CROSS-LINGUISTIC INFLUENCE IN L1 LANGUAGE ATTRITION AND SIMULTANEOUS ACQUISITION: EVIDENCE FROM ITALIAN/ TURKISH BILINGUALS1


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Ergün A. L.

RLA. REVISTA DE LINGÜÍSTICA TEÓRICA Y APLICADA, cilt.59, sa.2, ss.63-80, 2021 (SSCI)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 59 Sayı: 2
  • Basım Tarihi: 2021
  • Dergi Adı: RLA. REVISTA DE LINGÜÍSTICA TEÓRICA Y APLICADA
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Periodicals Index Online, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, DIALNET
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.63-80
  • Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

The present study reports data from a 40-item acceptability judgment task in Italian on

the interpretation of backward anaphora in complex sentences in which three groups

participated. The groups included bilingual Italian native speakers highly proficient in

Turkish as a second language (L2), and Turkish and Italian simultaneous bilingual (2L1)

children and monolingual native Italian speakers as a control group. In the 40-item acceptability

judgment task in Italian, they were asked the degree of acceptability of sentences

introduced by short stories suggesting coreference or disjoint reading of the overt

or null pronoun. It was assumed that Italian and Turkish languages do not differ with

respect to the antecedent biases of null and overt subject pronouns in the contexts under

investigation, except for anaphoric pronoun “kendi” that when it is used as the thirdperson

singular or plural, always expressing anaphoric references with the subject in the

matrix sentence. The findings revealed a significant difference in the monolingual group

regarding the null pronoun when preceded by a quantifier. This is discussed as evidence

for the cross-linguistic influence at the syntax-discourse interface in 2L1 acquisition in

children and in L1 attrition in language with similar parametric settings and for the fact

that quality and quantity of input in the native or minority language can significantly

diminish the effect.