Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 8:5 (2018) ► pp.523–560
Bilingualism effects in Basque Subject Pronoun Expression
Evidence from L2 Basque
Published online: 2 November 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.16024.rod
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.16024.rod
Abstract
The Interface Hypothesis (IH) ( (2011). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(1), 1–33. ; Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339–368. ; Sorace, A., & Serratrice, L. (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 195–210. ) proposes that structures involving an interface between syntax and other modules are less likely to be fully acquired. Whereas some studies have found evidence in favor of the IH (Michnowicz, J. (2015). Subject Pronoun Expression in Contact with Maya in Yucatan Spanish. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-Dialectal Perspective (pp.101–119). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.), others have reported that adult 2L1 and L2 speakers of differing proficiencies are equally efficient in acquiring the pragmatic constraints conditioning Subject Pronoun Expression (SPE) (Carvalho, A. M., & Bessett, R. M. (2015). Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish in contact with Portuguese. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-Dialectal Perspective (pp. 143–165). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.; (2015). First Person Singular Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish in Contact with Catalan. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-Dialectal Perspective (pp. 121–142). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.). In light of these contradictory results, this study tests the IH by exploring the acquisition of Basque SPE using naturally-occurring speech from 25 Basque-Spanish bilinguals. Results show that Basque L2-learners are responsive to discourse-pragmatic constraints. In fact, L2-Basque SPE is conditioned by a more complex set of constraints than native Basque SPE, for which we propose that L2 SPE results from a process of complexification (Dahl, O. (2004). The growth and maintenance of linguistic complexity. Studies in Language Companion Series 71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ), triggered by transfer effects from Spanish.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish and Basque: A bilingual approach
- 2.1Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish
- 2.2Subject Pronoun Expression in Basque
- 3.The Interface Hypothesis
- 4.The present study
- 4.1Objectives and research questions
- 4.2Participants
- 4.3Procedures
- 4.4Data extraction and coding criteria
- 4.5Data analysis
- 5.Results
- 6.Discussion
- 7.Conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
References
References (93)
Alexiadou, A., & Anagnostopoulou, E. (1998). Parametrizing AGR: Word order, v-movement and EPP-checking. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 161, 491–539.
Al Kasey, T., & Pérez-Leroux, A. T. (1998). Second language acquisition of Spanish null subjects. In S. Flynn, G. Martohardjono & W. O’Neil (Eds.), The Generative Study of Second Language Acquisition (pp. 161–185). London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Ávila-Jiménez, B. (1995). A sociolinguistic analysis of a change in progress: Pronominal overtness in Puerto Rican Spanish. Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics, 131, 25–47.
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1), 1–48.
Bayley, R. (1997). Null and expressed pronoun variation in Mexican descent children’s narrative discourse. Language Variation and Change, 91, 349–371.
Bayley, R., & Pease-Álvarez, L. (1996). Null and expressed pronoun variation in Mexican descent children’s Spanish. In J. Arnold, R. Blake & B. Davidson (Eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory and analysis (pp. 85–99). Stanford University, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Bentivoglio, P. (1987). Los sujetos pronominales de primera persona en el hablar de Caracas. Caracas: University Central de Venezuela.
Bini, M. (1993). La adquisición del italiano: más allá de las propiedades sintácticas del parámetro pro-drop. In J. M. Liceras (Ed.), La lingüística y el análisis de los sistemas no nativos (pp. 126–139.). Ottawa: Dovehouse.
Cameron, R. (1992). Pronominal and null subject variation in Spanish: constraints, dialects and functional compensation (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest. (Accession No. AAI9227631)
(1993). Ambiguous agreement, functional compensation and non-specific tú in the Spanish of San Juan, Puerto Rico and Madrid, Spain. Language Variation and Change, 51, 305–334.
(1994). Switch reference, verb class and priming in variable syntax. In K. Beals (Ed.) Papers from the 30th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society: Volume 2: The parasession on variation and linguistic theory (pp. 27–45). Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.
