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Part of
Language Acquisition Beyond Parameters: Studies in honour of Juana M. Liceras
Edited by Anahí Alba de la Fuente, Elena Valenzuela and Cristina Martínez Sanz
[Studies in Bilingualism 51] 2016
► pp. 37–70

Reference comprehension and production in bilingual Spanish

The view from null subject languages

| Universitat Pompeu Fabra
| Universitat Pompeu Fabra
| Universitat de Barcelona

Recent work suggests that bilingual speakers do not seem to behave native-like when syntax and pragmatics converge (Sorace, 2011). This study investigates subject pronouns because they allow observing how speakers integrate morphosyntactic forms with pragmatic information. Our goal is to determine whether Moroccan Arabic (MA)/Spanish bilinguals display different antecedent biases for null and overt pronoun both in comprehension and production when the two languages of the bilinguals are both null-subject languages. We tested two groups: MA/Spanish bilinguals and native speakers of Spanish. Participants completed an acceptability judgment test and a written narrative task. Results suggest an L1-like strategy in the comprehension and production of null pronouns whereas overt pronouns seem to diverge suggesting an overproduction/overacceptance, in line with previous work.

Keywords: bilingual acquisition, syntax–pragmatics interface, subject pronouns, anaphora resolution, null-subject languages
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pronominal dependencies in discourse
    • 2.1Pronoun reference in Spanish and Moroccan Arabic
    • 2.2The acquisition of pronoun reference
  • 3.Goals and research questions
  • 4.Experiment 1: Production data
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Procedure
    • 4.3Coding criteria
    • 4.4Results
  • 5.Experiment 2: Interpretation data
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Procedure and materials
    • 5.3Results
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 16 December 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.51.03bel
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