The null-subject parameter at the interface between

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The null-subject parameter at the interface between syntax and pragmatics: Evidence from bilingual German −Italian, German−French and Italian−French children Katrin Schmitz, Marisa Patuto and Natascha Müller First Language published online 10 May 2011 DOI: 10.1177/0142723711403880 The online version of this article can be found at: http://fla.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/03/19/0142723711403880

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FIRST LANGUAGE

Article

The null-subject parameter at the interface between syntax and pragmatics: Evidence from bilingual German–Italian, German–French and Italian– French children

First Language 1–34 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0142723711403880 fla.sagepub.com

Katrin Schmitz, Marisa Patuto, and Natascha Müller Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany

Abstract This article investigates subject realizations and omissions in bilingual German–Italian, German–French and Italian–French children. The German–Italian children realize too many subjects in Italian, unlike the French–Italian child. The authors modify the criteria for cross-linguistic influence: this occurs if the vulnerable grammatical phenomenon is an interface property and if the surface strings of the two languages are analysable with the syntactic derivation of one language. All children produce target-deviant subject omissions in French and German. Odd omissions of subjects in French and German and odd realizations in Italian are all syntactically 3rd person. The authors argue for one explanation for all observations, namely the misinterpretation of the deictic nature of 1st and 2nd person as the anaphoric 3rd person. Odd realized and omitted subject pronouns are of the NP-type, independent from licensing via agreement and realized as default 3rd person. Keywords cross-linguistic influence, default 3rd person, odd omission/realization, pro typology, syntax–pragmatics interface

Corresponding author: Katrin Schmitz, University of Wuppertal, Department A: Romance Building O, Level 10 Gaußstr. 20, 42119 Wuppertal, Germany. Email: [email protected]


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Introduction Research in bilingual first language acquisition has been guided by two main approaches: either it has been argued that bilingual children are not able to separate their two languages from early on since the two languages influence each other (Volterra & Taeschner, 1978) or it has been shown that separation is possible from early on and that there is no evidence of cross-linguistic influence (Genesee, 1989; Genesee, Nicoladis, & Paradis, 1995; Meisel, 1989). Put differently, separation and cross-linguistic influence have been considered as being mutually exclusive in describing early child bilingualism. The main reason for the assumption of mutual exclusiveness is that most research has conceptualized separation and influence as involving whole language systems (or languages). Recently, some researchers have become interested in the possibility that only some domains in simultaneous bilingualism are vulnerable to cross-linguistic influence while others are not (Hulk & Müller, 2000; Müller & Hulk, 2001). For some grammatical domains robust evidence exists from different language combinations that the two languages influence each other and that the direction of the influence is predictable. For example, if a pro-drop language is acquired together with a non-pro-drop language, bilingual children will use overt subject pronouns in a pro-drop language in contexts in which a monolingual will drop them (Schmitz, 2007; Serratrice & Sorace, 2002). In both types of languages, the null-subject and the non-null-subject language, the child, whether bilingual or monolingual, has to figure out the extent of grammatical omission. The interaction between syntax and pragmatics is not trivial for the grammatical domain of subject omissions, since the choice between the two syntactic options, realization and omission, is sometimes regulated by pragmatics, not by syntax. In Italian, sentences with a realized subject pronoun and with subject omission are not discourse-pragmatically equivalent: Io compro il libro ‘I buy the book’ or Compro il libro ‘(I) buy the book’ have a different pragmatic interpretation. In other words, the sentence Io compro il libro is acceptable if the subject is stressed contrastively. From a syntactic point of view, both sentences are grammatical. Syntax requires a subject for each sentence (Extended Projection Principle, EPP), however it does not care whether or not it is overtly expressed as a pronoun. Languages may differ with regard to the kind of realization of the EPP-feature. A universal principle, the Avoid Pronoun Principle (Chomsky, 1981) or a conversational maxim ‘Don’t say more than required’ (Grice, 1989), which at the sentence level equals to ‘deletion-up-to-recoverability’, regulates that the subject is indeed omitted in pro-drop languages (Pillunat, Schmitz, & Müller, 2006; Schmitz, 2007). A rather trivial interaction between syntax and pragmatics takes place in cases where realization and omission are discourse-pragmatically neutral; they may only reflect a different speech style, omissions belonging to an informal register. This is the case in non-pro-drop languages like French and German: Ø faut pas jouer au jardin ‘(One) mustn’t play in the garden’, Ø will das unbedingt lesen ‘(S/he) definitely wants to read this’. In these languages, subject omissions are possible, but they do not convey different discourse-pragmatic information. On the basis of these differences, one would expect that Italian is vulnerable, since the interplay between syntax and pragmatics is more complex than in French and German. We


