Anaphora resolution in Italian-Turkish late bilinguals in immigrant setting

The research carried out in the recent years indicates that the structures at the syntax-discourse interface fall in a vulnerable domain for bilinguals (Sorace, 2011 for review). It has been proposed that cross-linguistic interference occurs when syntactic features of the two languages partially overlap (Müller & Hulk 2001 among others) due to the rise of optionality. Subsequent studies (e.g., Sorace & Serratrice, 2009; Serratrice et al., 2012) found a cross-linguistic interference in bilinguals speaking two typologically similar languages. Recently, Sorace (2016) has proposed that interference may be due to the cognitive load of processing two languages. The present study analyzes the data collected by employing an Acceptability Judgment Test on the interpretation of backward anaphora in complex sentences by twelve native Italian speakers, who had learned Turkish as adults in immigration setting, with twelve matched Italian monolinguals as a control group. It is assumed that Italian and Turkish do not differ with respect to the antecedent biases of null and overt subject pronouns in the contexts under investigation. The focus of this study is on the acceptability of an overt/null subject in intrasentential anaphora with three conditions: general sentences, quantifier sentences, and subjunctive sentences. Our results show that bilingual speakers reject, significantly more, the null subject in an embedded subjunctive sentence as referring to the subject in the matrix sentence than the monolinguals. These data seem to contradict previous studies (Sorace & Filiaci 2006), wherein it was found that monolinguals and bilinguals differ in the interpretation of an overt pronoun. A discussion on why a null pronoun is vulnerable in Italian-Turkish bilinguals is needed. Though this study reinvigorates the hypothesis that the structures at a syntax-discourse interface are vulnerable and that bilingual processing cost may contribute to cross-linguistic interference.

Türkçeyi göçmenlik ortamında yetişkinken öğrenen anadili İtalyanca olanların artgönderim yorumu

Son yıllarda gerçekleştirilen çalışmalar, sözdizimi-söylem arayüzündeki yapıların ikidilliler için yatkın bir alana dönüştüğünü belirtir (bkz. Sorace, 2011). İki farklı dilin sözdizimsel özellikleri, isteğe bağlılığın artmasına bağlı olarak kısmen çakıştığında (Müller & Hulk 2001), çapraz dilbilimsel girişimin ortaya çıktığı öne sürülmüştür. Daha sonraki çalışmalar (ör. Sorace & Serratrice, 2009; Serratrice vb., 2012) tipolojik olarak benzer iki dil konuşan ikidillilerde çapraz dilbilimsel girişim olduğunu bulmuştur. Son yıllarda Sorace (2016), bu girişimin iki dilin işlenmesinin bilişsel yüküne bağlı olabileceğini öne sürmüştür. Bu çalışma tek dilli on iki İtalyandan oluşan kontrol grubu ile eşleştirilmiş, Türkçeyi göçmenlik ortamında yetişkinken öğrenen anadili İtalyanca olan on iki İtalyan ile gerçekleştirilmiş karmaşık cümlelerde geriye dönük artgönderim yorumu üzerine kabul edilebilir değerlendirme testi (Acceptability Judgment Test) verilerini sunmaktadır. İtalyanca ve Türkçenin araştırmadaki bağlamlarda, gizli ve açık özne zamirlerinin öncül önyargıları bakımından farklılık göstermediği varsayılmaktadır. Çalışmanın odak noktası tümceiçi artgönderimde açık/gizli öznenin üç durumda kabuledilebilir olduğudur: genel cümleler, niceleyici cümleler ve dilek/istek cümleleri. Elde ettiğimiz sonuçlar ikidillilerin ana cümle öznesine gönderimde bulunarak dilek/istek cümlesindeki içeyerleşik gizli özneyi tek dillilere oranla daha fazla reddettiğini göstermiştir. Bu verilerin, tek dilliler ve iki dillilerin açık zamirlerin yorumlanmasında farklılık gösterdiğini tespit eden (Sorace & Filiaci 2006) daha önceki çalışmalar ile çeliştiği görülmüştür. İtalyanca-Türkçe ikidillilerinde gizli zamir yatkınlığı konusunu tartışmak gereklidir ancak bu çalışma sözdizim söylemindeki arayüz yapılarının yatkın olduğu ve iki dillilik sürecinin çapraz dilsel müdahaleye katkıda bulunabileceği hipotezlerini yeniden canlandırmıştır.

