Chapter 13
From a Romance null subject grammar to a non-null subject
grammar
The syntax of pronominal subjects in advanced and near-native
English
This study investigates the acquisition of
pronominal subjects by advanced and near-native speakers of English
whose L1s are European Portuguese (EP), a null subject language
(NSL), and French, a non-NSL (NNSL). Two experimental tasks were
used: a drag-and-drop task and a speeded acceptability judgement
task. Results show that the EP speakers who have an advanced level
of English fail to reject expletive and [ animate] null subjects in
the speeded task. In contrast, those who are at a near-native level
behave native-like across all tasks, just as French speakers do.
These findings indicate that the syntax of subjects is acquirable in
L1 NSL-L2 NNSL pairings, despite giving rise to significant
developmental delays. Developmental problems are argued to result
from input misanalysis.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Referential and expletive subjects in (non-) null subject
languages
- 3.Previous studies on the L2 acquisition of null and non-null
subject languages
- 4.The present study
- 4.1Research questions and predictions
- 4.2Participants
- 4.3Experimental design
- 4.4Data analysis
- 5.Results
- 6.Discussion
- 7.Follow-up study
- 8.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
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