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.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the children who so kindly took part in the experiments reported. I am grateful to Anna Espinal (Servei d’Estadística Aplicada of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) for the statistical analyses; to Sophia Bello and Mihaela Pirvulescu for sharing their work with me; to the audiences at the International Congress of Linguistics in Geneva 2013 and Going Romance 2013 in Amsterdam, and to two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this work. Projects FFI2014-56968-C4-1 and 2014SGR 1013 are acknowledged for financial support.
References
Babyonyshev, Maria & Stefania Marin. 2006. Acquisition of pronominal clitics in Romanian. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 5. 17–44.10.5565/rev/catjl.71Search in Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana. 2006. (Past) participle agreement. In Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Clitics in the languages of Europe, 543–579. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Bello, Sophia & Mihaela Pirvulescu. 2013. The acquisition of direct and indirect object clitics in Quebec French. Poster presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston.Search in Google Scholar
Castilla, Anny P. & Ana T. Pérez-Leroux. 2010. Omissions and substitutions in early Spanish clitics. Language Acquisition 17. 2–25.10.1080/10489221003620904Search in Google Scholar
Coene, Martine & Larisa Avram. 2011. (A)symmetries in the production of object clitics by Romanian children. Studies on Language Acquisition 43. 39–68.10.1515/9783110238815.131Search in Google Scholar
Costa, João & Carolina Silva. 2007. Clitic omission, null object or both in the acquisition of European Portuguese? In S. Baauw et al. (eds.), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2005, 59–71. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.291.06cosSearch in Google Scholar
Costa, João, Maria Lobo, Jaqueline Carmona & Carolina Silva. 2008. Clitic omission in European Portuguese: Correlation with null objects? In Anna Gavarró & M. João Freitas (eds.), Language acquisition and development: Proceedings of GALA 2007, 133–143. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press.Search in Google Scholar
Costa, João, Maria Lobo & Carolina Silva. 2009. Null objects and early pragmatics in the acquisition of European Portuguese. Probus 21. 143–162.10.1515/prbs.2009.005Search in Google Scholar
Cummins, Sarah & Yves Roberge. 2005. A modular account of null objects in French. Syntax 8. 44–64.10.1111/j.1467-9612.2005.00074.xSearch in Google Scholar
Franco, Jon & Alazne Landa. 2003. Null objects revisited. In Rafael Nuñez-Cedeño, Luis López & Richard Cameron (eds.), A Romance perspective on language knowledge and use: Selected papers for the 31st Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Chicago, 19–22 April 2001, 311–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.238.23fraSearch in Google Scholar
Gavarró, Anna & Noemí Fortón. 2014. Person features and the acquisition of clitics. In Carla Contemori & Lena Dal Pozzo (eds.) Inquiries into linguistic theory and language acquisition. Papers offered to Adriana Belletti. Siena: CISCL Press.Search in Google Scholar
Gavarró, Anna & Marta Mosella. 2009. Testing syntactic and pragmatics accounts of clitic omission. In Jean Crawford, Koichi Otaki & Masahiko Takahashi (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA 2008), 25–35. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Search in Google Scholar
Gavarró, Anna & Maria Rafel. 2013. Clitic production and person features in child Catalan. Paper presented at Going Romance 2013, 27th Symposium on Romance Linguistics, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 28–30 November.Search in Google Scholar
Gavarró, Anna, Vicenç Torrens & Ken Wexler. 2010. Object clitic omission: two language types. Language Acquisition 17(4). 192–219.10.1080/10489223.2010.509262Search in Google Scholar
Greenfield, Patricia M. & Joshua H. Smith. 1976. The structure of communication in early language development. New York: Academic Press.Search in Google Scholar
