Pinning down the concept of interface in bilingual development: A reply to peer commentaries

Sorace, Antonella

doi:10.1075/lab.2.2.04sor

Article published In:
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 2:2] 2012
► pp. 209–217

Get fulltext from our e-platform

Download PDF

Reply-to-epistemological-article-commentaries

Pinning down the concept of interface in bilingual development

A reply to peer commentaries

Antonella Sorace | University of Edinburgh and University of Tromsø

Published online: 30 May 2012

https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.2.2.04sor

References (25)

References

Ariel, M. (1990). Accessing noun phrase antecedents. London: Routledge.

Avrutin, S. (1999). Development of the syntax-discourse interface. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Burkhardt, P. (2005). The syntax-discourse interface: Representing and interpreting dependency. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Carminati, M.N. (2002). The processing of Italian subject pronouns. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Filiaci, F. (2011). Anaphoric biases of null and overt subjects in Italian and Spanish: A crosslinguistic comparison. PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh.

Filiaci, F., Sorace, A., & Carreiras, M. (forthcoming). Anaphoric biases of null and overt subjects in Italian and Spanish: A cross-linguistic comparison.

Gundel, J., & Fretheim, T. (2004). Topic and Focus. In L. Horn, & G. Ward (Eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics (pp. 175–196). Oxford: Blackwell.

Kazanina, N., & Phillips, C. (2010). Differential effects of constraints in the processing of Russian cataphora. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 631, 371–400.

Paradis, J. and Navarro, S. (2003). Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: what is the role of the input? Journal of Child Language, 301, 371–393.

Place, S., & Hoff, E. (2011). Properties of dual language exposure that influence 2-year-olds’ bilingual proficiency. Child Development 82(6), 1834–1849.

Pires, A., & Rothman, J. (2009). Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across heritage grammars. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 211–238.

Rothman, J. (2007). Heritage speaker competence differences, language change and input type: Inflected infinitives in heritage Brazilian Portuguese. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(4), 359–389.

(2009). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 155–164.

Slabakova, R., & Ivanov, I. (2011). A more careful look at the syntax-pragmatics interface. Lingua, 1211, 637–651.

Snedeker, J., & Trueswell, J. (2004). The developing constraints on parsing decisions: The role of lexical-biases and referential scenes in child and adult sentence processing. Cognitive Psychology, 491, 238–299.

Sorace, A. (2004). Native language attrition and developmental instability at the syntax-discourse interface: data, interpretations and methods. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 71: 143–145.

(2005). Syntactic optionality at interfaces. In L. Cornips and K. Corrigan (eds). Syntax and Variation: Reconciling the Biological and the Social, 46–111.

(2011). Pinning down the concept of ‘interface’ in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 11, 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 development: Beyond structural overlap. International Journal of Bilingualism, 131, 195–210.

Trueswell, J., Sekerina, I., Hill, N., & Logrip, M. (1999). The kindergarten-path effect: Studying on-line sentence processing in young children. Cognition, 731, 89–134.

Tsimpli, T. 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.

Unsworth, S., Argyri, F., Cornips, L., Hulk, A., Sorace, A., & Tsimpli, I., (2011). Bilingual acquisition of Greek voice morphology and Dutch gender: What do they have in common? Proceedings of BUCLD 35. Cascadilla Press.

, (in review). On the role of age of onset and input in early child bilingualism in Greek and Dutch.

White, L. (2011). Second language acquisition at the interfaces. Lingua, 1211, 577–590.

Cited by (73)

Cited by 73 other publications

Order by:

Ahern, Aoife, José Amenós & Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes

2025. Internal and external interfaces. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 11:2 ► pp. 1 ff.

Feng, Shuo & Kailun Zhang

2025. Online processing and offline judgments of different types of presupposition triggers by second language speakers. Second Language Research 41:1 ► pp. 135 ff.

Gabriel, Christoph & Steffen Heidinger

2025. Prosody and focus recognition in Spanish. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 11:2 ► pp. 1 ff.

Giannakou, Aretousa & Georgios P. Georgiou

2025. Subject position in Greek and Spanish monolingual and bilingual production: Exploring the influence of verb type and definiteness. Language Acquisition 32:4 ► pp. 598 ff.

Limerick, Philip P.

