Bilingual children sometimes produce constructions influenced by their other language (cross-linguistic transfer). Transfer can often be predicted by the existence of overlapping and ambiguous constructions in both languages. In this paper, we investigate whether cross-linguistic transfer occurs when overlapping constructions exist, but there are cross-linguistic differences in conceptualization between languages. In Study 1, French–English bilingual and monolingual preschoolers named moving figures. In French, we expected the names to be in the form noun-qui-verb (e.g. vache qui danse; the relative clause is optional) and in English verb-ing-noun (e.g. dancing cow), although alternative, overlapping constructions exist (e.g. vache dansante; cow that is dancing). The results revealed little evidence of transfer and higher rates of naming the action in English. In Study 2, we found that children were more likely to mention the action in English than in French, but could recall the action when cued...

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Word Order in Constructions with a One-Valency Verb, a Subject NP and a PP in Spoken Rioplatense Spanish.

Thinking for speaking and cross-linguistic transfer in preschool bilingual children

/pdf/unaccusativity-and-word-order-in-mexican-spanish-an-3vlr03vcyn.pdf

Unaccusativity and word order in Mexican Spanish: An examination of syntactic interfaces and the split intransitivity hierarchy

features in inflection (I) and v. Therefore, the information contained in I and v is no longer in the form of affixes that attach to items, as it was in previous models; it is rather a collection of features that must coincide with the features of the item. If the features of the item and of I/v match, then I and v disappear and the derivation enters the PF component under Spell-Out. If the features do not match, then I and v remain and the derivation crashes at LF. In a sentence like the one in (20), for example, the head of the VP, the verb escribe, has to check its features (present tense, 3ps) in v and I. In this way, the

/pdf/english-spanish-syntactic-contrasts-minimalism-and-e7jnpeyofg.pdf

English/Spanish syntactic contrasts : minimalism and optimality

Based on research on children’s verb production, Usage-Based theorists have argued that children learn grammatical abstractions in the preschool years. The fact that, in English verb clauses, word ...

Children’s acquisition of word order depends on syntactic/semantic role: Evidence from adjective-noun order

Studies of unaccusativity and word order in Spanish have yielded conflicting results. This study further investigates unaccusativity by testing the ability of the ‘Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy’ ( Sorace 2000 ) to account for word orders with intransitive predicates in Mexican Spanish. The results of an oral production task show significant word order differences between verb categories and locate an unergative/unaccusative cutoff point midway along the hierarchy, situating unaccusativity in Spanish as being similar to Italian but trending in the direction of Dutch or French. Other variables affecting the word order are identified and ranked, including subject heaviness, definiteness, and the location of adverbial phrases. Greater inter-speaker variation at the syntax-discourse interface when compared with the syntax-lexicon interface shows that the Interface Hypothesis has application to native speakers of Spanish. The results of this study are important for current research on unaccusativity and syntactic interfaces.

Word Order in Constructions with a One-Valency Verb, a Subject NP and a PP in Spoken Rioplatense Spanish.

Citations

Thinking for speaking and cross-linguistic transfer in preschool bilingual children

Unaccusativity and word order in Mexican Spanish: An examination of syntactic interfaces and the split intransitivity hierarchy

English/Spanish syntactic contrasts : minimalism and optimality

Children’s acquisition of word order depends on syntactic/semantic role: Evidence from adjective-noun order

An investigation of unaccusativity and word order in Mexican Spanish

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