Development of pronominal expression in school-age children: Basque-Spanish contact

Etxebarria Zuluaga, Eider

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115536 Copy

Description

Title

Development of pronominal expression in school-age children: Basque-Spanish contact

Author(s)

Etxebarria Zuluaga, Eider

Issue Date

2022-04-12

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Montrul, Silvina

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Montrul, Silvina

Committee Member(s)

• Ionin, Tania
• Hualde, José Ignacio
• Jegerski, Jill

Department of Study

Spanish and Portuguese

Discipline

Spanish

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Subject Pronoun Expression (SPE)
• Syntax-discourse interface
• Crosslinguistic effects
• School-age children
• Basque-Spanish contact

Abstract

School-age children constitute an essential age group to connect research on early child language and adulthood, yet they ––and particularly bilingual school-age children–– remain an understudied population. Bilingualism research on pronominal expression has traditionally focused on null subject languages (henceforth, NSL) in contact with English, a non-NSL (e.g., Tsimpli et al., 2004; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006; Serratrice, 2007; Argyri & Sorace 2007). However, recent research on contact situations between two NSLs (Giannakou, 2018; Rodríguez-Ordóñez & SainzMaza-Lecanda, 2018) suggests that current proposals, such as the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace and colleagues, 2006, 2009, 2011), cannot accurately account for bilingual performance in contact situations between two NSLs. The scarcity of studies on bilingual speakers of two NSLs raises questions about the potential variation of null/overt pronoun distributions in NSLs and whether contact situations between two NSLs are different from contact situations between a null and another non-NSL. This dissertation examines the acquisition and development of subject pronoun expression in NSLs in Spanish monolingual and Basque-Spanish bilingual school-age children. Specifically, it explores same-/switch-reference contexts (i.e., Éli ya ha comido. Øi no tiene hambre (Spanish); Beraki dagoeneko jan egin du. Øi ez da gose (Basque) ‘He already ate. (He) is not hungry’ vs. Yoi trabajo como periodista. Ellaii es maestra (Spanish); Niki kazetari bezala lan egiten dut. Beraii irakaslea da (Basque) ‘Ii work as a journalist. Sheii is a teacher’) and anaphora resolution contexts (i.e., El chicoi saluda al abueloii [mientras ∅i>ii/élii se come una manzana] (Spanish); Mutilaki aitonaii agurtzen du [∅i/berakii>j sagar bat jaten duen bitartean] (Basque) ‘The boyi greets the grandpaii [while ∅/he eats an apple]’). This dissertation traces the developmental path and changes between pre-literate and mature grammars in the pragmatically conditioned pronominal expression of monolingual and bilingual children in contact and non-contact environments and evaluates potential crosslinguistic effects as well as current theories of bilingual acquisition. The participant sample included 136 Spanish monolingual and Basque-Spanish bilingual children (ages 6, 8, and 12) as well as 60 Spanish monolingual (both from the monolingual region of Madrid and bilingual region of the Basque Country) and Basque-Spanish bilingual adults. All participants completed three tasks (two production tasks and one interpretation task): i) a narrative task, ii) a pronoun elicitation task, and iii) a pronoun interpretation task, with bilinguals completing all tasks in both languages, Spanish and Basque. Results indicated that subject pronoun expression in NSLs is prolonged and taxing to acquire, and it is vulnerable to crosslinguistic effects. Monolingual and bilingual children reach the same developmental milestones synchronously in Spanish, with bilinguals also reaching the same developmental milestones synchronously in Basque. Results revealed that in contact situations between two NSLs, null pronouns seem to encode referential continuity more strongly and the coreferential properties of null pronouns may also be slightly stronger. Furthermore, Basque influence seems to weaken the referential discontinuity properties of Spanish pronouns and also widen the referential grid of Spanish pronouns in bilingual environments. Findings showed variable distributions of null/overt subject pronouns in different NSLs, particularly null subjects having a more variable distribution than commonly assumed. Overall, as previously proposed by Giannakou (2018), among others, findings revealed that null/overt pronoun rates and distributions in contact situations between two NSLs differ from contact situations between a null and another non-NSL, which seem to be motivated by pragmatic and crosslinguistic effects.

Graduation Semester

2022-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2022 Eider Etxebarria Zuluaga

Owning Collections