2025. Outlier speakers and apparent effects: The case of variable subject placement in Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism 29:1 ► pp. 309 ff.

Martín-Villena, Fernando, Cristóbal Lozano & Antonella Sorace

2025. L1 morphosyntactic attrition in instructed and immersed bilinguals: modulators of redundancy in oral production. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition ► pp. 1 ff.

Montrul, Silvina

2025. Intergenerational attrition: direct or reverse language transmission?. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 28:3 ► pp. 832 ff.

Teixeira, Joana, Alexandra Fiéis & Ana Madeira

2025. Are non-native speakers sensitive to microvariation in anaphora resolution?. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 15:5 ► pp. 688 ff.

Zingaretti, Mattia, Vasiliki Chondrogianni, D. Robert Ladd & Antonella Sorace

2025. L1 Attrition vis-à-vis L2 Acquisition: Lexicon, Syntax–Pragmatics Interface, and Prosody in L1-English L2-Italian Late Bilinguals. Languages 10:9 ► pp. 224 ff.

Ahern, Aoife K., José Amenós-Pons & Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes

2024. Pragmatics, Grammar and Meaning in SLA,

García-Tejada, Aída

2024. Direct object anaphora resolution in L1 English-L2 Spanish. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 37:2 ► pp. 591 ff.

Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro, Iria Bello & Melania S. Masià

2024. Aspects of morphosyntax of Majorcan Catalan-Spanish bilingual variety. In Language Acquisition in Romance Languages [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 18], ► pp. 34 ff.

Kim, Hyunwoo & Sun Hee Park

2024. Interaction between syntactic and information structure in the second language processing of Korean dative sentences. Second Language Research 40:2 ► pp. 197 ff.

Nishida, Chiyo, Adrián Rodríguez Riccelli & Casilde A. Isabelli

2024. Adult heritage speakers of Spanish in the US and subject placement in presentational unaccusative sentences: How are their grammars constrained?. Lingua 302 ► pp. 103630 ff.

Slioussar, Natalia & Maria Harchevnik

2024. Word order and context in sentence processing: evidence from L1 and L2 Russian. Frontiers in Psychology 15

Giannakou, Aretousa

2023. Anaphora resolution and age effects in Greek-Spanish bilingualism: Evidence from first-generation immigrants, heritage speakers, and L2 speakers. Lingua 292 ► pp. 103573 ff.

Hoot, Bradley & Tania Leal

2023. Crosslinguistic influence from Catalan and Yucatec Maya on judgments and processing of Spanish focus. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 13:4 ► pp. 529 ff.

Lerner, Itamar, Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes, Roberto Filippi, Fangfang Li & John W. Schwieter

2023. Editorial: New ideas in language sciences: language acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology 14

Wang, Jia

2023. Discussion. In Interfaces and Features in Second Language Acquisition, ► pp. 207 ff.

Archibald, John

2022. Feature dependency and the poverty of the stimulus in the acquisition of L2 German plural allomorphy. In Generative SLA in the Age of Minimalism [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 67], ► pp. 117 ff.

Ivanova-Sullivan, Tanya, Irina A. Sekerina, Davood Tofighi & Maria Polinsky

2022. Language-Internal Reanalysis of Clitic Placement in Heritage Grammars Reduces the Cost of Computation: Evidence from Bulgarian. Languages 7:1 ► pp. 24 ff.

Jiang, Shan & Huiping Zhang

2022. The features and factors in the acquisition of English existential constructions at the syntax–pragmatics interface by Chinese learners. Frontiers in Psychology 13

Jiang, Shan & Huiping Zhang

2025. The acquisition of locative inversion at the syntax-pragmatics interface by Chinese learners of English. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)

Leal, Tania & Bradley Hoot

2022. L2 representation and processing of Spanish focus. Language Acquisition 29:4 ► pp. 410 ff.

Sadeghi, Karim

2022. Bilingualism and SLA: An Interview with Antonella Sorace. In Talking About Second Language Acquisition, ► pp. 177 ff.

