Abstract This paper investigates object omissions in the spontaneous production of European Portuguese by second-generation Portuguese-German bilingual speakers and compares them to first-generation migrants, and two age-matched groups of monolingual speakers. The results show that bilingual speakers as well as the younger generation of monolinguals show a higher number of null objects in their speech than the two older generations. This may reflect an inter-generational development that favours null objects, which is independent of language contact. The analysis of the syntactic and semantic conditions determining the occurrence of null objects in the speech of the different groups reveals that the semantic properties of the null objects realized by the bilinguals, particularly the higher rates of animate and non-propositional null objects, show that they extend the semantic-pragmatic conditions of null object realization along a referential hierarchy. The bilingual speakers may reflect a language-internal pathway that appears to resemble a diachronic change observed in BP.

中文翻译：

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欧洲葡萄牙语单语和双语者的自发讲话中没有对象

摘要本文研究了第二代葡萄牙语-德语双语说话者自发产生的欧洲葡萄牙语中的对象遗漏，并将其与第一代移民以及两个年龄匹配的单语种说话者进行了比较。结果表明，与两个较老的一代相比，说双语的人以及较年轻的说单一语言的人在其语音中显示出更多的空对象。这可能反映了代际发展倾向于空对象，这与语言接触无关。通过分析语法和语义条件来确定在不同群体的语音中出现空对象的情况，发现双语者所实现的空对象的语义特性，尤其是动画和非命题空对象的比率较高，证明了它们沿参照层次扩展了空对象实现的语义语用条件。会说双语的人可能反映了一种语言内部的途径，该途径似乎类似于在BP中观察到的历时性变化。