Hostname: page-component-5d84bcc8dc-76cxt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-09-06T11:54:33.071Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Specific and generic subjects in the Italian of German–Italian simultaneous bilinguals and L2 learners*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2012

TANJA KUPISCH
TANJA KUPISCH*
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg & Lund University
*
Address for correspondence: University of Hamburg, Institut für Romanistik, Von-Melle-Park 6, 20149 Hamburg, Germanytanja.kupisch@uni-hamburg.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigates definite articles in specific and generic subject nominals in Italian spoken by adult simultaneous bilinguals (2L1ers) and second language learners (L2ers). The study focuses on plural and mass DPs, in which German and Italian differ. The aims are to (i) compare acquisition outcomes between the weaker and the stronger language in 2L1 acquisition, (ii) see in a comparison with L2ers whether the phenomenon under investigation, which is typically acquired late (after age 6;0), lacks age of onset effects, and (iii) discuss predictions for the directionality of cross-linguistic influence. Twenty German–Italian 2L1ers and 15 advanced L2ers of Italian with German as their native language were tested in an acceptability judgment task and a truth value judgment task. The results show clear differences between Italian as the weaker and as the stronger language in 2L1 acquisition, and similarities between Italian as L2 and as the weaker language in 2L1 acquisition.

Keywords

simultaneous bilingualismweaker and stronger languageL2 acquisitionspecific and generic DPs

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 736 - 756
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

Data for this study were collected as part of the Project E11 at the Research Centre of Multilingualism in Hamburg. I gratefully acknowledge funding from the German Science Foundation. I wish to thank Dagmar Barton, Giulia Bianchi, Ilse Stangen as well as three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. Special thanks to Joost van de Weijer for his assistance with the statistics.

References

Andersen, R. W. (1982). Determining the linguistic attributes of language attrition. In Lambert, R. D. & Freed, B. F. (eds.), The loss of language skills, pp. 83–118. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Barton, D. (2011). Cross-linguistic influence in adult early bilinguals: Generic noun phrases in German and French. Arbeiten zur Mehrsprachigkeit, 96.Google Scholar
Bley-Vroman, R. (1990). The logical problem of foreign language learning. Linguistic Analysis, 20, 3–49.Google Scholar
Chierchia, G. (1998). Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics, 6 (4), 339–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dayal, V. (2004). Number marking and (in)definiteness in kind terms. Linguistics and Philosophy, 27, 393–450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Döpke, S. (1998). Competing language structures: The acquisition of verb placement by bilingual German–English children. Journal of Child Language, 25, 555–584.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gathercole, V. Mueller. (2002). Grammatical gender in bilingual and monolingual children: A Spanish morphosyntactic distinction. In Oller, D. K. & Eilers, R. E. (eds.), Language and literacy in bilingual children, pp. 207–209. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gavarró, A., Pérez-Leroux, A., & Roeper, T. (2006). Definite and bare noun contrasts in child Catalan. In V. Torrens & Escobar, L. (eds.), The acquisition of syntax in Romance languages, pp. 51–68. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, S., & Raman, L. (2003). Preschool children use linguistic form class and pragmatic cues to interpret generics. Child Development, 74 (1), 308–325.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grosjean, F. (1989). Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person. Brain and Language, 36 (1), 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hulk, A., & Müller, N. (2000). Cross-linguistic influence at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3 (3), 227–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ionin, T., & Montrul, S. (2010). The role of L1-transfer in the interpretation of articles with definite plurals in L2-English. Language Learning, 60, 877–925.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krifka, M., Pelletier, F., Carlson, G., ter Meulen, A, Chierchia, G., & Link, G. (1995). Genericity: An introduction. In Carlson, G. & Pelletier, F. (eds.), The generic book, pp. 1–124. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kupisch, T., & Pierantozzi, C. (2010). Interpreting definite plural subjects: A comparison of German and Italian monolingual and bilingual children. In Franich, K., Iserman, K. & Keil, L. (eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 245–254. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Lenneberg, E. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longobardi, G. (1994). Reference and proper names: A theory of N-movement in syntax and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry, 25 (4), 609–665.Google Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (2007). The weaker language in early child bilingualism: Acquiring a first language like a second language? Applied Psycholinguistics, 28 (3), 495–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. M. (2011). First and second language acquisition: Parallels and differences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. M., Bonnesen, M., & Elsig, M. (2011). Delayed grammatical acquisition in first language development: Subject–verb inversion and subject clitics in French interrogatives. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1 (4), 347–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete acquisition on bilingualism: Re-examining the age-factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S., & Ionin, T. (2010). Transfer effects in the interpretation of definite articles by Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13 (4), 449–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, N. (1998). Transfer in bilingual first language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 151–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oosterhof, A. (2004). Generic noun phrases in Dutch. In Karlsson, F. (ed.), Proceedings of the 20th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, pp. 1–22. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of General Linguistics.Google Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A., Munn, A., Schmitt, C., & DeIrish, M. (2004). Learning definite determiners: Genericity and definiteness in English and Spanish. In Brugos, A., Micciulla, L. & Smith, C. E. (eds.), Proceedings Supplement of the 28th BUCLD, http://www.bu.edu/bucld/proceedings/supplement/vol28/ (retrieved December 6, 2011).Google Scholar
Platzack, C. (2001). The vulnerable C-domain. Brain and Language, 77, 364–377.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Polinsky, M. (1997). American Russian: Language loss meets language acquisition. In Wayles Browne, E., Dornisch, N., Kondrashowva, N. & Ze, D. (eds.), Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Cornell Meeting (1995), pp. 370–406. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publishers.Google Scholar
Renzi, L. (1982). Il vero plurale dell'articolo ‘uno’. Lingua Nostra, 42, 63–68.Google Scholar
Rothman, J. (2009). Understanding the nature of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13 (2), 155–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., Filiaci, F., & Baldo, M. (2009). Bilingual children's sensitivity to specificity and genericity: Evidence from metalinguistic awareness. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12 (2), 239–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slabakova, R. (2006). Learnability in the second language acquisition of semantics: A bidirectional study of a semantic parameter. Second Language Research, 22, 498–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snape, N., García Mayo, M. del P., & Gürel, A. (2009). Spanish, Turkish, Japanese and Chinese L2 learners’ acquisition of generic reference. In Bowles, M., Ionin, T., Montrul, S. & Tremblay, A. (eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference, pp. 1–8. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (1993). Incomplete vs. divergent representations of unaccusativity. Second Language Research, 9 (1), 22–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A. (2011). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1 (1), 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22, 339–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A., & Serratrice, L. (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13 (2), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ter Meulen, A. (1995). Semantic constraints on type-shifting anaphora. In Carlson, G. & Pelletier, F. J. (eds.), The generic book, pp. 339–357. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Tremblay, A. (2011). Proficiency assessment in second language acquisition research: Clozing the gap. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33, 339–372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, L. (1989). Universal grammar and second language acquisition. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, L. (2009). Grammatical theory: Interfaces and L2 knowledge. In Ritchie, W. B. & Bhatia, T. K. (eds.), The new handbook of second language acquisition, pp. 49–68. Bingley: Emerald.Google Scholar