The phenomenon of object omission in child L2 French

This paper investigates object omission in French longitudinal production from two English-speaking children (Lightbown, 1977). Similar patterns of object omission are observed: direct objects start being dropped as transitive verbs are emerging and licit and illicit null objects occur in all recordings thereafter. Moreover, the incidence of illicit null objects drops at about the same time in both children (month 20), which corresponds to the moment object clitics start being used productively and to the end of the root infinitive period (Prévost, 1997). I argue that object omission is an instance of clitic-drop and is related to processing difficulties. In particular, both the projection of full-fledged representations and the production of object clitics (which occupy non-canonical object positions in French) increase computational complexity for children. Object-drop in child L2 French does not seem to be affected by L1 transfer nor to be related to significant difficulties with properties at the syntax/pragmatics interface.

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Object clitics and their omission in child L2 French: The contributions of processing limitations and L1 transfer

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728911000113 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 531-549 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

THERES GRÜTER ◽

MARTHA CRAGO

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Language Production ◽

Negative Transfer ◽

Digit Span ◽

Facilitative Effect ◽

L1 Transfer ◽

Spanish Speaking ◽

Null Objects ◽

Object Clitics ◽

Better Than

This article explores the widely documented difficulty with object clitics in the acquisition of French. The study investigates the effects of L1 transfer and processing limitations on the production and comprehension of object clitics in child L2 learners of French with different L1 backgrounds (Chinese, Spanish). The Spanish-speaking learners performed better than Chinese-speaking learners on clitic-related tasks, indicating a facilitative effect of transfer when the L1 also has object clitics. Yet no evidence was found for (negative) transfer of null objects from Chinese to French, as learners consistently rejected interpretations requiring referential null objects on a receptive task. The frequency of Chinese-speaking learners’ object omissions in production was negatively correlated with an independent measure of working memory (backward digit span), consistent with the hypothesis that object clitic omission is affected by processing limitations. These findings are discussed within a psycholinguistic model of syntactic encoding during language production.

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Jesuit Culture in Poland and Lithuania, 1564–1773

Journal of Jesuit Studies ◽

10.1163/22141332-00503001 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 341-351

Author(s):

Krzysztof Fordoński ◽

Piotr Urbański

Keyword(s):

Subject Matter ◽

Political Identity ◽

Society Of Jesus ◽

Present Issue ◽

Turn Taking ◽

English Speaking ◽

The Moment

The presence of the Society of Jesus in the culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the period 1564–1773 was certainly one of the most important elements in the process of building the religious, cultural, and political identity of this multinational and multiconfessional state, one of the largest in Europe at the time. The authors sketch the most important trends in research on this subject matter and present the leading authors and their studies. They point out the recent departure from the historiography produced within the Society and the remnants of earlier, largely apologetic writings, towards the “hermeneutic turn” taking place at the moment. They explain their decisions concerning the contents of the present issue of JJS , aimed at filling gaps in the knowledge of English-speaking scholars caused by the fact that the majority of studies concerning the activities of Jesuits in the Commonwealth are published in Polish and Lithuanian.

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Editor's Column: Provincializing English

PMLA ◽

10.1632/pmla.2014.129.1.7 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 129 (1) ◽

pp. 7-17 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Simon Gikandi

Keyword(s):

British Empire ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

Global Politics ◽

Global English ◽

End Of History ◽

The World ◽

English Speaking ◽

Global Language ◽

The Moment ◽

Emerging Powers

What are we to do with english? Of all the major languages of the world, it causes the most anxiety. Its words seem to want to invade the citadels of other languages, forcing institutions such as the Académie Française to call for barricades against it; in the enclaves of Englishness, a Celtic fringe struggles to hold on to the remnants of the mother tongue; and in most parts of the world those without the ostensibly anointed language often see themselves as permanently locked out of the spring-wells of modernity. Sometimes the global linguistic map appears to be a simple division between those with English and those without it. In the reaches of the former British Empire, a swath of the globe stretching from Vancouver east to the Malay Peninsula, English has come to be seen as an advantage in the competitive world of global politics and trade; in the emerging powers of East Asia, most notably China and South Korea, the consumption of global English is evident in the huge sale of books on English as a second language; in parts of the world traditionally cut off from English, including eastern Europe, the mastery of the language marks the moment of arrival. Most linguistic research on English is carried out in institutions in the Germanic and Nordic zones of northern Europe. In popular books on language and in serious linguistic studies, a powerful myth of English as the global language has taken hold. We are presented not with a world at the end of history but with one in which English sits at the center of a new global community: “English-speaking people and their culture are more widespread in numbers and influence than any civilization the world has ever seen,” claims Robert McCrum (257).

