ProbusPub Date : 2020-04-21DOI: 10.1515/probus-2019-0005
J. García-Núñez
{"title":"On the left periphery of Spanish indirect interrogatives","authors":"J. García-Núñez","doi":"10.1515/probus-2019-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2019-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Spanish doubly filled complementizer (DFComp) clauses differ from plain embedded questions in a number of respects (availability of discourse-related projections, islandhood, sequence of tenses, licensing of discourse particles). I argue that the contrast is caused by the presence in the left periphery of these clauses of an illocutionary projection (Haegeman 2004, 2006; Coniglio and Zegrean 2012; Woods 2016b) between the leftmost projection, here identified as Haegeman’s (2004) SubP, and the criterial interrogative projections (InterP and QembP). This illocutionary projection prevents syncretism of the clause-typing and the criterial projections, the default option in plain embedded clauses. This not only explains the range of structural phenomena differentiating DFComp clauses and embedded questions, but also a key semantic property of the former, namely their speech-act denotation. Finally, DFComp clauses are compared with plain embedded questions displaying root behavior under first-person matrix subjects and with English inverted embedded questions. Both are shown to pose minimal variants of the structural pattern proposed for DFComp clauses.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85657280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2020-04-21DOI: 10.1515/probus-2019-0001
Anna Pineda
{"title":"From dative to accusative. An ongoing syntactic change in Romance","authors":"Anna Pineda","doi":"10.1515/probus-2019-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2019-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In several Romance languages, including Catalan, Spanish, Asturian and Neapolitan, several verbs (‘phone’, ‘answer’, ‘shoot’, ‘rob’, among others) can take a dative- or accusative-marked complement. I argue that this alternation is indeed a transition from dative to accusative; that is, it is a process of syntactic change, with different stages of evolution depending on the dialectal or even idiolectal variety. The relevant verbs, being a priori dative-taking intransitive verbs, are analyzed as unergatives, made up of a light verb and a nominal, ‘phone= do+phone call’. When the complement ‘to somebody’ is added, a ditransitive structure is obtained, where I assume that the direct (‘phone call’) and the indirect (‘to somebody’) objects are related via an applicative head. The properties of this functional applicative head allow me to explain the change from dative to accusative case in the first stages of syntactic change. Likewise, I show that the completion of the syntactic change results in a true transitivization of the structure.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81797180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2019-09-25DOI: 10.1515/probus-2016-0015
Natascha Müller
{"title":"Null subjects and null objects in monolingual and bilingual children: a commentary","authors":"Natascha Müller","doi":"10.1515/probus-2016-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2016-0015","url":null,"abstract":"The occurrence of cross-linguistic influence has been widely attested in the speech of bilingual children at different levels of linguistic description: in phonological, morphological and syntactic domains. One of the most studied grammatical domains is the realization/omission of subjects. Most scholars have looked at the combination of the two null-subject languages Spanish or Italian with the non-null-subject language English. The comparison of the results from these studies with those of other language combinations is revealing and will advance our understanding of cross-linguistic influence. Until now, the focus of these studies has been the null-subject language. Advancing our understanding of cross-linguistic influence requires a detailed analysis of the developmental path taken by the non-null-subject language. Very recent research also highlights the importance of the interaction between grammatical person and overproduction of subject pronouns in the null-subject language. Object omissions ranged among the first grammatical phenomena for which the existence of cross-linguistic influence has been attested. For this grammatical domain, our understanding of the underlying linguistic machinery has advanced during the last decade. While the focus had been on the languages which were (wrongly) assumed not to licence null objects, like French, Italian and English, the fine-grained analysis of null objects in these languages and others has shifted the focus to the question of how children detect the extent to which the adult system allows for null objects. Some language acquisition researchers have assumed a universal null-object stage which is abandoned by the child less quickly if the evidence from the input supports an analysis of the data in terms of such a default grammar. In the bilingual child, this kind of confusing evidence may even be reinforced due to the second language. As in the case of subject omissions, the developmental path in bilingual children","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76418397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2019-09-25DOI: 10.1515/probus-2016-0010
P. Guijarro-Fuentes
{"title":"Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Determining onset and end","authors":"P. Guijarro-Fuentes","doi":"10.1515/probus-2016-0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2016-0010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this paper we review current novel work across several languages and instances of bilingual acquisition (2L1 and child L2), whose focus is on the syntax and semantics of different linguistic phenomena with a range of naturalistic and experimental methodologies (e. g. grammaticality judgments, truth-value judgment task, semantics entailment experiments in on-line and off-line modalities and longitudinal data) to determine at which age one can say that the influence of one language over the other diminishes or disappears. Moreover, we discuss the central issue of what may trigger the end of the influence of one language over the other.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91136974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2019-09-25DOI: 10.1515/probus-2016-0011
