Acquisition of null subjects by heritage children and child L2 learners

Dominance, Language Experience, and Increased Interaction Effects on the Development of Pragmatic Knowledge in Heritage Bilingual Children

“…We hypothesize that we will see evidence of cross-linguistic influence both from Spanish to English and from English to Spanish in the distribution of null and overt subjects, as has been shown to occur in previous studies (Austin et al, 2017;Goldin, 2020aGoldin, , 2020b. We also hypothesize that this influence correlates with language dominance, such that Spanish-dominant children will accept null subjects in continuous contexts in English.…”

“…These findings suggest a complex picture of the development of morphosyntactic and pragmatic abilities. This analysis is surprising given the findings from Shin and Cairns (2012) and Goldin (2020aGoldin ( , 2020b, who found that morphosyntactic abilities develop concurrently with early pragmatic abilities in bilingual and monolingual children until age 5-6, followed by many years of fine-tuning of pragmatic knowledge. The results of our study suggest that it is possible for children to develop morphosyntactic competence and gradually develop pragmatic abilities that mirror those of heritage bilingual adults in their environment.…”

“…Liceras et al (2012) predicted that the transfer of null subject properties from a null subject language to an overt subject language was highly unlikely, because the mechanism that licenses null subjects in Spanish belongs to the core syntax that is purportedly not susceptible to cross-linguistic influence. However, recent studies of child heritage speakers of Spanish dominant in Spanish suggest cross-linguistic influence from a null subject language to an overt subject one can occur as a product of language dominance (Austin et al, 2017), or the learning environment (Goldin, 2020a). More generally, research on adult heritage speakers has identified the need to determine the extent to which patterns of exposure to a certain type of input in the heritage language and activation for comprehension and production may result in differences in access to grammatical representations (Bayram et al, 2017;Kupisch & Rothman, 2018;Perez Cortes et al, 2019;Putnam & Sánchez, 2013;Sánchez, 2019).…”

“…For most bilingual children, input in the heritage language is generally limited to their home and immediate community (Paradis, 2011). In contrast, the language proficiency of heritage children enrolled in immersion programs is boosted by the increased input they receive to the heritage language through academic instruction during the primary years (Montrul & Potowski, 2007;Potowski, 2007;Kupisch & Pierantozzi, 2010;Kupisch & Rothman, 2018;Goldin, 2020a).…”