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Historical overview

Romance Object Clitics ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198864387.003.0004 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 63-104

Author(s):

Diego Pescarini

Keyword(s):

Ninth Century ◽

Romance Languages ◽

Historical Overview ◽

Verb Movement ◽

Null Objects ◽

Object Clitics ◽

Information Packaging ◽

Main Factors ◽

The Relationship

The chapter overviews the evolution from Latin pronouns to present-day object clitics. The discussion of Latin focuses on the relationship between pronominal syntax and three main factors: information packaging, verb movement, and the licensing of null objects. Then the chapter examines the earliest Romance documents (eighth–ninth century) and elaborates on the distinction between archaic and innovative early Romance languages. The former allowed interpolation, i.e. the presence of material between proclitics and the verb, while the latter exhibited adverbal clitics, which are always attached to a verbal host. The loss of enclisis/proclisis alternations in finite clauses (Tobler-Mussafia effects) marks the transition towards modern systems. Further variation across modern vernaculars results from clitic climbing, which is often lost in restructuring contexts and, to a lesser extent, in compound and simple tenses. Lastly, the chapter overviews several systematic changes affecting the order of sequences formed by two or more object clitics.

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On the development of null implicit objects in L1 English

The Canadian Journal of Linguistics / La revue canadienne de linguistique ◽

10.1017/s0008413100002656 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 58 (3) ◽

pp. 443-464 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ana T. Pérez-Leroux ◽

Mihaela Pirvulescu ◽

Yves Roberge ◽

Anny Castilla

Keyword(s):

Sole Source ◽

Incomplete Knowledge ◽

Null Objects ◽

Null Object ◽

Object Construction ◽

Production Study ◽

English Speaking ◽

Verb Meaning ◽

L1 Acquisition ◽

L1 English

AbstractThis article explores a defining property of implicit null object constructions, and how this property emerges during the L1 acquisition process. Implicit objects are non-referential and characterized by a strong semantic association between a null N in object position and the contents of the verb root. By means of an elicited production study, we examine children’s sensitivity to this association in terms of the typicality of implicit direct objects and of their use in a potentially contrastive context. Participants were 73 English-speaking children (between the ages of 2;09 and 5;08) and 20 adult controls. Our results show that children make a distinction between implicit objects with typical and atypical objects—even in scenarios where a previous use introduces a potential contrast—but at rates that differ from those of adults. This suggests an incomplete knowledge of the target properties of null objects and indicates that children use a referential null N until later in development, when the selectional link between V and the null object becomes entrenched and hyponymy with the verb root becomes the sole source of recoverability. We draw implications about the co-development of verb meaning and the null object construction.

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ASYMMETRY OF NULL SUBJECTS AND NULL OBJECTS IN CHINESE SPEAKERS' L2 ENGLISH

Studies in Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1017/s0272263197004038 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 467-497 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Boping Yuan

Keyword(s):

Null Subjects ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Null Subject ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Null Objects ◽

Null Object ◽

Chinese Learners ◽

English Speaking ◽

L1 Acquisition ◽

Chinese And English

One of the differences between Chinese and English is that the former allows both null subjects in finite sentences and null objects, but the latter allows neither. This cross-linguistic variation is believed to be related to the underspecification of I and topic drop in Chinese but not in English. This paper reports on an empirical study investigating the unlearning of null subjects and null objects by 159 Chinese learners in their L2 acquisition of English. In L1 acquisition, it has been found that English-speaking children display an asymmetry by frequently allowing null subjects but rarely null objects. The results of this study indicate that there is an asymmetry in Chinese learners' L2 English, which, however, is opposite to that found in English L1 acquisition: Chinese learners are able to reject the incorrect null subject in English, but unable to detect the ungrammaticality of the null object. It is proposed that the unlearning of null subjects by Chinese learners of English is triggered by the evidence in their input indicating the specification of AGR(eement) and T(ense) in English, and that the difficulty in the unlearning of null objects is related to the lack of informative evidence to unset the [+ topic-drop] setting in Chinese learners' L2 English.