Uygun, Serkan

2022. Processing pro-drop features in heritage Turkish. Frontiers in Psychology 13

Uygun, Serkan

2023. Vulnerability in processing definiteness: The case of heritage Turkish. Frontiers in Psychology 14

Brehmer, Bernhard & Aldona Sopata

2021. Word Order in Complex Verb Phrases in Heritage Polish Spoken in Germany. Languages 6:2 ► pp. 70 ff.

D'Alessandro, Roberta

2021. Syntactic Change in Contact: Romance. Annual Review of Linguistics 7:1 ► pp. 309 ff.

Ahern, Aoife, José Amenós-Pons & Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes

2020. Future Tense Acquisition by French-Speaking Learners of L2 Spanish: Chronology, Conjecture and Concession. In New Trends in Language Acquisition Within the Generative Perspective [Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, 49], ► pp. 27 ff.

Ahern, Aoife, José Amenós-Pons & Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes

2023. Relevance theory and the study of linguistic interfaces in second language acquisition. Intercultural Pragmatics 20:4 ► pp. 429 ff.

Antonova-Unlu, Elena & Li Wei

2020. Examining possible sources of L2 divergence at the pragmatics interface: Turkish accusative in the end-state grammar of L1 Russian and L1 English users of L2 Turkish. Lingua 244 ► pp. 102868 ff.

Avram, Larisa & Veronica Tomescu

2020. Chapter 3. Differential Object Marking in simultaneous Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals. In The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 26], ► pp. 77 ff.

Avram, Larisa & Veronica Tomescu

2020. Differential Object Marking in simultaneous Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals. In The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 26], ► pp. 77 ff.

Giannakou, Aretousa & Ioanna Sitaridou

2020. Microparametric variation in the syntax of Spanish and Greek pronominal subjects. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5:1

Giannakou, Aretousa & Ioanna Sitaridou

2022. (In)felicitous use of subjects in Greek and Spanish in monolingual and contact settings. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 7:1

Margaza, Panagiota & Anna Gavarró

2020. Null/overt subject alternations in L2 Spanish and L2 Greek. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5:1

Margaza, Panagiota & Anna Gavarró

2022. The Distribution of Subjects in L2 Spanish by Greek Learners. Frontiers in Psychology 12

Margaza, Panagiota & Anna Gavarró

2023. Word Order with Transitives and the Interface Hypothesis in L2 Greek and L2 Spanish. In Advances in Second/Foreign Language Acquisition, ► pp. 97 ff.

Margaza, Panagiota & Anna Gavarró

2024. Subject position and verb class in L2 Greek and L2 Spanish. Second Language Research 40:3 ► pp. 591 ff.

Sequeros-Valle, Jose, Bradley Hoot & Jennifer Cabrelli

2020. Clitic-Doubled Left Dislocation in Heritage Spanish: Judgment versus Production Data. Languages 5:4 ► pp. 47 ff.

Teixeira, Joana

2020. Gradient optionality in L2 acquisition at the syntax-discourse interface: Evidence from inversion in advanced and near-native English. Lingua 245 ► pp. 102947 ff.

Wu, Mingjun, Lawrence Jun Zhang, Di Wu & Tongshun Wang

2020. Effects of the interface categories on the acquisition patterns of English reflexives among learners of English as a foreign language. International Journal of Bilingualism 24:4 ► pp. 651 ff.

Yan, Shanshan

2020. Syntactic and Discourse Features in Chinese Heritage Grammars: A Case of Acquiring Features in the Chinese Sentence-Final Particle ba. Languages 5:2 ► pp. 26 ff.

Cerrón-Palomino, Álvaro

2019. Null-subject encounter: Variable subject pronoun expression in the Spanish of Quechua-Spanish bilinguals in the Central Peruvian Andes. International Journal of Bilingualism 23:5 ► pp. 1005 ff.

Daskalaki, Evangelia, Vasiliki Chondrogianni, Elma Blom, Froso Argyri & Johanne Paradis

2019. Input effects across domains: The case of Greek subjects in child heritage language. Second Language Research 35:3 ► pp. 421 ff.

de Prada Pérez, Ana

2019. Theoretical implications of research on bilingual subject production: The Vulnerability Hypothesis. International Journal of Bilingualism 23:2 ► pp. 670 ff.

Pinto, Manuela & Shalom Zuckerman

2019. Coloring Book: A new method for testing language comprehension. Behavior Research Methods 51:6 ► pp. 2609 ff.

Gómez Soler, Inmaculada & Diego Pascual y Cabo

2018. On focus and weight in Spanish as a heritage language. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 31:2 ► pp. 437 ff.

