Abstract
This study investigates the acquisition of pronominal subjects by advanced and near-native speakers of English whose L1s are European Portuguese (EP), a null subject language (NSL), and French, a non-NSL (NNSL). Two experimental tasks were used: a drag-and-drop task and a speeded acceptability judgement task. Results show that the EP speakers who have an advanced level of English fail to reject expletive and [-animate] null subjects in the speeded task. In contrast, those who are at a near-native level behave native-like across all tasks, just as French speakers do. These findings indicate that the syntax of subjects is acquirable in L1 NSL-L2 NNSL pairings, despite giving rise to significant developmental delays. Developmental problems are argued to result from input misanalysis.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15 |
Subtitle of host publication | Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 30, Frankfurt |
Editors | Ingo Feldhausen, Martin Elsig, Imme Kuchenbrandt, Mareike Neuhaus |
Place of Publication | Amsterdam |
Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company |
Chapter | 13 |
Pages | 256-274 |
Number of pages | 18 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9789027262370 |
ISBN (Print) | 9789027203373 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Event | Going Romance 2016 - Frankfurt Duration: 8 Dec 2016 → 10 Dec 2016 |
Conference
Conference | Going Romance 2016 |
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Period | 8/12/16 → 10/12/16 |
Keywords
- Second language acquisition, ultimate attainment, null subject parameter, interface hypothesis, antecedent animacy
- Input misanalysis
- Ultimate attainment
- Null subject parameter
- Interface hypothesis
- Antecedent animacy