Cover not available
Part of
Current Perspectives on Generative SLA - Processing, Influence, and Interfaces: Selected proceedings of the 15th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference
Edited by Anne Dahl, Marta Velnić and Kjersti Faldet Listhaug
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 70] 2024
► pp. 38–63

Chapter 2
Extending the Decreased Activation Hypothesis

| Università per Stranieri di Perugia
| Goethe University Frankfurt
| Universität Mannheim

Some studies of anaphora resolution have highlighted the fact that even speakers of two nullsubject languages may over-use overt subject pronouns in their null subject second language. Here, we analyze the overt subject pronouns produced in Italian by a group of near-native L2 speakers with L1 Serbian, compared to those produced by a group of near-native L2 speakers with L1 Greek, and a group of Italian native speakers. Results reveal that Serbian L2ers, like Greek L2ers, over-produce overt subject pronouns, using them in the context of topic continuity. Overt subject pronouns which maintain the current topic are produced when two referents are active rather than one, supporting the view that referential choices are partially determined by decreased referent activation.

Keywords: overt subject pronouns in Italian, near-natives, topicality, active referents, L1 Serbian, L1 Greek
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A first evidence for the Decreased Activation Hypothesis
  • 3.Extending the Decreased Activation Hypothesis: The productions of L2ers of Italian with L1 Serbian
    • 3.1Properties of null and overt subject pronouns in Greek and Serbian
    • 3.2Participants
    • 3.3Elicitation procedure and definition of the reference total
    • 3.4The near-nativeness test
    • 3.5Overall results
    • 3.6Overt subject pronouns and topicality
    • 3.7Overt subject pronouns and active referents
  • 4.Summary and discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References (50)
Ariel, M.
(1990) Accessing noun phrase antecedents. Routledge.Google Scholar
(2001) Accessibility theory: An overview. In T. J. M. Sanders, J. Schilperoord, & W. Spooren (Eds.), Text representation: Linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects (pp. 29–87). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arnold, J. E., & Griffin, Z. M.
(2007) The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(4), 521–536. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Belletti, A., Bennati, E., & Sorace, A.
(2007) Theoretical and developmental issues in the syntax of subjects: Evidence from near-native Italian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 25(4), 657–689. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bini, M.
(1993) La adquisición del italiano: Mas allá de las propiedades sintácticas del parámetro pro-drop. In J. Liceras (Ed.), La lingüística y el análisis de los sistemas no natives (pp. 126–140). Doverhouse Editions Canada.Google Scholar
Browne, W.
(1993) Serbo-Croat. In B. Comrie & G. G. Corbett (Eds.), The Slavonic languages (pp. 306–387). Routledge.Google Scholar
Calabrese, A.
(1986) Pronomina: Some properties of the Italian pronominal system. In N. Fukui, T. R. Rapoport, & E. Sagey (Eds.), Papers in theoretical linguistics (pp. 1–46). The MIT PressGoogle Scholar
Cardinaletti, A.
(2004) Toward a cartography of subject positions. In L. Rizzi (Ed.), The structure of CP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures (Vol. II, pp. 115–165). Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carminati, M. N.
(2002) The processing of Italian subject pronouns (Doctoral dissertation). University of Massachusetts at Amherst. (Publication No. 3039345). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.
Chafe, W.
(Ed.) (1980) The pear stories: Cognitive, cultural, and linguistic aspects of narrative production. Ablex.Google Scholar
Chamorro, G.
(2018) Offline interpretation of subject pronouns by native speakers of Spanish. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 3(1), 27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C.
(2006) Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27(1), 3–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Contemori, C., & Di Domenico, E.
(2021) Microvariation in the division of labor between null and overt subject pronouns: The case of Italian and Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 42(4), 997–1028. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Contemori, C., & Ivanova, I.
(2020) Bilinguals’ referential choice in cognitively demanding situations. Bilingualism: Language and cognition, 24(1), 83–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Di Domenico, E.
(2020) Clausal types and syntactic subjects in narratives. In C. Bongartz & J. Torregrossa (Eds.), What’s in a narrative? Variation in storytelling at the interface between language and literacy (pp. 121–146). Peter Lang.Google Scholar
(2021) Bilingualism and (outward) over-explicitness in the choice of subject anaphoric devices. Quaderni di Linguistica e Studi Orientali (Qulso), 7, 51–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Di Domenico, E., & Baroncini, I.
(2019) Age of onset and dominance in the choice of subject anaphoric devices: Comparing natives and near-natives of two null-subject languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2729. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Di Domenico, E., Baroncini I., & Capotorti, A.
(2020) Null and overt subject pronouns in topic continuity and topic shift: An investigation of the narrative productions of Italian natives, Greek natives and near-native second language speakers of Italian with Greek as a first language. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 5(1), 117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Di Domenico, E., & Matteini, S.
(2021) Micro-variation in subject realization and interpretation: An introduction. Glossa. A Journal of General Linguistics, 6(1), 45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dimitriadis, A.
(1996) When pro-drop languages don’t: Overt pronominal subjects and pragmatic inference. In L. M. Dobrin, K. Singer, & L. McNair (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (pp. 33–47). The Chicago Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Filiaci, F., Sorace, A., & Carreiras, M.
