Unbestimmte Subjekte: zur problematischen Äquivalenz von deutschem man und italienischem si

German sentences with man and Italian sentences with si impersonale or si passivante are often presented as equivalent in contrastive grammars. However, this functional equation proves to be problematic when Italian students refer with man to their own role as authors, such as in: “Darauf wird man aber im folgenden Kapitel eingehen”. Evidently, man cannot refer to the speaker role, while in the same context the Italian si is well suitable. Starting from this interference error, the paper examines the possible range of reference of the two pronouns. It turns out that the most common reading of man and si in both languages is the generic one, which can be paraphrased as “everyone”. Systematic divergences, on the other hand, occur in the particular reading, i. e. when referring to single unspecified subjects. While the German man characterizes the subject as anonymous and does never include listeners or speakers (e. g: Gestern hat man bei uns eingebrochen; man ≈ ‘jemand’, ‘somebody’), the Italian si, according to the verb class (transitive, unergative, unaccusative, etc.), can or must be read as speaker-exclusive (Mi si è raccontato che ...; si ≈ ‘qualcuno’, ‘someone’) or as speaker-inclusive (Ieri si è andati al ristorante; si ≈ ‘noi’, ‘we’). The speaker-inclusive reading also occurs when si is used in academic texts as a substitute for the established form of speaker (author) reference by means of the 1st person plural (noi, ‘we’). In addition to man and si, other forms of indeterminate subjects are examined, namely the non-anaphoric uses of German “sie (pl.)” (Sie haben schon wieder die Preise erhöht.) and of the Italian 3rd person plural null subject (Ti hanno cercato.) as well as the so-called impersonal passive form in German (Es wird gemurmelt.).

Designing an Online Course to Teach Anaphora in Foreign Languages

This paper presents the designing of an online course to teach anaphora in English and Spanish as foreign languages. Anaphora is a discursive mechanism that contributes to textual cohesion. Instead of repeating the same nouns in their texts, speakers can use different pronouns or even ellipsis to improve communication. Each language has its own anaphoric system, which can be very distinct from null-subject languages, such as Spanish, to non-null-subject languages, such as English. Focusing on this topic, a two-week course was designed and taught in 2020 at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and at the University of Algarve (Portugal) to language undergraduate students. The first lesson was an introduction to the concepts of cohesion, anaphora, and the pronominal system in the target language. These topics were further explained in the second lesson, which was also about ambiguity. The activities included: educational videos; tools for corpus analysis and coreference resolution; discussion forums; short answer, matching, and multiple-choice exercises; hyperlinks to more videos, texts, and exercises. Students’ knowledge of anaphora was assessed in a pre-test and in three post-tests (discussed in another article), and the results were compared between experimental and control groups. The teaching module improved learners’ comprehension of written texts and could be adapted to teach anaphora in other languages.

Overt subject pronoun in Gothic vs null subject in Greek

The Gothic translation of the Bible is a word-for-word rendition of a lost Greek Vorlage (reconstructed by W. Streitberg in 1908; 2nd revised edition in 1919). As previous studies have pointed out, one of the most interesting features of this version is the presence of the overt subject pronoun in instances where there is a null subject in Greek. Considering that Gothic is a null subject language, how is it possible to justify this feature? Based on a new collation that uses biblical textual witnesses not considered by Streitberg (i.e. Greek majuscule and minuscule manuscripts, Church Fathers, commentaries, lectionaries, and Vetus Latina manuscripts), this paper analyses the Gothic-Greek divergences involving the presence of the overt subject pronoun in the Gospel of John, in order to verify previous hypotheses and shed new light on this debated topic.

Brazilian Portuguese

The aim of this article is twofold. In the first place, we present evidence that the syntactic change towards overt pronominal subjects observed in Brazilian Portuguese is not a stable phenomenon; rather, our empirical results allow to follow the parametric change in course and to identify the progressive loss of crucial properties related to ‘consistent’ null subject languages. The contrastive analysis with European Portuguese shows the stronger and the weaker structural contexts in this continuous battle towards the implementation of overt pronouns. Personal sentences (with definite and ‘indefinite’ – arbitrary and generic – subjects, usually referred as “impersonal”) are analyzed in more detail than those we consider impersonal sentences, which include a variety of structures, with climate, existential and unaccusative verbs, . They are, however, shown to have been deeply affected by the re-setting of the value of the Null Subject Parameter. Then, we will briefly compare Brazilian Portuguese with Finnish null subjects to conclude that Brazilian Portuguese does not seem to fit the group of the so called ‘partial’ null subject languages, which seem to exhibit null subjects in very restricted contexts, have a lexical expletive in apparent variation with null and generic subjects as well as in impersonal sentences, when it seems to be merged to avoid a verb-initial sentence.

Parameter setting and acceleration

The present contribution analyzes the acquisition of subjects in French based on a longitudinal case study of a trilingual child aged 2;8–3;2 who acquired French, Italian and Spanish simultaneously. The three languages vary with respect to the null-subject property; French is traditionally characterized as a non-null-subject language, while Italian and Spanish are prototypical null-subject languages. Argument subject omissions in French are ungrammatical but frequently observed in monolingual children in early acquisitional phases, as are ungrammatical postverbal subjects which cluster with null-subjects. Bilingual children acquiring French produce fewer subject omissions and postverbal subjects. The present study also finds an acceleration effect in the trilingual child. The results are interpreted in light of a parameter setting which accounts for different verb classes at different locations with which the null-subjects occur, giving rise to ‘categorial CS’ or ‘congruent categorialization.’

Microvariation in the division of labor between null- and overt-subject pronouns: the case of Italian and Spanish

In Italian, null pronouns are typically interpreted toward antecedents in a prominent syntactic position, whereas overt pronouns prefer antecedents in lower positions. Interpretation preferences in Spanish are less clear. While comprehension and production have never been systematically compared in Italian and Spanish, here we look at the preferences for overt- and null-subject pronouns in the two languages using the same production and comprehension materials. Using an offline comprehension task with a group of Spanish and Italian speakers, we tested sentences where the type of pronoun (null vs. explicit) and position of the pronoun (anaphoric vs. cataphoric) are manipulated, to determine how context affects speakers’ interpretations in the two languages. With two production tasks, we measured referential choice in controlled discourse contexts, linking the production patterns to the differences observed in comprehension. Our results indicate microvariation in the two null-subject languages, with Spanish following the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis but to a lesser degree than Italian. More specifically, in Spanish, the weaker object bias for overt pronouns parallels with a higher use of overt pronouns (and with fewer null pronouns) in contexts of topic maintenance.

ACQUIRING L2 PRONOUN INTERPRETATION BIASES

Learners of a nonnull subject language (e.g., English) whose first language (L1) is a null subject language (e.g., Spanish) can show some optionality in the interpretation of overt subject pronouns in the second language (L2). By exposing L2 learners to nativelike interpretations of pronouns in discourse, we aim at understanding how exposure can promote implicit learning of pronoun comprehension biases in a L2. A sentence comprehension task was used with intermediate-proficiency English L2 speakers (L1 Spanish) that included a pretest, an exposure phase using the priming technique, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest administered 6–10 days later. English learners showed a significant increase in nativelike pronoun interpretations both in the immediate posttest and in the delayed posttest, in comparison to the pretest. The results show that exposure through priming can be effective in changing L2 participants’ interpretations and that effects of exposure are persistent and may aid in the successful acquisition of pronoun resolution biases.