Hermas, Abdelkader

2018. Discourse-linking in advanced L3 English: Testing the Interface Hypothesis. Lingua 212 ► pp. 20 ff.

Hermas, Abdelkader

2022. D-linked and non-d-linkedwh-questions in L2 French and L3 English. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 60:3 ► pp. 723 ff.

Hermas, Abdelkader

2023. Genericity in L2 French and L3 English: a pragmatic deficit with a semantic consequence. International Journal of Multilingualism 20:2 ► pp. 425 ff.

Lozano, Cristóbal

2018. The Development of Anaphora Resolution at the Syntax-Discourse Interface: Pronominal Subjects in Greek Learners of Spanish. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 47:2 ► pp. 411 ff.

Lozano, Cristóbal & Marcus Callies

2018. Word Order and Information Structure in Advanced SLA. In The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition, ► pp. 419 ff.

Pérez-Guerra, Javier

2018. An empirical study on word order in predicates: on syntax, processing and information in native and learner English. Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas 13:1 ► pp. 99 ff.

Sanz, Cristina & Julio Torres

2018. The Prior Language Experience of Heritage Bilinguals. In The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition, ► pp. 179 ff.

Özçelik, Öner

2018. Interface Hypothesis and the L2 acquisition of quantificational scope at the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface. Language Acquisition 25:2 ► pp. 213 ff.

Amaro, Jennifer Cabrelli

2017. L3 morphosyntactic effects on L1 vs. L2 systems. In L3 syntactic transfer [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 5], ► pp. 173 ff.

DESTRUEL, EMILIE & BRYAN DONALDSON

2017. Second language acquisition of pragmatic inferences: Evidence from the Frenchc'est-cleft. Applied Psycholinguistics 38:3 ► pp. 703 ff.

Hoot, Bradley

2017. Narrow presentational focus in heritage Spanish and the syntax‒discourse interface. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 7:1 ► pp. 63 ff.

Hoot, Bradley

2019. Focus in heritage Hungarian. Language Acquisition 26:1 ► pp. 46 ff.

Meir, Natalia, Joel Walters & Sharon Armon-Lotem

2017. Bi-directional cross-linguistic influence in bilingual Russian-Hebrew children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 7:5 ► pp. 514 ff.

Donaldson, Bryan

2016. Aspects of interrogative use in near-native French. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 6:4 ► pp. 467 ff.

Sorace, Antonella

2016. Referring expressions and executive functions in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 6:5 ► pp. 669 ff.

Sorace, Antonella

2019. Referring expressions and executive functions in bilingualism. In Bilingualism, Executive Function, and Beyond [Studies in Bilingualism, 57], ► pp. 131 ff.

Tsang, Wai Lan

2016. Acquisition of English number agreement: L1 Cantonese–L2 English–L3 French speakers versus L1 Cantonese–L2 English speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism 20:5 ► pp. 611 ff.

Garraffa, Maria, Madeleine Beveridge & Antonella Sorace

2015. Linguistic and Cognitive Skills in Sardinian–Italian Bilingual Children. Frontiers in Psychology 6

Judy, Tiffany

2015. Knowledge and Processing of Subject-related Discourse Properties in L2 Near-native Speakers of Spanish, L1 Farsi. In The Acquisition of Spanish in Understudied Language Pairings [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 3], ► pp. 169 ff.

Judy, Tiffany & Silvia Perpiñán

2015. Introduction. In The Acquisition of Spanish in Understudied Language Pairings [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 3], ► pp. 1 ff.

Leal Méndez, Tania, Jason Rothman & Roumyana Slabakova

2015. Discourse-sensitive clitic-doubled dislocations in heritage Spanish. Lingua 155 ► pp. 85 ff.

SLABAKOVA, ROUMYANA & MARÍA DEL PILAR GARCÍA MAYO

2015. The L3 syntax–discourse interface. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 18:2 ► pp. 208 ff.

Gómez Soler, Inmaculada

2014. Beyond interfaces. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 4:4 ► pp. 494 ff.

Leal, Tania, Jason Rothman & Roumyana Slabakova

2014. A Rare Structure at the Syntax-Discourse Interface: Heritage and Spanish-Dominant Native Speakers Weigh In. Language Acquisition 21:4 ► pp. 411 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.