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Linguistic Approaches to Portuguese as an Additional Language
Edited by Karina Veronica Molsing, Cristina Becker Lopes Perna and Ana Maria Tramunt Ibaños
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 24] 2020
► pp. 35–59

Syntactic contrasts in early and late Brazilian Portuguese-European Portuguese bidialectal bilinguals

Data from production

| UiT The Arctic University of Norway
| UiT The Arctic University of Norway
| UiT The Arctic University of Norway

This study explores the production of subject and object pronouns in the case of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and European Portuguese (EP) early and late bidialectal bilinguals. The distribution of empty categories in the two systems differs in terms of syntactic and semantic constraints. In this light, we test the extent to which Brazilians acquiring EP naturalistically in Portugal display cross-linguistic effects. Our results indicate that cross-linguistic effects are found both in BP and EP for late learners, but only in BP for early learners. We believe that the high degree of typological proximity between BP and EP and the structural differences between subjects and objects can better explain these learners’ outcomes.

Keywords: empty categories, Portuguese, bilingualism, cross-linguistic effects, interface
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cross-linguistic effects in L2 and HL acquisition
  • 3.Morpho-syntactic distinctions
    • 3.1Null subject distribution
      • 3.1.1European Portuguese
      • 3.1.2Brazilian Portuguese
    • 3.2Null object distribution
      • 3.2.1European Portuguese
      • 3.2.2Brazilian Portuguese
  • 4.Research questions and hypotheses
  • 5.Methodological approach
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Mode trigger
    • 5.3Elicited production task
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Null vs. overt pronominal subjects
    • 6.2Null vs. overt pronominal objects
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 26 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.24.02cas
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