Part of
Hispanic Linguistics at the Crossroads: Theoretical linguistics, language acquisition and language contactEdited by Rachel Klassen, Juana M. Liceras and Elena Valenzuela
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 4] 2015
► pp. 169–190
Edited by Rachel Klassen, Juana M. Liceras and Elena Valenzuela
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 4] 2015
► pp. 169–190
Does agreement affect the syntax of bare nominal subjects in Russian–Spanish bilinguals?
We analyze the effect of overt agreement marking on nouns in the acquisition of the syntactic constraints of bare nominals among L1 Russian learners of L2 Spanish. Gender is grammatically active in both Russian and Spanish, but nominals have a different structure and distribution. We posit that gender serves as a path for Russian learners to acquire the distribution and the structure of nominals in Spanish. The results of the present study show that L1 Russian speakers do acquire the overall DP structure in Spanish, and that overt agreement has some effect on the acquisition of bare NP constraints. Results are consistent with the representation of feminine as different from masculine.
Keywords: bare NPs, gender, gender concord, L2 acquisition, Russian, Spanish
References
Abney, S
(1987) The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. MIT.
Baker, M
(2003) Lexical categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
Benedicto, E
(1998) Verb movement and its effects on determinerless plural subjects. In A. Schwegler, B. Tranel, & M. Uribe-Etxebarria (Eds.), Romance linguistics: Theoretical perspectives (pp. 25–40) Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bošković, Ž
(2008) What will you have, DP or NP? In E. Elfner & M. Walkow (Eds.), NELS 37: Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (pp. 101–114). Amherst, MA: GLSA.
Bošković, Ž., & Gajewski, J
(2011) Semantic correlates of the NP/DP parameter. In S. Lima, K. Mullin, & B. Smith, (Eds.), NELS 39: Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society (pp. 121–134). Amherst, MA: GLSA.
Bruhn de Garavito, J., & White, L
(2002) L2 acquisition of Spanish DPs: The status of grammatical features. In A.T. Pérez–Leroux & J.M. Liceras (Eds.), The acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax: The L1/L2 connection (pp. 153–178). Dordrecht: Springer.
Caruso, D
(2011) Nominal phrases in Croatian as DPs. In K. Otaki, H. Takeyasu, & S. Tanigawa (Eds.), Online Proceedings of GLOW in Asia Workshop for Young Scholars. Retrieved from á[URL]ñ (4 November 2013).
Casielles, E
(1997) Topic, focus and bare nominals in Spanish. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Massachusetts.
Chierchia, G
(1998) Reference to kinds across language. Natural Language Semantics, 6, 339–405.
Contreras, H
(1986) Spanish bare NPs and the ECP. In I. Bordelois, H. Contreras, & K. Zagona (Eds.), Generative studies in Spanish syntax (pp. 25–49). Dordrecht: Foris.
Corbett, G
(1991) Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cornips, L., & Hulk, A
(2008) Factors of success and failure in the acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch. Second Language Research, 24, 267–296.
Cuza, A., Guijarro–Fuentes, P., Pires, A., & Rothman, J
(2013) The syntax–semantics of bare and definite plural subjects in the L2 Spanish of English natives. International Journal of Bilingualism, 5, 634–652.
Déprez, V., Sleeman, P., & Guella, H
(2011) Specificity effects in L2 determiner acquisition: UG or pragmatic egocentrism? In M. Pirvulescu (Ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010) (pp. 27–36). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Franceschina, F
(2005) Fossilized second language grammars. The acquisition of grammatical gender. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fukui, N
(1988) Deriving the difference between English and Japanese: A case study in parametric syntax. English Linguistics, 5, 249–270.
Gillon-Dowens, M., Vergara, M., Barber, H.A., & Carreiras, M
(2010) Morphosyntactic processing in late second–language learners. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 1870–1887.
Grimshaw, J
(2000) Extended projections and locality. In P. Coopmans, M. Everaert, & J. Grimshaw (Eds.), Lexical specification and insertion (pp. 115–33). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Grüter, T., Lew–Williams, C., & Fernald, A
(2011) Grammatical gender in L2: Where is the problem? In N. Danis, K. Mesh, H. Sung (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 246–258). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Grüter, T., Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A
(2012) Grammatical gender in L2: A production or a real-time processing problem? Second Language Research, 28, 191–215.
Guillelmon, D., & Grosjean, F
(2001) The gender marking effect in spoken word recognition: The case of bilinguals. Memory and Cognition, 29, 503–511.
Harris, J
(1991) The exponence of gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 22, 27–62
Hawkins, R., & Franceschina, F
(2004) Explaining the acquisition and non–acquisition of determiner–noun gender concord in French and Spanish. In P. Prévost & J. Paradis (Eds.), The acquisition of French in different contexts (pp. 175–206). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ionin, T., Ko, H., & Wexler, K
(2004) Article semantics in L2–acquisition: The role of specificity. Language Acquisition, 12, 3–69.
Kallestinova, E.D
(2007) Aspects of word order in Russian. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Iowa.
Kirova, A
(2014) The role of values in gender feature transfer in Russian L1 Spanish L2 speakers. Poster presented at the 44th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Western Ontario, Canada.
Klassen, R
Forthcoming). The representation of asymmetric grammatical gender systems in the bilingual mental lexicon.
Laca, B
(1999) Presencia y ausencia de determinante. In I. Bosque & V. Demonte (Eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española (Vol. 1; pp. 891–928). Madrid: Espasa.
Longobardi, G
(1994) Reference and proper names. Linguistic Inquiry, 25, 609–666.
Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñán, S
(2008) Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning, 58, 503–553.
Montrul, S. & Ionin, T
(2010) Transfer effects in the interpretation of definite articles by Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 449–473.
Montrul, S., & Ionin, T
(2012) Dominant language transfer in Spanish heritage speakers and L2 learners in the interpretation of definite articles. The Modern Language Journal, 96, 70–94.
Sagarra, N., & Herschensohn, J
(2011) Asymmetries in gender and number agreement processing in late bilinguals. In L.A. Ortiz-López, (Ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 13th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 169–177). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
(2012) The role of proficiency and working memory in gender and number agreement processing in L1 and L2 Spanish. Lingua, 120, 2022–2039.
(2013) Processing of gender and number agreement in late Spanish bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism, 17, 607–27.
Salamoura, A., & Williams, J.N
(2007) The representation of grammatical gender in the bilingual lexicon: Evidence from Greek and German. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 257–275.
Snape, N
(2006) The acquisition of the English determiner phrase by Japanese and Spanish learners of English. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Essex.
Szabolcsi, A
(1983) The possessor that ran away from home. The Lingusitic Review, 3, 89–102.
(1987) Functional categories in the noun phrase. In I. Kenesei (Ed.), Approaches to Hungarian 2 (pp. 167–89). Szeged: JATE.
Weir, A
(2009) Article drop in English headlines. Unpublished MA Dissertation. University College London.
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska–Macgregor, M., & Leung, I
(2004) Gender agreement in non–native Spanish: Evidence against failed features. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 105–133.