(2014) Anaphoric biases of null and overt subjects in Italian and Spanish: A cross-linguistic comparison. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(7), 825–843. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giannakou, A., & Sitaridou, I.
(2020) Microparametric variation in the syntax of Spanish and Greek pronominal subjects. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 5(1), 75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hammond, L.
(2005) Serbian: An essential grammar. Routledge.Google Scholar
Holton, D., Mackridge, P., & Philippaki-Warburton, I.
(2015) Greek: An essential grammar of the modern language. Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kordić, S.
(1997) Serbo-Croatian. Lincom.Google Scholar
Kraš, T.
(2008) Anaphora resolution in near-native Italian grammars: Evidence from native speakers of Croatian. In L. Roberts, F. Myles, & A. David (Eds.), Eurosla Yearbook 8 (pp. 107–134). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016) Cross-linguistic influence at the discourse-syntax interface: Insights from anaphora resolution in child second language learners of Italian. International Journal of Bilingualism, 20(4), 369–385. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kraš, T., & Miličević Petrović, M.
(2019) Anaphora resolution in Italian by Croatian-Italian simultaneous bilinguals. In R. Slabakova, J. Corbet, L. Dominguez, A. Dudley, & A. Wallington (Eds.), Explorations in second language acquisition and processing (pp. 81–93). Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, K.
(1994) Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus and the mental representation of discourse referents. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lozano, C.
(2006) The development of the syntax-information structure interface: Greek learners of Spanish. In V. Torrens & L. Escobar (Eds.), The Acquisition of syntax in Romance languages (pp. 371–399). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) The development of anaphora resolution at the syntax-discourse interface: Pronominal subjects in Greek learners of Spanish. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 47(2), 411–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Margaza, P.
(2018) The distribution of subjects in L2 Spanish and L2 Greek (Doctoral dissertation). Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. CORA TDX Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa. [URL]
Margaza, P., & Bel, A.
(2006) Null subjects at the syntax-pragmatics interface: Evidence from Spanish interlanguage of Greek speakers. In M. Grantham O’Brien, C. Shea, & J. Archibald (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2006), (Banff, Canada 27–30 April 2006) (pp. 88–97). Cascadilla Press.
Miličević, M., & Kraš, T.
(2017) Anaphora resolution in L1 Serbian by trainee translators from L2 English. In K. Cergol Kovačević & S. L. Udier (Eds.), Applied linguistic research and methodology: Proceedings from the 2015 CALS Conference (pp. 187–202). Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Miltsakaki, E.
(2007, March 29–30). A rethink of the relationship between salience and anaphora resolution [Conference section]. 6th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium, Lagos, Portugal. [URL]
Polovina, V.
(2022) Non-omission of deictic personal pronouns. In N. P. Cerovski, B. Kovačević, & M. Dinić Marinković (Eds.), BeLiDa1: Thematic collection of paper (Vol. 1, pp. 367–403). Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prentza, A., & Tsimpli, I. M.
(2013) Resolution of pronominal ambiguity in Greek: Syntax and pragmatics. Studies in Greek Linguistics, 33, 197–208.Google Scholar
Rizzi, L.
(2018) Subjects, topics and the interpretation of pro. In R. Petrosino, P. Cerrone, & H. Hulst (Eds.), From sounds to structures: Beyond the veil of Maya (pp. 510–530). De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothman, J.
(2009) Pragmatic deficits with syntactic consequences? L2 pronominal subjects and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(5), 951–973. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ryan, J.
(2015) Over-explicit referent tracking in L2 English: Strategy, avoidance or myth? Language Learning, 65(4) 824–859. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A.
(2011) Pinning down the concept of ‘interface’ in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(1), 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016) Referring expressions and executive functions in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 6(5), 669–684. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2021, February 19). Creating an interdisciplinary framework for research on multilingualism. [Conference session]. IGG46 workshop Multilingualism: Social and Cognitive Dimensions, University of Siena. [URL]
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F.
(2006) Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339–368. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Torregrossa, J., Andreou, M., & Bongartz, C.
(2020) Variation in the use and interpretation of null subjects: A view from Greek and Italian. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 5(1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Triantafyllidis, M.
(1996[1941]) Neoelliniki grammatiki tis dimotikis. Ekdoseis Pataki.Google Scholar
Tsimpli, I. M., Sorace, A., Heycock, C., & Filiaci, F.
(2004) First language attrition and syntactic subjects: A study of Greek and Italian near native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8(3), 257–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tsimpli, I. M., & Sorace, A.
(2006) Differentiating interfaces: L2 performance in syntax-semantics and syntax-discourse phenomena. In D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia, & C. Zaller (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 653–664). Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Vulchanova, M., Vulchanov, V., Sorace, A., Suarez-Gomez C., & Guijarro-Fuentes, P.
(2022) Editorial: The notion of the native speaker put to test: Recent research advances. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 875740. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
White, L., & Genesee, F.
(1996) How native is near-native? The issue of ultimate attainment in adult second language acquisition. Second Language Research, 12(3), 233–265. DOI logoGoogle Scholar