Carvalho, A. M., & Bessett, R. M. (2015). Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish in contact with Portuguese. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-Dialectal Perspective (pp. 143–165). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Carvalho, A. M., & Child, M. (2011). Subject Pronoun Expression in a Variety of Spanish in Contact with Portuguese. In J. Michnowicz & R. Dodsworth (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Spanish Sociolinguistics (pp. 14–25). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Carvalho, A. M., Orozco, R., & Shin, N. (2015). Introduction. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject pronoun expression in Spanish: A cross-dialectal perspective (pp. xviii–xxvi). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Cenoz, J. (2009). Towards Multilingual Education: Basque educational research from an international perspective. Briston/Buffalo/Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Dahl, O. (2004). The growth and maintenance of linguistic complexity. Studies in Language Companion Series 71. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
D’Alesandro, R. (2015). Null subjects. In A. Fábregas, J. Mateu & M. Putnam (Eds.), Contemporary linguistic parameters (pp. 201–226). London / New York: Bloomsbury.
DeHouwer, A. (2007). Parental language input patterns and children’s bilingual use. Applied Psycholinguistics, 281, 411–424.
Duguine, M. (2008). Silent arguments without pro. The case of Basque. In T. Biberauer (Ed.), The Limits of Syntactic Variation (pp. 311–329). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
(2012). Basque nominalizations and the role of structural Case in the licensing of null arguments. In U. Etxebarria, R. Etxepare & M. Uribe-Etxebarria (Eds.), Nouns phrases and nominalizations in Basque: syntax and semantics (pp. 333–374). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Enriquez, E. V. (1984). El pronombre personal sujeto en la lengua española hablada en Madrid. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Erker, D., & Guy, G. (2012). The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability: variable subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish. Language, 88(3), 526–557.
Etxepare, R. (2003). Valency and argument structure in the Basque verb. In J. I. Hualde & J. Ortiz de Urbina (Eds.), A Grammar of Basque (pp. 363–425). Berlin / New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Eusko Jaurlaritza. (2013). V. Inkesta Soziolinguistikoa. Vitoria-Gasteiz: Eusko Jaurlaritzaren Argitalpen Zerbitzu Nagusia.
Ezeizabarrena, M. J. (2013). Overt subjects in early Basque and other null subject languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 17(3), 309–336.
Flores-Ferrán, N. (2002). A sociolinguistic perspective on the use of subject personal pronouns in Spanish narratives of Puerto Ricans in New York City. Munich: Lincom-Europa.
(2004). Spanish subject personal pronoun use in New York City Puerto Ricans: Can we test the case of English contact? Language Variation and Change, 161, 49–73.
Gómez, R., & Sainz, K. (1995). On the Origins of the Finite Forms of the Basque Verb. In J. I. Hualde, J. Lakarra & R. L. Trask (Eds.), Towards a History of the Basque Language (pp. 235–274). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Haspelmath, M. (2006). Against markedness (and what to replace it with). Journal of Linguistics, 421, 25–70.
Holmberg, A., Nayudu, A., & Sheehan, M. (2009). Three partial null-subject languages: A comparison of Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish and Marathi. Studia Linguistica, 631, 59–97.
Hualde, J. I. (2002). On the loss of Ergative Displacement in Basque and the role of analogy in the development of morphological paradigms. In F. Cavoto (Ed.), The Linguist’s Linguist: A Collection of Papers in Honour of Alexis Manaster Ramer, vol 11 (pp. 219–230). Munich: Lincom Europa.
Iraola, M., Santesteban, M., Sorace, A., & Ezeizabarrena, M. J. (2016). Pronoun preferences of children in a language without typical third-person pronouns. First Language, 1–18.
Iraola, M. (2015). Anaphora resolution in children and adults: An experimental study of the mature speakers and learners of Basque. Tübingen: Günher NarrVerlag.
Johnson, J. S., & Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21(1), 60–99.
Karlsson, F., Miestamo, M., & Sinnemäki, K. (2008). Introduction: the problem of language complexity. In M. Miestamo, K. Sinnemäki & F. Karlsson (Eds.), Language Complexity: Typology, contact, change (pp. vii–xiv). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kusters, W. (2003). Linguistic Complexity the Influence of Social Change on Verbal Inflection. PhD Thesis, University of Leiden.