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discuss both the notion of complexity and the properties of the syntax–pragmatics interplay in the fifth section. The issue of cross-linguistic influence in bilingual acquisition of null-subjects has been examined in several recent studies leading to important results for the present article: Serratrice, Sorace, and Paoli (2004) have studied subject omissions in early child bilingualism and have argued that cross-linguistic influence will go uni-directionally from the language with fewer pragmatic constraints in the distribution of overt pronominal subjects (English) to the language where the appearance of pronominal subjects is regulated by pragmatically complex (= more) constraints, such as topic shift and focus (Italian). The coordination of syntactic and pragmatic knowledge is a demanding task for young children in general (Avrutin, 1999), and even more so in the case of bilingual children since they have to evaluate competing solutions to the syntax–pragmatics problem from two different languages (Serratrice et al., 2004, p. 201). With respect to vulnerability, the authors make the same prediction as the above mentioned approach on grammatical complexity: the language with more constraints, Italian, is vulnerable. Serratrice et al. (2004) also present a pragmatic analysis of the different subject pronouns. Their prediction is that children (and perhaps also adults) omit subjects more often with 1st and 2nd person than with 3rd person because the latter are more ambiguous from a discourse-pragmatic point of view, measured in terms of ‘informativity’ by using a combination of different factors considered to be pragmatic like the presence/ absence of a new referent (see Schmitz, 2007 for a detailed presentation and replication of that approach). Although Serratrice et al. (2004) do not refer to the features [± deictic] and [± anaphoric], it is possible to relate the complexity of 3rd person pronouns to their status as anaphors while 1st and 2nd person pronouns can only pick up the speaker or hearer as referents respectively. This is the reason why 1st and 2nd person pronouns are considered deictic pronouns. According to Levinson (1994), deictic indexical terms like pronouns can be used both in a deictic and a non-deictic, anaphoric way (p. 66ff.). This, however, holds only for 3rd person pronouns (personal and demonstrative) as well as for deictic elements for local and temporal reference. They are used in a deictic way when they refer to a linguistic expression (or part of a discourse), whereas a pronoun is used anaphorically when it refers to an entity which has already been referred to by a previously used expression. We discuss the following observations: in Italian, bilingual German–Italian children realize too many subjects, many with 1st and 2nd person pronouns, i.e., with pronouns which are less ambiguous from a pragmatic point of view. French develops in bilingual German–French as in monolingual children. If the null-subject property in Italian is vulnerable due to its linguistic complexity or due to the fact that Italian necessitates more pragmatic constraints than other languages like French and German, we expect that it is also vulnerable in Italian when Italian is acquired together with French. The French– Italian bilingual child develops the (non-) null-subject property as two monolinguals, however. Furthermore, all children omit 1st and 2nd person pronouns, although this is only allowed in adult Italian. We argue for a unified account of these omissions and the ‘odd’ realizations of subject pronouns in the Italian of the German–Italian bilingual