PDF

___

Argyri, E. and Sorace, A. (2007). Crosslinguistic influence and language dominance in older bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 77–99.

Belletti, A. (2001). Inversion as focalization. Subject Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar, 60–90.

Belletti, A. (2004) Aspects of the low IP area. In L. Rizzi (Ed.), The structure of CP and IP. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 2 (pp. 16–51). New York: Oxford University Press.

Bialystok, E. (1991). Metalinguistic dimensions of bilingual language proficiency. In E. Bialystok (Ed.), Language processing in bilingual children. 113–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: Language Literacy and Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bialystok, E. (2007). Cognitive effects of bilingualism: How linguistic experience leads to cognitive change. The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10 (3), 210–223

Bini M. (1993). La adquisición del italiano: más allá de las propiedades sintácticas del parámetro prodrop. In J.M Liceras (Ed), La linguística y el análisis de los sistemas no nativos, 126–139. Ottawa: Dovehouse.

Carminati, Maria Nella (2002). The Processing of Italian Subject Pronouns. Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts

Chondrogianni, V., & Marinis, T. (2011). Differential effects of internal and external factors on the development of vocabulary, tense morphology and morpho-syntax in successive bilingual children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1 (3) 223–248

Costa, A., Santesteban, M. (2004) Lexical access in bilingual speech production: Evidence from language switching in highly proficient bilinguals and L2 learners. Journal of Memory and Language 50 (2004) 491–511

Domínguez, L. (2013). Understanding Interfaces: Second language acquisition and first language attrition of Spanish subject realization and word order variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamin.

Donaldson, B. (2011b). Nativelike right-dislocations in near-native French. Second Language Research, 27, 361–390.

Donaldson, B. (2012). Syntax and discourse in near-native French: Clefts and focus. Language Learning, 62, 902–930.

Erguvanlı, E. 1984. The Function of Word Order in Turkish Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Geber, D., 2006. Processing subject pronouns in relation to non-canonical (Quirky) constructions. Ottawa Papers in Linguistics 34, 47–61.

Howell, D. (2007). Statistical Methods for Psychology . Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Belmont: CA

Hulk, A. & Müller, N. (2000). Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3 (3), 227–244.

Isever, S. 2003. Information structure in Turkish: the word order-prosody interface. Lingua, 113, 1025– 1053.

Ivanov, I. P. L2 acquisition of Bulgarian clitic doubling: A test Case for the Interface Hypothesis. Second Language Research.Vol. 28, No. 3 (July 2012): 345-368

Iverson, M., Kempchinsky, P., & Rothman, J. (2008.) Interface vulnerability and knowledge of the subjunctive/indicative distinction with negated epistemic predicates in L2 Spanish. EUROSLA Yearbook, 8:135–163.

Jackendoff, R. (2007). A Parallel Architecture perspective on language processing. Brain Research, 1146, 2–22.

Jaeggli, O. and Safir, K (1989): The Null Subject Parameter and Parametric Theory. In: O. Jaeggli & K. Safir, eds., The Null Subject Parameter. Kluwer, Dordrecht.

Kornfilt, J. (1984). Case Marking, Agreement and Empty Categories in Turkish. Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University.

Kraš, T. (2008). Anaphora resolution in near-native Italian grammars: Evidence from native speakers of Croatian. Eurosla Yearbook, 8 (1),107–134

Kraš,T. (2016). Cross-linguistic influence at the discourse–syntax interface: Insights from anaphora resolution in child second language learners of Italian. International Journal of Bilingualism 20 (4), 369 – 385

Lozano, C. (2006). Focus and split intransitivity: the acquisition of word order alternations in nonnative Spanish. Second Language Research, 22, 1–43.