(2008). Complexity in linguistic theory, language learning and language change. In M. Miestamo, K. Sinnemäki & F. Karlsson (Eds.), Language Complexity: Typology, contact, change (pp. 3–22). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Laka, I. (1993). The structure of inflection: A case study of X0 syntax. In J. I. Hualde & J. Ortiz de Urbina (Eds.), Generative Studies in Basque Linguistics (pp. 21–70). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Lapidus, N., & Otheguy, R. (2005). Overt nonspecific Ellos in Spanish in New York. Spanish in Context, 2(2), 157–174.
Lastra, Y., & Butragueño, P. M., (2015). Subject Pronoun Expression in Oral Mexican Spanish. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-Dialectal Perspective (pp.39–57). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Liceras, J. M. (1989). On some properties of the pro-drop parameter: looking for missing subjects in non-native Spanish. In S. Gass & J. Schachter (Eds.) Linguistic perspectives in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 109–133). Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press.
Lowen, S., & Reinders, H. (2011). Key Concepts in Second Language Acquisition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Margaza, P., & Bel, A. (2006). Null Subjects at the Syntax-Pragmatics Interface: Evidence from Spanish Interlanguage of Greek Speakers. In M. G. O’Brien, C. Shea & J. Archibald (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference (pp. 88–97). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Matras, Y. (2010). Contact, convergence and typology. In R. Hickey (Ed.), The Handbook of Language Contact (pp. 66–87). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Meisel, J. (2008). Child second language acquisition or successive first language acquisition? In B. Haznedar & E. Gavruseva (Eds.), Current Trends in Child Second Language Acquisition: A generative perspective (pp. 55–80). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Michnowicz, J. (2015). Subject Pronoun Expression in Contact with Maya in Yucatan Spanish. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-Dialectal Perspective (pp.101–119). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Miestamo, M. (2008). Grammatical complexity in cross-linguistic perspective. In M. Miestamo, K. Sinnemäki, & F. Karlsson (Eds.), Language Complexity: Typology, contact, change (pp. 23–41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Montrul, S. (2004). Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(2), 125–142.
(2008). Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism. Re-examining the Age Factor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Nettle, D. (1999). Functionalism and its difficulties in biology and linguistics. In M. Darnell, E. Moravcsik, N. Noonan & K. Wheatley (Eds.), Functionalism and formalism in linguistics. Vol.11 (pp. 445–468). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Orozco, R. (2015). Pronominal Variation in Colombian Costeño Spanish. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-Dialectal Perspective (pp. 17–37). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Otheguy, R. & Zentella, A. C. (2012). Spanish in New York: Language contact, dialectal leveling, and structural continuity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Otheguy, R., Zentella, A. C., & Livert, D. (2007). Language contact in Spanish in New York: Toward the formation of a speech community. Language, 831, 770–802.
Posio, P. (2011). Spanish subject pronoun usage and verb semantics revisited: First and second person singular subject pronouns and focusing of attention in spoken Peninsular Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 431, 777–798.
(2015). Subject Pronoun Usage in Formulaic Sequences: Evidence from Peninsular Spanish. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-Dialectal Perspective (pp. 59–78). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Prada-Pérez, A. (2009). Subject expression in Minorcan Spanish: Consequences of contact with Catalan. PhD Thesis, Pennsylvania State University.
(2010). Variation in pronoun expression in Western Romance. In S. Colina, A. Olarrea & A. M. Carvalho (Eds.), Romance Linguistics 2009: Selected papers from the 39th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) (pp. 267–284). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
(2015). First Person Singular Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish in Contact with Catalan. In A. M. Carvalho, R. Orozco & N. Shin (Eds.), Subject Pronoun Expression in Spanish: A Cross-Dialectal Perspective (pp. 121–142). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Rizzi, L. (1986). Null Objects in Italian and the Theory of pro. Linguistic Inquiry, 17(3), 501–557.
