Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages

Abstract

In this paper we want to compare the results from monolingual children with object omissions in bilingual children who have acquired two languages simultaneously. Our longitudinal studies of bilingual Dutch±French, German±French, and German±Italian children show that the bilingual children behave like monolingual children regarding the type of object omissions in the Romance languages. They differ from monolingual children with respect to the extent to which object drop is used. At the same time, the children differentiate the two systems they are using. We want to claim that the difference between monolingual and bilingual children concerning object omissions in the Romance languages is due to crosslinguistic in¯uence in bilingual children: the Germanic language in¯uences the Romance language. Crosslinguistic in¯uence occurs once a syntactic construction in language A allows for more than one grammatical analysis from the perspective of child grammar and language B contains positive evidence for one of these possible analyses. The bilingual child is not able to map the universal strategies onto language-speci®c rules as quickly as the monolinguals, since s/he is confronted with a much wider range of language-speci®c syntactic possibilities. One of the possibilities seems to be compatible with a universal strategy. We would like to argue for the existence of crosslinguistic in¯uence, induced by the mapping of universal principles onto language-speci®c principles ± in particular, pragmatic onto syntactic principles. This in¯uence will be de®ned as mapping induced in¯uence. We will account for the object omissions by postulating an empty discourse-connected PRO in pre-S position (Mu Èller, Crysmann, and Kaiser, 1996;. Like monolingual children, bilingual children use this possibility until they show evidence of the C-system (the full clause) in its target form.

Defining an “ideal” heritage speaker: Theoretical and methodological challenges Reply to peer commentaries

“…Kupisch and Meisel remind us that, since the 1980s, a vast and important body of research has been conducted on child bilingualism and bilingual first language acquisition in Europe (De Houwer 2009, Deuchar and Quay 2000, Döpke 1992, Ezeizabarrena Segurola 2001, Lanza 2004, Meisel 1994, 2007, Müller and Hulk 2001, and, we would like to add, in Canada (Genesee 1989, Genesee et al 1995. This work has shown that young children keep their two linguistic systems separate from the onset of bilingual acquisition and go through the same developmental milestones in each language that monolingual children do.…”

Neuter gender and interface vulnerability in child L2/2L1 Dutch

“…The emerging grammars develop in a very similar way to the development of the corresponding monolingual L1 grammars. Hulk and Müller (2000) and Müller and Hulk (2001), among many others, have argued that cross-linguistic influence is nevertheless possible in certain vulnerable domains and in particular in the interface domain between syntax and pragmatics.…”

Gradience in linguistic data

“…Sorace (1999Sorace ( , 2000a claims that interpretable features (in Chomsky's 1995 terms) are subject to language attrition and to residual optionality in L2 acquisition, whereas non-interpretable features are immune to attrition and don't exhibit residual optionality. Support for this distinction has recently begun to emerge from other areas of language development, such as bilingual first language acquisition (Müller and Hulk, 2001) and specific language impairment (Jakubowicz, 2000;Hamann et al, 1998). Further research is needed to explore-both theoretically and experimentally-these patterns of convergences, and more generally the modes of interaction of different constraints types in natural languages.…”