Chapter published in:
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
Published online: 19 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.52.09mer
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