Indirect structural crosslinguistic influence in early Catalan–Spanish bilinguals in adulthood: predicate selection in Catalan existential constructions
This study reports an oral production experiment investigating the expression of existentiality in the Catalan of adult Catalan–Spanish early bilinguals (N = 58) with comparable proficiencies but different language dominance. The results show qualitative differences among the bilinguals in existenti...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya) |
| Repositorio: | Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:recercat.cat:10230/53105 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10230/53105 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0142716421000308 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | crosslinguistic influence Catalan bilingualism existential sentences ser estar harver-hi partitive clitics language dominance |
| Sumario: | This study reports an oral production experiment investigating the expression of existentiality in the Catalan of adult Catalan–Spanish early bilinguals (N = 58) with comparable proficiencies but different language dominance. The results show qualitative differences among the bilinguals in existential predicate selection and in their supply of partitive pronouns, modulated by language dominance. Balanced Bilinguals as well as Spanishdominant bilinguals significantly produced more estar (in detriment of ser-hi and haver-hi) not only in locative contexts, where Catalan already presents optionality regulated by semantic differences, but also in existential constructions, where this optionality does not exist. We argue for indirect crosslinguistic influence (CLI), when the bilingual perceives certain structural overlap within constructions, mediating the influence from one structure to another one and expanding the limits of CLI. The qualitative differences found among bilinguals challenge the idea of a bilingualism continuum in Catalan– Spanish bilingualism with an identical mental representation. |
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