Bilingual Grammar

López, Luis

doi:10.1017/9781108756181

Cited by 36 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 156 publications

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“…We take the "language" of a given lexical item to be merely a convenient shorthand for its syntactic features, without ascribing any theoretical status to the fact that the lexical item is socially assigned to one named language or another. See López (2020) for more detailed discussion on this issue and an enlightening comparison of "languages" in code-switching with "languages" in post-creole continua. Hoot and Ebert…”

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confidence: 99%

On the position of subjects in Spanish: Evidence from code-switching

Hoot

Ebert²

2021

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Some languages have a fixed subject position, while others are more flexible. Languages like English require pre-verbal subjects; languages like Spanish allow subjects in postverbal position. Because this difference clusters with several linguistic properties distinguishing the two languages, subjects in Spanish and English have been a perennial issue in linguistic theory, touching central problems like the EPP, the nature of cross-linguistic variation, and the relationship between core functional heads. Our project contributes a novel source of evidence to these debates: Spanish/English codeswitching. Code-switching, the use of two languages in one utterance, combines the languages' lexical items and their attendant syntactic features in a single derivation. Because code-switching, like all natural language, is rule-governed, researchers can exploit judgments about the well-formedness of code-switched sentences to draw conclusions about the combinations of features they represent. We report on a formal judgment experiment testing subject position in Spanish/English code-switching as a function of the presence of two functional heads known (from monolingual evidence) to affect subject placement: the C(omplementizer) and T(ense) heads. By manipulating which head appears in which language, we test the availability of post-verbal subjects under different feature combinations. Our results show that post-verbal subjects are only available when both C and T are in Spanish; neither Spanish head alone is sufficient. This finding suggests that the features regulating subject position stem from neither head alone, which is problematic for traditional approaches to the EPP as a feature of T but in line with other recent research on null subjects.

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confidence: 99%

On the position of subjects in Spanish: Evidence from code-switching

Hoot

Ebert²

2021

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…In the absence of negative evidence relating language mixing and learning, only the positive effects of freely using both languages in situations where they are contextually relevant and known to the speakers remain. Furthermore, the absence of negative consequences of using two separate codes might also speak in favor of theories that consider the bilingual linguistic repertoire as an integrated system rather than two separate ones [83][84][85].…”

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confidence: 99%

¡Hola! Nice to Meet You: Language Mixing and Biographical Information Processing

Antón

Duñabeitia

2021

Brain Sciences

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In bilingual communities, social interactions take place in both single- and mixed-language contexts. Some of the information shared in multilingual conversations, such as interlocutors’ personal information, is often required in consequent social encounters. In this study, we explored whether the autobiographical information provided in a single-language context is better remembered than in an equivalent mixed-language situation. More than 400 Basque-Spanish bilingual (pre) teenagers were presented with new persons who introduced themselves by either using only Spanish or only Basque, or by inter-sententially mixing both languages. Different memory measures were collected immediately after the initial exposure to the new pieces of information (immediate recall and recognition) and on the day after (delayed recall and recognition). In none of the time points was the information provided in a mixed-language fashion worse remembered than that provided in a strict one-language context. Interestingly, the variability across participants in their sociodemographic and linguistic variables had a negligible impact on the effects. These results are discussed considering their social and educational implications for bilingual communities.

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“…11 As far as we can tell, nothing hinges on whether the phase edge is DP (e.g. Svenonius 2004) or KP, as assumed in López (2020), with DP inheriting features from KP. Regardless, we assume that the semantic number clash issue must resolved prior to transfer of this phase.…”

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confidence: 99%

On semantic plurality within the Spanish DP and ad sensum agreement: A combinatorial variability approach

Gupton¹,

Howe²

2022

Preprint

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Spanish ad sensum agreement involves a semantically-plural, but grammatically-singular subject, of the form [NP1 [de NP2]] 'NP1 of NP2', appearing with a plural verb. Agreement with a structurally-lower NP2 is problematic for syntactic accounts dependent on c-command (e.g. Reinhart 1976). Previous accounts are largely stipulative in nature regarding identification of 'head N' and cannot predict variable agreement. We propose a uniform account of collective agreement and ad sensum/attraction phenomena in Spanish. Following Adger (2006), we predict variable agreement when semantic and grammatical number clash, triggering a Count mechanism that calculates phi-proportions, an index that informs variation in subsequent subject-verb agreement.

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Bilingual Grammar

Cited by 36 publications

References 156 publications

On the position of subjects in Spanish: Evidence from code-switching

On the position of subjects in Spanish: Evidence from code-switching

¡Hola! Nice to Meet You: Language Mixing and Biographical Information Processing

On semantic plurality within the Spanish DP and ad sensum agreement: A combinatorial variability approach

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