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Pronominal objects in English–Italian and Spanish–Italian bilingual children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2011

LUDOVICA SERRATRICE ,
ANTONELLA SORACE ,
FRANCESCA FILIACI  and
MICHELA BALDO
LUDOVICA SERRATRICE*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
ANTONELLA SORACE
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
FRANCESCA FILIACI
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
MICHELA BALDO
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Ludovica Serratrice, University of Manchester, School of Psychological Sciences, Ellen Wilkinson Building, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom. E-mail: serratrice@manchester.ac.uk
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Abstract

This study investigated the role of typological relatedness, language of the community, and age, in predicting similarities and differences between English–Italian, Spanish–Italian bilingual children and their monolingual child and adult counterparts in the acceptability of pre- and postverbal object pronouns in [±focus] contexts in Italian and in English. Cross-linguistic influence occurred in [−focus] contexts as a function of typological relatedness and language of the community. English–Italian bilinguals in the UK accepted pragmatically inappropriate postverbal pronouns in [−focus] contexts in Italian twice as often as all the other groups. Cross-linguistic influence was unidirectional from English to Italian as shown by the categorical rejection of preverbal pronouns in [−focus] contexts in English. In [+focus] contexts, in English no significant differences existed between the monolinguals and the bilinguals in the low accuracy with which they chose pragmatically appropriate stressed pronouns. Similarly, the choice of appropriate pronouns in [+focus] contexts in Italian was problematic for monolingual and bilingual children irrespective of the language of the community and of the bilinguals’ other language. Age was a factor only for the Italian children who approached adultlike performance in [+focus] contexts only by the age of 10. These findings point to the need for a multifaceted approach to account for similarities and differences between the linguistic behavior of bilingual and monolingual children.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 725 - 751
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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