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children. Both omissions and realizations appear with 3rd person finite verb forms. In this article, we argue that the children only perceive the anaphoric use of 3rd person pronouns and, extending that interpretation, wrongly analyse the deictic 1st and 2nd person null or overt subjects as anaphoric, namely as topics. These null or overt pronouns are not identified by Agr, but by a zero topic. The finite verb appears in the (default) 3rd person form. We argue that the syntactic analysis of those ‘odd’ subject realizations and omissions is universally available to children; it is, however, more frequently used by children who acquire German, a topic-drop language. While Serratrice et al. (2004) see influence-driven difficulties in the acquisition of pragmatics rather than in syntax, we argue in favour of a more refined analysis of syntactic consequences of cross-linguistic influence and in favour of a different conception of the syntax–pragmatics interface. There is not a general lack of pragmatic competence (as Schmitz, 2007 shows for one German–Italian child, using the features proposed by Serratrice et al., 2004). The syntactic consequence of the transitional misanalysis of subject pronouns is that – although all bilingual children set the pro-drop parameter correctly – we still observe the aforementioned ‘odd’ omissions and realizations (mostly 1st person pronoun + 3rd person verb form). Unlike Serratrice (2007), we consider this misinterpretation in our investigated children as a competence problem and not as a performance error (which is, however, a possible explanation for the children investigated by Serratrice who were around 8 years old). The children in our study have already passed the stage of using proper names instead of 1st person pronouns but they are still in a second stage where the described ‘odd’ realizations and omissions occur. The comparison of three different language combinations, two of them containing both a null-subject and a non-null-subject language and all of them having different pragmatic characteristics, allows us to shed new light both on the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the produced subjects and on the issue of cross-linguistic influence in a more general way. The article is structured as follows. In the second section, we present an analysis of the adult systems of Italian, French and German, which include both quantitative and qualitative aspects of subject omissions. The third section contains the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the subject omissions and realizations of bilingual German–Italian, German–French and Italian–French children. In the fourth section, relevant theoretical work is presented. It is related to the children’s subjects in the fifth section in order to explain the aforementioned observations and assumptions. The sixth section concludes the article.

Null-subjects in adult French, Italian and German: Quantitative and qualitative aspects In a study of child-directed speech (spontaneous interactions), Schmitz and Müller (2008) found that subjects are omitted at a rate of 67% in Italian (out of a total of 1637 utterances), at a rate of 9% in French (out of 2168 utterances) and a rate of 4% in German (out of 1286 utterances). This quantitative analysis shows that omissions are marginal in the two non-pro-drop languages (see Figure 1).1


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Schmitz et al. 100 80

Omission DP

60

strong pronoun weak pronoun

%

clitic

40 20 0

Subj. It.

Subj. Ger.

Subj. Fr.

Figure 1. Subject omissions and realizations in adult Italian, German and French

The quantitative difference is well known and was one of the reasons for the assumption that the difference between the three languages is syntactic in nature, in the generative tradition formulated as a parametric difference. Italian is a null-subject language, whereas French and German are not. The perhaps surprising result of the quantitative analysis is that subject omissions are rare in German (in spite of the grammatical possibility to drop subject topics). They amount to a percentage which is similar to percentages obtained for speech errors or performance errors in adults. From the child’s perspective, subject omissions in German adults might wrongly be interpreted as speech errors. The quantitative differences among the languages are clear. However, the question is whether there is also a qualitative difference between pro-drop and non-pro-drop languages. In a study of adult–adult interaction (monolinguals in spontaneous interaction) of the three languages, German, French and Italian, we have found that in French, all omitted subjects were non-referential 3rd person subjects (impersonal il) (see Figure 2 for the person marking of the omitted subjects). In German, omitted referential subjects exist, but they are nearly all 3rd person (see Figure 3). In Italian, all grammatical persons are affected by omissions (see Figure 4). Furthermore, omissions are much more frequent with 1st and 2nd person than with 3rd person in Italian.2 To summarize, we can conclude that French, German and Italian exhibit subject omissions of 3rd person. More specifically, subject omissions occur only with 3rd person (expletive) in French. Put differently, argument omissions in the subject position in French are non-existent. In this sense, French is a clear example of a non-pro-drop language. In German, subject omissions are most frequent with 3rd person (rare with 1st person, absent with 2nd person). Italian is the only language where subject omissions occur with all persons. Also, subject omissions in Italian are much more frequent with 1st and 2nd person (82% and 80% respectively) than with 3rd person (58%), since 1st and


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100% 80% 60%

realization omiss. - targ. omiss. + targ.

40% 20% 0% 1.

2.

3.

Figure 2. Subjects by person in French adults

100% 80% 60%


40% 20% 0%

1.

2.

3.

Figure 3. Subjects by person in German adults

2nd person pronouns contribute less information than 3rd person pronouns. In sum, Italian does not only differ quantitatively from the other two languages, but also from a qualitative perspective. There is a further qualitative aspect which differentiates among the languages under investigation. Whereas there are no syntactic restrictions to subject drop in Italian, there are root/non-root asymmetries in German: dropping of the subject in subordinate clauses or clauses where the first position is occupied by some other element than the subject is


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100% 80% 60%


40% 20% 0%

1.