Guasti, Maria Teresa. 2002. Language acquisition. The growth of grammar. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hosmer, David & Stanley Lemeshow. 2000. Applied logistic regression, 2nd edn. New York: John Wiley and Sons.10.1002/0471722146Search in Google Scholar
Huang, C.-T. James. 1982. Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT doctoral dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Hulk, Aafke & Natascha Müller. 2000. Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(3). 227–244.10.1017/S1366728900000353Search in Google Scholar
Hyams, Nina & Ken Wexler. 1993. The grammatical basis of null subjects in child language. Linguistic Inquiry 24. 421–459.Search in Google Scholar
Kapia, Enkeleida. 2013. Syntax and pragmatics at work from early on: acquisition of clitic doubling in Albanian. In Stavroula Stavrakaki, Marina Lalioti & Polyxeni Konstantinopoulou (eds.), Advances in language acquisition, 121–128. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1989. Facets of Romance past participle agreement. In P. Benincà (ed.) Dialect variation and the theory of grammar, 85–103. Dordrecht: Foris.10.1515/9783110869255-005Search in Google Scholar
Larrañaga, Pilar & Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes. 2012. Clitics in L1 bilingual acquisition. First Language 32(1–2). 151–175.10.1177/0142723711403878Search in Google Scholar
Lyzckowski, David. 1999. Adquierételo: On the acquisition of pronominal object clitics in Spanish. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University undergraduate thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Müller, Natascha, Berthold Crysman & Georg A. Kaiser. 1996. Interaction between the acquisition of French object drop and the development of the C-system. Language Acquisition 5(1). 35–63.10.1207/s15327817la0501_2Search in Google Scholar
Müller, Natascha & Aafke Hulk. 2001. Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4(1). 1–21.10.1017/S1366728901000116Search in Google Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, Ana T., Mihaela Pirvulescu & Yves Roberge. 2008. Null objects in child language: syntax and the lexicon. Lingua 118. 370–398.10.1016/j.lingua.2007.07.002Search in Google Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, Ana T., Mihaela Pirvulescu, Yves Roberge, Danielle Thomas & Lyn Tieu. 2006. Variable input and object drop in child language. In Claire Gurski & Milica Radisic (eds.), Proceedings of the Canadian Linguistic Association Conference.Search in Google Scholar
Pirvulescu, Mihaela, Yves Roberge, Danielle Thomas, Ana T. Pérez-Leroux & Nelleke Strik. 2014. Bilingual effects: Exploring object omission in pronominal languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17(3). 495–510.10.1017/S1366728913000631Search in Google Scholar
Rafel, Maria. 2013. L’adquisició dels clítics de 1a i 2a persona en català [The acquisition of first and second person clitics in Catalan]. Bellaterra: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona undergraduate thesis. http://ddd.uab.es/record/112560?ln=ca (accessed 8 October 2015).Search in Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1986. Null objects in Italian and the theory of pro. Linguistic Inquiry 17(3). 501–557.10.4324/9780203461785-6Search in Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 2005. Grammatically-based target-inconsistencies in child language. Proceedings of the inaugural conference of GALANA. UConn/MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, Cambridge, MA.Search in Google Scholar
Roeper, Tom. 1999. Universal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 2(3). 169–186.10.1017/S1366728999000310Search in Google Scholar
Schaeffer, Jeannette. 2000. The acquisition of direct object scrambling and clitic placement. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/lald.22Search in Google Scholar
Schwenter, Scott A. 2006. Null objects across South America. In Timothy L. Face & Carol A. Klee (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 8th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 23–36. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Search in Google Scholar
Serratrice, Ludovica, Antonella Sorace, Francesca Filiaci & Michela Baldo. 2012. Pronominal objects in English-Italian and Spanish-Italian bilingual children. Applied Psycholinguistics 33(4). 725–751.10.1017/S0142716411000543Search in Google Scholar
