically significant differences in English: regardless of age, language combination, and language of the community, participants overwhelmingly rejected ungrammatical sentences with a missing subject and chose sentences with an overt subject pronoun. In Italian, by contrast, the patterns of results were much more varied. Younger monolingual and bilingual children chose significantly more pragmatically inappropriate overt subject pronouns than older children and adults. A significant interaction between age and language of the community also showed that at the age of 6–7 English-Italian bilinguals in the UK chose significantly more pragmatically overt pronouns than all the other groups of children, while at the age of 8–10 it was the Spanish-Italian bilinguals that performed significantly less accurately than all other groups of children. Bilingual children, regardless of age and language combination, also accepted some infelicitous null subject pronouns. This pattern of results indicates that variables beside cross-linguistic influence must be considered as explanatory factors in this particular domain. It also suggests that it is important to differentiate among different discourse conditions affecting subject pronouns in context.
Data from one English-Italian bilingual child (1;10-3;1) are presented in this study which challe... more Data from one English-Italian bilingual child (1;10-3;1) are presented in this study which challenge the hypothesis that the consistent realization of overt subjects in English is caused by the emergence of finite verbal morphology in the child's grammar. The argument is made for the emergence of subjects as an independent grammatical property of English, namely the marking of person deixis. Throughout the period of observation there is a significant proportion of overt subjects in the child's English utterances appearing both with finite and non-finite verb forms. Production of subjects stabilizes at 90% of obligatory contexts when no morphological correlates of finiteness have been acquired yet. While subjects are produced at significantly lower rates in Italian, we observe the consolidation of a number of inflected forms marking person agreement. The emergence of overt subjects in English on the one hand, and of subject-verb agreement in Italian on the other suggest that this bilingual child is grammaticalizing the all-important function of person deixis in language-specific ways: the same function is expressed by different forms in the child's two languages.
Abstract Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have well-known difficulties with the o... more Abstract Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have well-known difficulties with the obligatory use of verbal tense-marking morphology which they use optionally for a longer period of time than typically developing children. Copula BE and auxiliary BE are two tense markers that have been shown to be problematic for children with SLI, but their status as independent allomorphs is somewhat controversial in the literature. In the present study we argue for copula BE and auxiliary BE as two separate tense markers showing different ...
This study investigates the acceptability of Italian and English pronominal subject forms in −top... more This study investigates the acceptability of Italian and English pronominal subject forms in −topic shift [−TS] and +topic shift [+TS] contexts in English-Italian and Spanish-Italian bilingual children aged 6–7 and 8–10, age-matched monolingual children, and monolingual adults. The aim was to disentangle possible effects of cross-linguistic influence from the more general effects of bilingualism and the use of ‘default’ forms. A further aim of the study was to test the influence of input and exposure to Italian by comparing bilinguals living in Italy and bilinguals living in the UK. The results showed no statistically significant differences in English: regardless of age, language combination, and language of the community, participants overwhelmingly rejected ungrammatical sentences with a missing subject and chose sentences with an overt subject pronoun. In Italian, by contrast, the patterns of results were much more varied. Younger monolingual and bilingual children chose significantly more pragmatically inappropriate overt subject pronouns than older children and adults. A significant interaction between age and language of the community also showed that at the age of 6–7 English-Italian bilinguals in the UK chose significantly more pragmatically overt pronouns than all the other groups of children, while at the age of 8–10 it was the Spanish-Italian bilinguals that performed significantly less accurately than all other groups of children. Bilingual children, regardless of age and language combination, also accepted some infelicitous null subject pronouns. This pattern of results indicates that variables beside cross-linguistic influence must be considered as explanatory factors in this particular domain. It also suggests that it is important to differentiate among different discourse conditions affecting subject pronouns in context.
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