Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1366728907003197How to cite this article: KATRIN SCHMITZ and NATASCHA MÜLLER (2008). Strong and clitic pronouns in monolingual and bilingual acquisition of French and Italian.The present article investigates the acquisition of the pronominal systems by French and Italian monolingual children and by bilingual German-French and German-Italian children, demonstrating a stable asymmetry: object and reflexive clitics are acquired later than nominative clitics and strong subject and object pronouns. We will widen the scope of former investigations to include the acquisition of strong pronouns and argue that the observed asymmetry can be accounted for if we combine the external (categorial status) and internal syntax of pronouns (internal structure). In particular, we argue for the relevance of the absence/presence of a nominal layer (N-layer) in the internal structure of a pronoun. This approach can account for the observation that pronouns containing an N-layer, i.e., strong subject pronouns, subject clitics and strong object pronouns, are acquired simultaneously and earlier than pronouns which lack the N-layer, i.e., object clitics and reflexive clitics.

This article investigates subject realizations and omissions in bilingual German-Italian, German-French and Italian-French children. The German-Italian children realize too many subjects in Italian, unlike the French-Italian child. The authors modify the criteria for cross-linguistic influence: this occurs if the vulnerable grammatical phenomenon is an interface property and if the surface strings of the two languages are analysable with the syntactic derivation of one language. All children produce target-deviant subject omissions in French and German. Odd omissions of subjects in French and German and odd realizations in Italian are all syntactically 3rd person. The authors argue for one explanation for all observations, namely the misinterpretation of the deictic nature of 1st and 2nd person as the anaphoric 3rd person. Odd realized and omitted subject pronouns are of the NP-type, independent from licensing via agreement and realized as default 3rd person.

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et Karen Ferret pour leurs commentaires sur le contenu, leurs corrections et améliorations stylistiques du français. 10 Katrin SCHMITZ 2. Cf. Cantone et al. (2006) pour une critique du concept de la dominance. 3.Les critères originalement formulés en anglais ont été traduits par l'auteur de cette étude.12 Katrin SCHMITZ 4.Même si Chomsky (1981) ne cite pas explicitement les maximes conversationnelles de Grice, il est très probable qu'il s'en soit inspiré pour la formulation de l'APP. Voir Grice (1993: 26).