A. Gavarró
{"title":"L1 variation in object pronominalisation, and the import of pragmatics","authors":"A. Gavarró","doi":"10.1515/probus-2016-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2016-0011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Much work on referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual acquisition rests on the assumption that early grammars licence null objects even when they are not possible in the corresponding target grammar, in virtue of discourse-pragmatic licencing. This proposal has been made mainly with reference to third person object pronominalisation. Less attention has been given to other pronouns. Here, I show how the pragmatic account of third person object pronouns (along the lines of Serratrice et al. [2004, Crosslinguistic influence in the syntax-pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English-Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7(3). 182–205], in the spirit of Hulk and Müller [2000, Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(3). 227–244], Müller and Hulk [2001, Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4(1). 1–21]) does not extend to clitics instantiating other person specifications or other grammatical functions. I present an alternative analysis, in terms of the Unique Checking Constraint (Wexler [1998, Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation for the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106. 23–79]) that offers a generalisation over other clitics, in particular indirect object clitics and first person object clitics, which are generally preserved in child grammar – as witnessed by two experiments run on Catalan L1 reported here.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87912171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2019-09-25DOI: 10.1515/probus-2016-0012
J. Liceras, Raquel Fernández Fuertes
{"title":"Subject omission/production in child bilingual English and child bilingual Spanish: the view from linguistic theory","authors":"J. Liceras, Raquel Fernández Fuertes","doi":"10.1515/probus-2016-0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2016-0012","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In bilingual child language acquisition research, a recurrent learnability issue has been to investigate whether and how cross-linguistic influence would interact with the non-adult patterns of omission/production of functional categories. In this paper, we analyze the omission/production of subject pronouns in the earliest stage English grammar and the earliest stage Spanish grammar of two English–Spanish simultaneous bilingual children (FerFuLice corpus in CHILDES). We base this analysis on Holmberg’s (2005, Is there a little pro? Evidence from Finnish. Linguistic Inquiry 36. 533–564) and Sheehan’s (2006, The EPP and null subjects in Romance. Newcastle: Newcastle University PhD dissertation) formulation of the null subject parameter and on Liceras et al.’s (2012, Overt subjects and copula omission in the Spanish and the English grammar of English-Spanish bilinguals: On the locus and directionality of interlinguistic influence. First Language 32(1–2). 88–115) assumptions concerning the role of lexical specialization in cross-linguistic influence. We have conducted a comparative analysis of the patterns of production/omission of English and Spanish overt and null subjects in two bilingual children, on the one hand, versus the patterns of production/omission of one monolingual English child and one monolingual Spanish child, on the other. The results show that while there is no conclusive evidence as to whether or not English influences the higher production of overt subjects in child bilingual Spanish, the presence of null subjects in Spanish has a positive influence in the eradication of non-adult null subjects in bilingual English. We argue that in a bilingual situation, as compared to a monolingual one, lexical specialization in one of the languages of the bilinguals (the availability of an overt and a null realization of the subject in Spanish) facilitates the acquisition of the other language.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83849547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ProbusPub Date : 2019-09-25DOI: 10.1515/probus-2016-0014
V. Tomescu, L. Avram
{"title":"Peripheral cross-linguistic interference in the acquisition of accusative clitics by Romanian–Hungarian simultaneous bilinguals","authors":"V. Tomescu, L. Avram","doi":"10.1515/probus-2016-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2016-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper presents the results of the first study of the acquisition of Accusative clitics in Romanian by Romanian–Hungarian bilingual children. Our data show that the acquisition route is similar to the one in a monolingual setting. An interesting observation which arises from this study is that two structures which are superficially similar in the two languages favour the occurrence of non-target constructions, unavailable in either of the two languages. They occur under bilingual conditions via non-language-specific mechanisms, such as comparison and analogy. This is why their use, age of onset, and end of influence are subject to individual variation. Their analysis reveals that even structures which are the result of non-language-specific mechanisms, when drawing on morpho-syntactic knowledge, can fall within the range of constructions made available by Universal Grammar. The same superficial similarity seems to boost the acquisition of clitics by Romanian–Hungarian bilinguals.","PeriodicalId":45039,"journal":{"name":"Probus","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2019-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73048230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}