Roberts, I., & Holmberg, A. (2010). Introduction: parameters in minimalist theory. In T. Biberauer, A. Holmberg, I. Roberts & M. Sheehan (Eds.), Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory, (pp. 1–57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rodríguez-Ordóñez, I. (2015). The acquisition of nominal and verbal inflectional morphology: Evidence from Basque ergativity in adult L2 speakers. In E. Grillo, K. Jepson & M. LaMendola (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th annual Boston University Conference of Language Development. Online Proceedings Supplement. Boston, MA: Boston University.
Shin, N. (2014). Grammatical complexification in Spanish in New York: 3sg pronoun expression and verbal ambiguity. Language Variation and Change, 261, 303–330.
Shin, N., & Otheguy, R. (2009). Shifting sensitivity to Continuity of reference: Subject pronoun use in Spanish in New York City. In M. Lacorte & J. Leeman (Eds.), Español en Estados Unidos y en otros contextos de contacto: Sociolingüística, ideología y pedagogía (pp. 111–136). Madrid: Iberoamericana.
(2013). Social class and gender impacting change in bilingual settings: Spanish subject pronoun use in New York. Language in Society, 421, 429–452.
Silva-Corvalán, S. (1994). Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sloetjes, H., & Wittenburg, P. (2008). Annotation by category – ELAN and ISO DCR. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2008).
Sorace, A. (2006). Gradience and optionality in mature and developing grammars. In G. Fanselow, C. Fery, M. Schlesewsky, & R. Vogel (Eds.), Gradience in grammars: Generative perspectives (pp. 106–123). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(2011). Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(1), 1–33.
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339–368.
Sorace, A., & Serratrice, L. (2009). Internal and external interfaces in bilingual language development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 195–210.
Schwartz, B., & Sprouse, R. (1996). L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access model. Second Language Research, 121, 40–72.
Tagliamonte, S. (2011). Variationist Sociolinguistics: Change, Observation, Interpretation. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Toribio, A. J. (2000). Setting Parametric limits on dialectal variation in Spanish. Lingua, 101, 315–341.
Torres-Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. (2010). Variable yo expression in New Mexican: English Influence? In S. Rivera-Mills & D. Villa, (Eds.), Spanish of the U.S. Southwest: A language in transition (pp. 185–206). Madrid: Iberoamericana/ Vervuert.
(2011). Testing convergence via code-switching: Priming and the structure of variable subject expression. International Journal of Bilingualism, 151, 241–267.
Trask, R. L. (2003). The noun phrase: nouns, determiners and modifiers, pronouns and names. In Hualde, J. I. & J. Ortiz de Urbina (Eds.), A Grammar of Basque (pp. 119–318). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Travis, C. (2007). Genre effects on subject pronoun expression in Spanish: priming in narrative and conversation. Language Variation and Change, 191, 101–135.
Travis, C., & Torres-Cacoullos, R. (2012). What do subject pronouns do in discourse? Cognitive, mechanical and constructional factors in variation. Cognitive Linguistics 23(4), 711–748.
Tsimpli, I., & Roussou, A. (1991). Parameter resetting in L2? UCL Working papers in Linguistics, 31, 149–169.
Tsimpli, I., Sorace, A., Heycock, C., & Filiaci, F. (2004). First language attrition and syntactic subjects: a study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism, 81, 257–277.
Cited by (8)
Cited by eight other publications
Etxebarria, Eider & Silvina Montrul
Zingaretti, Mattia, Vasiliki Chondrogianni, D. Robert Ladd & Antonella Sorace
Gondra, Ager
2024. Syntactic outcomes of socially (un)restricted bilingualism in Spain. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 14:3 ► pp. 340 ff.
Rodríguez-Ordóñez, Itxaso
Rodríguez-Ordóñez, Itxaso & Lorena Sainzmaza-Lecanda
Shin, Naomi L.
2021. Testing interface and frequency hypotheses. In Sociolinguistic Variation and Language Acquisition across the
Lifespan [Studies in Language Variation, 26], ► pp. 81 ff.
Chou, Chao-Ting Tim, Tsung-Ying Chen & Acrisio Pires
2020. Acquisition of null objects in Mandarin Chinese by heritage speakers. International Journal of Chinese Linguistics 7:2 ► pp. 223 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