Lozano, C. (2006a). The development of the syntax-discourse interface: Greek learners of Spanish. In V. Torrens & L. Escobar (eds.), The acquisition of syntax in Romance languages, 371–399. Amsterdam: John Benjamin.

Malakoff, M. & K. Hakuta. (1991). Translation skill and metalinguistic awareness in bilinguals. In E. Bialystok (ed.), Language processing in bilingual children, 141–166. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Margaza, P., & Bel, A. (2006). Null Subjects at the Syntax-Pragmatics Interface: Evidence from Spanish Interlanguage of Greek Speakers. In M. Graham O’Brien, C. Shea, & J. Archibald (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (GASLA 2006),88–9). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Maxwell, S. E., & Delaney, H. D. (2004). Designing experiments and analyzing data: A model comparison perspective (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers

Muller, N. & Hulk, A. (2001) Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as a recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 1–21.

Pinto, M. (1997). Licensing and Interpretation of Inverted Subjects in Italia. Utrecht: Utrechts Instituut voor Linguistiek .

Platzak, C. (1999). Multiple interfaces. In U. Nikanne & E.vad der Zee (Eds.), Conceptual structure and its interfaces with other modules of rappresentation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rizzi L. (1982). Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.

Roberts, L., Gullberg, M., & Indefrey, P. (2008). Online Pronoun Resolution In L2 Discourse: L1 Influence and General Learner Effects. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30 (03), 333– 357.

Rothman, J. & M. Inverson (2007). On L2 clustering and resetting the Null-Subject Parameter in L2 Spanish: Implications and Observations. Hispania 90 (2): 329-342.

Serratrice, L., A. Sorace, & S. Paoli. (2004). “Subjects and objects in ItalianEnglish bilingual and monolingual acquisition”. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7. 183–206.

Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., Filiaci, F. and Baldo, M. (2009). Bilingual children's sensitivity to specificity and genericity: evidence from metalinguistic awareness. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12: 239–267.

Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., Filiaci, F. And Baldo, M. (2012). Pronominal objects in English–Italian and Spanish–Italian bilingual children’, Applied Psycholinguistics, 33 (4), pp. 725–751

Sorace, A. 2003. Near-nativeness. In M. Long and C. Doughty (eds.), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, 130–152. Oxford: Blackwell.

Sorace, A. 2016. Referring expressions and executive functions in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism,

Sorace, A. and Serratrice, L. 2009. Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism 13: 195–210.

Sorace, A., Serratrice, L. Filiaci, F. and Baldo, M. 2009. Discourse conditions on subject pronoun realization: testing the linguistic intuitions of older bilingual children. Lingua 119: 460–477.

Sorace, A.2005: Selective optionality in language development. In Cornips, L. and Corrigan, K., editors, Biolinguistic and sociolinguistic accounts of syntactic variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamin, 55– 80.

Tsimpli, I. (2007). First language attrition from a minimalist perspective: Interface vulnerability ad processing effects. In B. Köpke, M. Schmid, M. Keijzer & S. Dostert (Hgg.) (2007). Language attrition: Theoretical perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. 83–98.

Tsimpli, I., A. Sorace, C. Heycock & F. Filaci (2004). First language attrition and syntactic subjects: a study of Greek and Italian near- native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism 8. 157–177.

Tsimpli, T. Sorace, A., Heycock, C. and Filiaci, F. 2004. First language attrition and syntactic subjects: a study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism 8: 257–277. Underhill, R. (1972). ‘Turkish participles.’ Linguistic Inquiry 3, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 87–99 Unsworth, S. (2014): Assessing the role of amount and timing of exposure in simultaneous bilingual development and ultimate attainment Bilingualism: Language and Cognition: 181-201 Wilson, F., Sorace, A., & Keller, F. (2009). Antecedent preferences for anaphoric demonstratives in L2 German. In J. Chandlee, M. Franchini, S. Lord, & G-M. Rheiner (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. pp.634–645. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Zobl, H., and Liceras, J. (1994). Functional categories and acquisition orders. Language Learning, 44, 159–180