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To assess the presence of cross-linguistic influence, this study compared the processing of Dutch sentences by English–Dutch and German–Dutch bilingual and Dutch monolingual children in a self-paced listening task. We combined insights from studies on child bilingualism and adult second language acquisition. Sentence structures showing partial overlap between languages were investigated (long passives), as well as structures with complete or no overlap (verb second and verb third sentences). We found evidence for syntactic co-activation of overlapping structures in the form of inhibition during listening. Syntactic, and possibly lexical, overlap between languages, and language dominance modulated effects. In particular, online cross-linguistic influence was visible only in the German–Dutch group. Furthermore, effects were most pronounced when structures partially overlapped and were absent in non-overlapping structures. Effects of online cross-linguistic influence became stronger the more German-dominant children were. Our results indicate that syntactic co-activation across languages affects sentence processing in bilingual children.

Bilinguals are often considered to develop shared syntactic representations between their languages. Evidence for shared syntax typically comes from between-language priming studies showing that exposure to a structure in a bilingual’s one language can prime the subsequent use of the same structure in the other language. In turn, between-language priming of shared structures can have long-term consequences, explaining an intensively studied phenomenon in the field of bilingualism: cross-linguistic influence. Virtually all available studies on between-language priming have focussed on structures that are present in both languages of the bilingual population tested. However, cross-linguistic influence has been found to result in ungrammatical structures as well. In this study, we investigated whether it is possible to prime ungrammatical adjective placement between a Romance language (French and Spanish) and a Germanic language (Dutch) in Spanish-Dutch and French-Dutch bilingual children. In addition, we studied the effect of language proficiency on the strength of such between-language priming. Finally, we tested whether priming of ungrammatical structures is the result of shared or separate-but-connected syntactic representations. Our results show between-language priming of ungrammatical adjective placement from Spanish and French into Dutch. The lower children’s proficiency in their languages, the stronger the priming effect was. These findings follow the proposal that between-language priming can account for cross-linguistic influence, including ungrammatical structures. Furthermore, we believe our results of ungrammatical priming are best explained by separate-but-connected syntactic structures.

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