Serratrice, Ludovica, Antonella Sorace & Sandra Paoli. 2004. Crosslinguistic influence in the syntax-pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English-Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7(3). 182–205.10.1017/S1366728904001610Search in Google Scholar
Silva, Carolina. 2008. Assimetrias na aquisição de clíticos diferenciados em português europeu [Asymmetries in the acquisition of different types of clitics]. Lisboa: Universidade Nova de Lisboa MA dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Sportiche, Dominique. 1996. Clitic construction. In Johan Rooryck & Laurie Zaring (eds.) Phrase structure and the lexicon, 231–276. Dordrecht: Kluwer.10.1007/978-94-015-8617-7_9Search in Google Scholar
Tsakali, Vina & Ken Wexler. 2004. Why children omit clitics in some languages, but not in others: New evidence from Greek. In Jacqueline van Kampen & Sergio Baauw (eds.) Proceedings of GALA 2003, Volume 2, 493–504. Utrecht: LOT.Search in Google Scholar
Varlokosta, Spyridoula, Adriana Belletti, João Costa, Naama Friedmann, Anna Gavarró, Kleanthes K. Grohmann, Maria Teresa Guasti, Laurice Tuller, Maria Lobo, Darinka Anđelković, Núria Argemí, Larisa Avram, Sanne Berends, Valentina Brunetto, Hélène Delage, María-José Ezeizabarrena, Iris Fattal, Ewa Haman, Angeliek van Hout, Kristine Jensen de López, Napoleon Katsos, Lana Kologranic, Nadezda Krstić, Jelena Kuvac Kraljevic, Aneta Miękisz, Michaela Nerantzini, Clara Queraltó, Zeljana Radic, Sílvia Ruiz, Uli Sauerland, Anca Sevcenco, Magdalena Smoczyńska, Eleni Theodorou, Heather van der Lely, Alma Veenstra, John Weston, Maya Yachini & Kazuko Yatsushiro. 2016. A cross-linguistic study of the acquisition of clitic and pronoun production. Language Acquisition 23(1). 1–26.10.1080/10489223.2015.1028628Search in Google Scholar
Wexler, Ken. 1998. Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation for the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106. 23–79.10.1016/S0024-3841(98)00029-1Search in Google Scholar
Yang, C. (2004). Universal Grammar, statistics, or both. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8. 451–456.10.1016/j.tics.2004.08.006Search in Google Scholar
Appendix
Experimental items
Test items for the elicitation of dative clitics (study 1)
(La nena) li posa una corona (al rei).
the girl DAT puts a crown to the king ‘The girl puts a crown on the king.’
(El cuiner) li dóna un tomàquet (a la nena).
the cook DAT gives a tomato to the girl ‘The cook gives a tomato to the girl.’
(El cuiner) li tira un ou (a la guineu).
the cook DAT throws an egg to the fox ‘The cook throws an egg at the fox.’
(El cuiner) li dóna un regal (a la nena).
the cook DAT gives a present to the girl ‘The cook gives a present to the girl.’
(El rei) li explica un conte (a la nena).
the king DAT tells a story to the girl ‘The king tells a story to the girl.’
(El rei) li dóna la sopa (a la nena).
the king DAT gives the soup to the girl ‘The king gives the soup to the girl.’
(El cuiner) li renta el vestit (a la nena).
the cook DAT washes the dress to the girl ‘The cook washes the girl’s dress.’
(La guineu) li tapa la boca (a la nena).
the fox DAT covers the mouth to the girl ‘The fox covers the girl’s mouth.’
(El cuiner) li estira la cua (a la guineu).
the cook DAT pulls the tail to the fox ‘The cook pulls the fox’s tail.’
(La guineu) li estripa el diari (al cuiner).
the fox DAT tears the newspaper to the cook ‘The fox tears the cook’s newspaper.’
(La guineu) li pren el tomàquet (a la nena).
the fox DAT takes the tomato to the girl ‘The fox takes a tomato from the girl.’
Test items for the elicitation of 1st person object clitics, out of 8 items (study 2)
See (7) above
The fox and the cat, both holding a ruler, are fighting.
Experimenter: Mira, estant fent una lluita d’espases. Ai, que es faran mal…
Experimenter: Look, they are having a fight. They’ll hurt themselves…
[The fox hits the cat, and the cat falls to the ground.]
Fox: Ha! He guanyat! [It looks at the child] Ah! Tu també vols guerra? Ja ho veuràs!
Fox: Ha! I’ve won! You want a fight too? Come and see!
[The fox hits the child (without the ruler)]
Experimenter: Què ha passat? Què ha fet la guineu?
Experimenter: What happened? What has the fox done?
Expected response: M’ha pegat.
It hit me.
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