2.

3.

Figure 4. Subjects by person in Italian adults

ungrammatical (see examples (4) to (7)). In French, expletive drop is possible in root (see example (1)) as well as in subordinate clauses (see example (2)). In example (2), another possibility is [ki] instead of [k]. We mention this possibility because [ki] might also be agreeing que ‘that’. It has been argued that [ki] is to be analysed as que+Agr, since qui must always be present in French when there is a subject trace (or more generally for the present purposes an empty subject): L’hommei que je crois [ ti qui / *que [ ti viendra ]] ‘The man that I believe that will come’ and L’hommei que je pense [ ti que [Jean croit [ ti qui / *que[ ti viendra ]]]] ‘The man that I think that John believes that comes’ are perfectly grammatical sentences whereas the equivalents with que are ungrammatical. Recently Bošković and Lasnik (2003) have analysed this kind of morphological reflex of the application of Spec–Head agreement between a trace and the head of C in terms of the following generalization: qui is a C with an EPP feature, whereas que is a C without this feature. The [ki] in (2) could therefore be analysed as agreeing qui and not as qu’i, where the last consonant of the expletive il has been dropped. What other observation could strengthen this analysis? Interestingly, dropping of the subject in est-ce que questions as in (3) is ungrammatical. Here, the only option would be to use [ki]: Est-ce [ki] faut acheter des livres? ‘Does one have to buy books?’ If it was the case that we are not dealing with agreeing [ki] qui in (2) and (3), i.e., if [i] was only due to phonological reasons of dropping the final consonant of the expletive il, then we would not be able to explain why [k] is possible in (2), but not in (3). The contrast between (2) and (3) relates to the contrast which we have mentioned further above, and which has been treated under the topic of that-t effects. For the purpose of the present discussion, we can safely say that expletive drop in French is also syntactically constrained. Whereas it is possible in declarative clauses without rescuing the offending empty category by the insertion of an agreeing complementizer [ki], it is not possible in interrogatives, see also the ungrammaticality of *Je me demande [s] faut absolument lire


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ces livres ‘I ask myself (whether) one absolutely has to read these books’, where the interrogative complementizer si ‘whether’ has been phonetically reduced and the expletive in subject position is being omitted. (1) (Il / I’) faut pas jouer au jardin ‘(one) must not play in-the garden’ (2) J’ t’ai dis mille fois qu’ faut / [ki] faut pas jouer au jardin ‘I have told you thousand times that (one) must not play in-the garden’ (3) Est-ce qu’ *(il) faut / [ki] faut acheter des livres? ‘Does one have to buy books?’ (4) (Er) sollte das lesen ‘(He) should read it’ (5) Ich denke dass *(er) das lesen sollte ‘I believe that he should read it’ (6) Das sollte *(er) unbedingt lesen ‘He should absolutely read THIS’ (7) Was sollte *(er) unbedingt lesen? ‘What should he absolutely read?’ Thus, in German, subject drop interacts only with the left periphery, while this is not the case in Italian. French is like German, however, only with regard to the subtle interplay concerning the interrogative feature. In interrogatives, the expletive can be dropped if and only if the construction allows for the agreeing complementizer qui [ki]. The described quantitative and qualitative differences between the three languages under investigation (and their use by monolingual adults) lead to the following summary regarding the language combinations of the bilingual children investigated in this article and the possibility to analyse surface strings of one language with the syntactic analysis of the other: • German–Italian: although only Italian is a pro-drop language, both languages allow the omission of subject arguments, with no syntactic constraints on subject omission in Italian, but constraints to topic position in German. • German–French: neither language is a pro-drop language and both display a very subtle interplay in the left periphery, differing however with respect to the important fact that in German dropped subjects may be arguments, while French only allows dropping of the expletive il. • Italian–French: this combination of a pro-drop language and a non-pro-drop language has nothing in common since French completely disallows argument omission and Italian does not have expletive clitics. It is thus only the combination of German and Italian where a cross-linguistic influence may lead to visible differences from the target while Italian–French is a combination of languages which are too different to be analysed syntactically in the same way. The combination of German and French displays only one, but a very important difference: French does not allow argument omission. This difference impedes an analysis of French subjects in terms of German syntax.


