Cover not available
Part of
Cross-linguistic Influence in Bilingualism: In honor of Aafke Hulk
Edited by Elma Blom, Leonie Cornips and Jeannette Schaeffer
[Studies in Bilingualism 52] 2017
► pp. 181–206

Cross-linguistic influence in scope ambiguity

Evidence for acceleration

| Utrecht University
| McGill University
| Radboud University Nijmegen
Cross-linguistic influence of interface-conditioned properties in bilingual language acquisition has been reported in a large number of studies and various linguistic domains. While many of these studies have found that cross-linguistic influence can occur in the form of delay, few have shown evidence for acceleration (a.o., Kupisch, 2007; Meisel, 2007; Schwartz, Nir, Leikin, Levie, & Ravid, 2014). In this paper we investigate the interpretation of indefinites in sentences containing negation by simultaneous bilingual (2L1) English-Dutch and Italian-Dutch children. Our results provide evidence for cross-linguistic influence from Italian to Dutch in the form of acceleration, only. We conclude that in cases of partial overlap between a bilingual child’s two languages, the direction of cross-linguistic influence can also depend on language-internal properties.
Keywords: cross-linguistic influence, indefinites, bilingualism, acceleration
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Cross-linguistic influence in the area of syntax-semantics
  • 3.Indefinites and negation in Dutch and English monolingual development
  • 4.Study 1: Indefinites and negation in English-Dutch bilinguals
    • 4.1Participants and method
    • 4.2Results
    • 4.3Discussion
  • 5.Specific indefinites in Italian
  • 6.Study 2a: Indefinites and negation in monolingual Italian children and adults
    • 6.1Participants and method
    • 6.2Results
    • 6.3Discussion
  • 7.Study 2b: Indefinites and negation in Italian-Dutch bilinguals
    • 7.1Participants and method
    • 7.2Results
    • 7.3Discussion
  • 8.Comparison of Study 1 and Study 2
    • 8.1Results
    • 8.2Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.52.09mer
References
Austin, J.
(2009) Delay, interference and bilingual development: The acquisition of verbal morphology in children learning Basque and Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(4), 447–479. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carey, S. E.
(2004) Bootstrapping the origin of concepts. Daedalus, 133(1), 59–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crain, S., & Thornton, R.
(1998) Investigations in Universal Grammar: A guide to experiments on the acquisition of syntax and semantics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Foroodi-Nejad, F., & Paradis, J.
(2009) Cross-linguistic transfer in the acquisition of compound words in Persian – English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(4), 411–427. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. D., & Sag, I.
(1982) Referential and quantificational indefinites. Linguistics and Philosophym, 5, 355–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gawlitzek-Maiwald, I., & Tracy, R.
(1996) Bilingual bootstrapping. Linguistics, 34(5), 901–926. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gualmini, A.
(2004) The ups and downs of child language: Experimental studies in children’s knowledge of entailment relationships and polarity phenomena. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gualmini, A., Hulsey, S., Hacquard, V., & Fox, D.
(2008) The question-answer requirement for scope assignment. Natural Language Semantics, 16(3), 205–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haznedar, B.
(2010) Transfer at the syntax-pragmatics interface: Pronominal subjects in bilingual Turkish. Second Language Research, 26(3), 355–378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Hoop, H.
(1992) Case configuration and noun phrase interpretation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.Google Scholar
Huang, Y. T., Spelke, E., & Snedeker, J.
(2013) What exactly do numbers mean? Language Learning and Development, 9(2), 105–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hulk, A., & Müller, N.
(2000) Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3(3), 227–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hulsey, S., Hacquard, V., Fox, D., & Gualmini, A.
(2004) The question-answer requirement and scope assignment. In A. Csirmaz, A. Gualmini, & A. Nevins (Eds.), Plato’s problems: Papers in language acquisition (pp. 71–90). Cambridge, MA: MITWP.Google Scholar
Krämer, I.
(2000) Interpreting indefinites. An experimental study of children’s language comprehension. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Utrecht University.Google Scholar
Kupisch, T.
(2007) Determiners in bilingual German-Italian children: What they tell us about the relation between language influence and language dominance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10(1), 57–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, M., Kwak, H. Y., Lee, S., & O’Grady, W. D.
(2010) Processing, pragmatics and scope in Korean and English. In H. Sohn, H. Cook, W. O’Grady, L. Serafim, & S. Cheon (Eds.), Proceedings of 19th Japanese-Korean linguistics conference. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Lidz, J., & Musolino, J.
(2002) Children’s command of quantification. Cognition, 84, 113–154. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lleò, C., Kuchenbrandt, I., Kehoe, M., & Trujillo, C.
(2003) Syllable final consonants in spanish and german monolingual and bilingual acquisition. In N. Müller (Ed.), (In)vulnerable Domains in Multilingualism (pp. 191–220). Amsterdam: John Benjamins DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J.
