[WS104] Cross-linguistic influence: determining onset and end

 

Authors : Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes, Pilar Larraňaga

Title: Cross-linguistic influence: determining onset and end

Discussant: Natascha Müller from the University of Wuppertal has accepted to act as discussant.

 

Summary:

This workshop includes five oral presentations of 20 minutes each with additional 5 minutes discussion after each paper by the authors included below and does not plan to accept unsolicited papers. Prof. N. Müller will attend the workshop and will act as a discussant following the last presentation. The papers to be presented will be reviewed by two external reviewers as well as by the Chairs of the workshop. We do not plan to apply for external funding for the attendants/presenters.

Focusing on different language cognition interface phenomena, the talks, that encompass this workshop, will (a) discuss the manifestation of cross-linguistic influence (CLI), as a possible factor in deviations from universal developmental patterns occurred in a child bilingual grammar, and (b) examine as to when such manifestations start and end. Divergent bilingual populations and methodological approaches are to be used in these studies; all invited speakers will present longitudinal and cross-sectional data using a diverse range of methodologies.

 

Overview abstract:

Much research has been conducted since Hulk & Müller (2000) and Müller & Hulk (2001) postulated that bilinguals acquiring two languages may show structures in one language that seem to be influenced by the other language being acquired. From the research available, we know that cross-linguistic influence is to be found in the pragmatic domain provided that both languages share some superficial properties. The domains of subject-drop and the use of clitics have been identified as domains in which cross-linguistic influence occurs in a number of language combinations (Nicoladis, 2002; Paradis & Navarro, 2003; Genesee et al., 2005; Serratrice et al., 2009; Fernández Fuertes & Liceras, 2010 to name just a few). However, a number of issues has not been addressed as of today, i.e., the age of onset and duration of the cross-linguistic influence. Hence, the present workshop will address several issues. Specifically, the goal is to determine whether there is an age or stage of onset and end of cross-linguistic influence in the linguistic domains of subject and object acquisition. Moreover, it will be attempted to clarify whether language internal or external factors (e.g., specific structural features, language dominance and language proximity) constrain age of onset and end of the cross-linguistic influence as well as the language combination being acquired.

For the above reasons, we restrict the workshop to the phenomenon of subjects and clitics prone to cross-linguistic influence and the combinations of non-pro-drop languages such as English and German in combination with the pro-drop languages Spanish and Italian. In addition to these languages, a combination of Indo-European and non Indo-European 2 languages will also be investigated, i.e., Basque-Spanish/Basque and Romanian/Hungarian. This is the more so interesting for the language combination, since these grammatical domains are diametrically opposite.

In order to discuss the issues above we have invited the following scholars who have already accepted our invitation to participate. The workshop consists of 5 oral presentations (see below for complete list of names, affiliations and email addresses), which will last for 20 minutes each. The workshop will be opened by a 5-minute introduction by the session chairs and closed by a 20 minute discussion lead by the invited discussant, Prof. N. Müller. The summary discussion will lead the audience into the allotted 30 minutes for questions to be addressed to anyone on the panel (the chairs, paper presenters and discussants alike). The total length of the proposed workshop is of 3 hours.

 

 

22.07.2013   10:30-12:30

Chair: Pilar Larrañaga

10:30 - 11:00 Pilar LARRAÑAGA
Introduction
11:00 - 11:30 Juana LICERAS et al.
Subject omission/production in child bilingual English and child bilingual Spanish: The view from linguistic theory
> read abstract...
11:30 - 12:00 Pedro GUIJARRO-FUENTES et al.
Clitic drop in Basque Spanish: adult profiles and early acquisition
> read abstract...
12:00 - 12:30 Anna GAVARRÓ
Objects and (2)L1 crosslinguistic variation, and the import of pragmatics
> read abstract...

22.07.2013   14:00-16:00

Chair:

14:00 - 14:30 Larisa AVRAM et al.
Romanian clitics and the Interface Hypothesis: The view from two Romanian-Hungarian simultaneous bilinguals
> read abstract...
14:30 - 15:00 João COSTA et al.
Clitic production by Portuguese and Capeverdean children: omission in bilingualism
> read abstract...
15:00 - 16:00 Natascha MÜLLER
Discussion