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Quantity and quality of the subject omissions and realizations in bilingual German–Italian, German– French and Italian–French children We investigated four bilingual German–French, three bilingual German–Italian children and one bilingual Italian–French child with respect to subject omissions and realizations. The data have been analysed elsewhere from different perspectives. For the German– French data see Hauser-Grüdl (2010), for the German–Italian data see Schmitz (2007) and Patuto (2008), for the Italian–French data see Patuto (2008). For a comparison of monolingual and bilingual acquisition, we analysed data of a French monolingual child, Grégoire, and of an Italian monolingual child, Raffaello, both from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, 1995; MacWhinney & Snow, 1985). The data to be presented are part of the research project ‘Die Architektur der frühkindlichen bilingualen Sprachfähigkeit: Italienisch-Deutsch und Französisch-Deutsch in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich’ (The architecture of the early childhood bilingual language faculty: Comparing Italian–German and French–German in Italy, Germany and France).3 The bilingual children are presented in Table 1. The children have all been raised bilingually (German–Italian–French) from birth in Germany or France. The parents decided to raise them according to the ‘une personne – une langue’ strategy (Ronjat, 1913). In most cases (Céline is the exception) the mother speaks the Romance language to the child and the father German. The corpus consists of video recordings (every fortnight). The languages were separated during the recordings: the German interviewer spoke German with the child; the Romance interviewer interacted with the child in the respective Romance language. One child, Juliette, has been raised in France with French and Italian. Juliette’s mother speaks French, her father speaks Italian with her.

The language combination German–Italian (see Figures 5 and 6) The first observation is that the German–Italian children differ from the monolingual child Raffaello with respect to the frequencies of subject omissions. Whereas Raffaello has reached an omission rate of around 80% from a mean length of utterance (MLU) of 2 onwards, and remains at that rate until the end of the study, the bilingual children realize too many subjects when compared with the monolingual child. Towards the end of our study, the bilingual children and Raffaello show comparable frequencies of subject omissions in Italian. Patuto (2008) and Schmitz (2007) have also shown that bilingual German–Italian children realize too many subject pronouns when compared with their monolingual peers. In Figure 1 we illustrated our results for the Italian adults who omit subjects at a rate of 67%. Since Raffaello’s omission rate does not change from an MLU of about 2 onwards, we can assume that child spontaneous interactions display a higher rate of subject omissions, in other words the norm would differ from that of adults. This is plausible since children mainly talk about things or events which are present in the actual situation, whereas adults do not. Furthermore, we assume that subject omissions also depend on the type of discourse; however, future research would have to verify this assumption empirically. The second important observation is that the omission rate is


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Table 1. Children under investigation Language(s)

Children

No. of analysed utterancesa

French Italian German–French German–Italian Italian–French Total French Total Italian Total German

Grégoire Raffaello Alexander

Fr. 1040 It. 953 Fr. 1086 Ger. 636 Fr. 1447 Ger. 1169 Fr. 264 Ger. 1361 Fr. 369 Ger. 318 It. 2287 Ger. 326 It. 709 Ger. 1829 It. 1765 Ger. 2602 Fr. 2166 It. 1491 4206 7205 3484

Amélie Céline Caroline Aurelio Jan Lukas Juliette

Investigation periodb 1;9.18-2;5.27 1;7.7-2;11.20 2;2.6-3;2.2 1;6.12-3;1.2 2;0.24-3;5.29 2;8.5-3;7.28 1;9.27-3;5.30 2;0.11-4;0.14 1;7.12-3;6.30 1;8.16-3;5.17

a

The utterances analysed include all understandable and complete utterances containing a finite verb, with the exception of imperatives. b Age is indicated in years; months. days.

low in the German of the German–Italian bilingual children from an MLU of 2 onwards, when compared with Italian from early on. Perfect adult-like behaviour can be observed at an MLU of about 4. Clearly, the bilingual children separate the two languages early in development. Let us turn to subject omissions in relation to person marking. In Italian, all children omit subjects of all persons, an observation which is predicted on the basis of the adult system. In German, contrary to the adult system, 1st and 2nd person pronouns are being omitted, one child (Aurelio) omitting 1st person pronouns even more often than 3rd person pronouns. Omission of 1st and 2nd person pronouns can also be observed by monolingual German children, as Patuto (2008) shows. Interestingly, two of the bilingual children omit more 1st and 2nd person pronouns in Italian than 3rd person pronouns (Aurelio and Lukas). In Serratrice et al. (2004) the opposite observation is made for a child who has been raised with Italian and English. Since the present study also contains one child which would corroborate their finding, it seems that it is rather an individual difference