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What variables condition syntactic transfer? A look at the L3 initial state

Second language Research ◽

10.1177/0267658309349410 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 189-218 ◽

Cited By ~ 89

Author(s):

Jason Rothman ◽

Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro

Keyword(s):

English Learners ◽

First Language ◽

Linguistic Knowledge ◽

Future Research ◽

State Testing ◽

Initial State ◽

L1 Transfer ◽

Third Language ◽

Null Subject Parameter ◽

English Speaking

This study investigates transfer at the third-language (L3) initial state, testing between the following possibilities: (1) the first language (L1) transfer hypothesis (an L1 effect for all adult acquisition), (2) the second language (L2) transfer hypothesis, where the L2 blocks L1 transfer (often referred to in the recent literature as the ‘L2 status factor’; Williams and Hammarberg, 1998), and (3) the Cumulative Enhancement Model (Flynn et al., 2004), which proposes selective transfer from all previous linguistic knowledge. We provide data from successful English-speaking learners of L2 Spanish at the initial state of acquiring L3 French and L3 Italian relating to properties of the Null-Subject Parameter (e.g. Chomsky, 1981; Rizzi, 1982). We compare these groups to each other, as well as to groups of English learners of L2 French and L2 Italian at the initial state, and conclude that the data are consistent with the predictions of the ‘L2 status factor’. However, we discuss an alternative possible interpretation based on (psycho)typologically-motivated transfer (borrowing from Kellerman, 1983), providing a methodology for future research in this domain to meaningfully tease apart the ‘L2 status factor’ from this alternative account.

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On the Computational Complexity of the Numerically Definite Syllogistic and Related Logics

Bulletin of Symbolic Logic ◽

10.2178/bsl/1208358842 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 1-28 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Ian Pratt-Hartmann

Keyword(s):

Computational Complexity ◽

Competing constraints on the variable placement of direct object clitics in Mexico City Spanish

Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics ◽

10.1075/resla.27.2.13sch ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 27 (2) ◽

pp. 514-536 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Scott A. Schwenter ◽

Rena Torres Cacoullos

Keyword(s):

Mexico City ◽

Direct Object ◽

Verb Constructions ◽

Speech Corpora ◽

Object Clitics ◽

Direct Objects ◽

Clitic Placement ◽

Finite Verb

We utilize variationist methodology to explore the conventionalization and pragmatics of 3rd person direct object clitic placement in Spanish periphrastic constructions. Analysis of 652 tokens extracted from three Mexico City speech corpora indicates that while proclitic position is the majority variant, the rate of enclitic position depends on particular [finite + non-finite verb] constructions, distinguished by frequency measures and more grammaticalized meanings. At the same time, enclisis is favored by propositional or non-referential direct objects and by direct objects of low topic persistence, measured by subsequent mentions. In contrast, proclitic position is favored more by inanimate than human referents, especially those that show topic persistence and whose previous mention was in the syntactic role of direct object in the same or preceding clause. These quantitative patterns suggest that proclisis indicates prototypical DOs in non-prototypical use, i.e. topical inanimates. Thus, despite conventionalization of the general proclitic schema, particular constructions and semantic-pragmatic considerations are operative factors in the variation.

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L1 variation in object pronominalisation, and the import of pragmatics

Probus ◽

10.1515/probus-2016-0011 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 31 (2) ◽

pp. 299-322

Author(s):

Anna Gavarró

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

First Language ◽

Alternative Analysis ◽

Null Objects ◽

Object Clitics ◽

Third Person ◽

Pragmatic Account ◽

Language And Cognition ◽

Referential Expressions ◽

Crosslinguistic Influence

Abstract Much work on referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual acquisition rests on the assumption that early grammars licence null objects even when they are not possible in the corresponding target grammar, in virtue of discourse-pragmatic licencing. This proposal has been made mainly with reference to third person object pronominalisation. Less attention has been given to other pronouns. Here, I show how the pragmatic account of third person object pronouns (along the lines of Serratrice et al. [2004, Crosslinguistic influence in the syntax-pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English-Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7(3). 182–205], in the spirit of Hulk and Müller [2000, Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(3). 227–244], Müller and Hulk [2001, Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4(1). 1–21]) does not extend to clitics instantiating other person specifications or other grammatical functions. I present an alternative analysis, in terms of the Unique Checking Constraint (Wexler [1998, Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation for the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106. 23–79]) that offers a generalisation over other clitics, in particular indirect object clitics and first person object clitics, which are generally preserved in child grammar – as witnessed by two experiments run on Catalan L1 reported here.

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