(2007) On autonomous syntactic development in multiple first language acquisition. In H. Caunt-Nulton, S. Kulatilake, & I. Woo (Eds.), BUCLD 31: Proceedings of the 31st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 26–45). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Meroni, L., Unsworth, S., & Smeets, L.
(2013) Cross-linguistic influence in scope ambiguity: Evidence for acceleration. In S. Baiz, N. Goldman, & R. Hawkes (Eds.), BUCLD 37: Proceedings of the 37th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (Vol. 2, pp. 265–279). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Miller, K., & Schmitt, C.
(2004) An experimental study on child comprehension of Spanish indefinites and bare singulars. Language Acquisition, 12(3–4), 247–256. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, N., & Hulk, A.
(2001) Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4(1)–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Musolino, J.
(1998) Universal Grammar and the Acquisition of Semantic Knowledge: An experimental investigation into the acquisition of quantifier-negation interaction in English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Musolino, J., Crain, S., & Thornton, R.
(2000) Navigating negative quantificational space. Linguistics, 38(1), 1–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mykhaylyk, R., & Ko, H.
(2010) Optional scrambling is not random: Evidence from English-Ukranian acquisition. In M. Merete, K. Bentzen, & M. Westergaard (Eds.), Variation in the input: Studies in the acquisition of word order (pp. 207–240). Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Neeleman, A.
(1994) Scrambling as a d-structure phenomenon. In N. Corver & H. van Riemsdijk (Eds.), Studies on scrambling. Movement and nonmovement approaches to free word-order phenomena (pp. 387–429). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Grady, W., Kwak, H. Y., Lee, O. S., & Lee, M.
(2011) An emergentist perspective on heritage language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33(2), 223–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J.
(2009) Oral language development in French and English and the role of home input factors. Report for the Conseil Scolarie Centre-Nord, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F.
(1996) Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18(1), 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., & Navarro, S.
(2003) Subject realization and cross-linguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: What is the role of the input? Journal of Child Language, 30(2), 371–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pirvulescu, M., Perez-Leroux, A. T., Roberge, Y., Strik, N., & Thomas, D.
(2014) Bilingual effects: Exploring object omission in pronominal languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(3), 495–510. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ruys, E. G.
(2001) Dutch scrambling and the strong-weak distinction. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 4(1), 39–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, M., Nir, B., Leikin, M., Levie, R., & Ravid, D.
(2014) Acquisition of noun plurals among early sequential Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals: A longitudinal multiple case study. Heritage Language Journal, 11, 144–178.Google Scholar
Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., & Paoli, S.
(2004) Cross-linguistic influence at the syntax–pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English –Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(3), 183–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A.
(2007) The more, the merrier: Facts and beliefs about the bilingual mind. In S. Della Sala (Ed.), Tall tales about the mind and the brain: Separating fact from fiction (pp. 193–203). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Su, Y. C.
(2001) Scope and Specificity in Child Language: A Cross-linguistics Study on English and Chinese. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. College Park.Google Scholar
(2008) Structure and context effects in scope ambiguity resolution. Language and Linguistics, 9(3), 585–627.Google Scholar
Unsworth, S.
(2003) Testing Hulk and Müller (2000) on cross-linguistic influence: Root infinitives in a bilingual German/English child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6(2), 143–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012) Testing for cross-linguistic influence and exposure effects in the bilingual acquisition of specific indefinite objects. In A. K. Biller, E. Y. Chung, & A. E. Kimball (Eds.), BUCLD 36: Proceedings of the 36th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 633–645). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
(2014) Comparing the role of input in bilingual acquisition across domains. In T. Grüter & J. Paradis (Eds.), Input and experience in bilingual development (pp. 181–201). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Unsworth, S., Gualmini, A., & Helder, C.
(2008) Children’s interpretation of indefinites in sentences containing negation: A reassessment of the cross-linguistic picture. Language Acquisition, 15(4), 315–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Geenhoven, V.
(1998) Semantic incorporation and indefinite descriptions: Semantic and syntactic aspects of noun incorporation in West Greenlandic. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Karaca, Figen, Susanne Brouwer, Sharon Unsworth & Falk Huettig
2021. Chapter 6. Prediction in bilingual children. In Prediction in Second Language Processing and Learning [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 12], ► pp. 116 ff. DOI logo
VAN DIJK, Chantal, Elise VAN WONDEREN, Elly KOUTAMANIS, Gerrit Jan KOOTSTRA, Ton DIJKSTRA & Sharon UNSWORTH
2022. Cross-linguistic influence in simultaneous and early sequential bilingual children: a meta-analysis. Journal of Child Language 49:5 ► pp. 897 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.