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100 80 Raffaello

60

Italian

%

German

40 20 0

1.0–1.49 1.5–1.99 2.0–2.49 2.5–2.99 3.0–3.49 3.5–3.99 4.0–4.49 MLU

Figure 5. Subject omissions in bilingual German–Italian children, compared to the monolingual Italian child Raffaello

Figure 6. Subject omissions by person in bilingual German–Italian children

as to whether 3rd person pronoun omissions are most frequent or not. The important generalization is that bilingual German–Italian children (as well as monolingual children of the respective languages) omit all persons in both languages, although this corresponds to the adult language in Italian only.


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100 80 60

Grégoire

%

German 40

French

20 0

1.0– 1.49

1.5– 1.99

2.0– 2.49

2.5– 2.99

3.0– 3.49

3.5– 3.99

4.0– 4.49

4.5– 4.99

5.0– 5.49

MLU

Figure 7. Subject omissions in bilingual German–French children, compared to the monolingual French child, Grégoire

The language combination German–French (see Figures 7 and 8) The first observation is that the German–French children develop their languages quite similarly, from an MLU of about 3 onwards, the omission rate is low, when compared with Italian. Perfect adult-like behaviour takes time, as in the case of the German–Italian bilinguals, and can be attested not earlier than an MLU of about 4. Pillunat et al. (2006) have argued that the bilingual children behave very similarly to monolingual French children. Apart from MLU point 2.5, our monolingual child Grégoire and the French of the bilingual children show no difference. Monolingual French children are reported to use subject clitics from very early on, at a rate which reflects the adult system (see Schmitz & Müller, 2008 and the cited literature). Let us turn to subject omissions in relation to person marking. In French, all children omit subjects of all persons (see Hauser-Grüdl, 20104), an observation which is not predicted on the basis of the adult system. In German, contrary to the adult system, 1st and 2nd person pronouns are being omitted, some children omitting 1st person pronouns more than 3rd person pronouns. In sum, the German–French children, like the German– Italian children in German, omit subjects of all persons, contrary to the adult systems.

The language combination Italian–French (see Figures 9 and 10) For the language combination Italian and French, we investigated only one child, Juliette (Patuto, 2008). As becomes clear from Figure 9, her subject omissions are very similar to those of our here analysed bilingual German–French children in French until an MLU of 3.5 and seem to match nearly perfectly the monolingual line. At the end of the study, i.e., from an MLU of about 3.5 onwards, Juliette’s data resemble that of the monolingual child Grégoire in French, who also shows a (very) slight rise of subject omissions. The


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100 80 1.

60 %

2. 3.

40 20

. Fr e in

C ar ol

C ar ol

in

e

G

er .

. in

e

Fr

er . G e in

C él

él

ie

G

Am

C él

er .

.

ie él

Am

nd

er

Fr

er . G

xa

er

Al e

nd xa Al e

Fr .

0

Figure 8. Subject omissions by person in bilingual German–French children

100 80

Grégoire Raffaello

60 %

French (bi.) Italian (bi.)

40

Juliette (Fr.) Juliette (It.)

20 0 1.0– 1.49

1.5– 1.99

2.0– 2.49

2.5– 2.99

3.0– 3.49

3.5– 3.99

4.0– 4.49

4.5– 4.99

5.0– 5.49

MLU

Figure 9. Subject omissions in French and Italian by a bilingual Italian–French child (Juliette), bilingual German–Italian (bi.) and bilingual German–French (bi.) children and monolingual children Grégoire (Fr.) and Raffaello (It.)

observation that Juliette’s and Grégoire’s subject omission rate goes up again later in development seems to support the aforementioned assumption very tentatively that subject omissions (the fine rate, not the gross differences) are related to the discourse type. Turning to Juliette’s Italian, we can observe that while the bilingual German–Italian children have been observed to use more overt pronouns in Italian than the monolingual child, Juliette seems to produce a nearly exact pattern to the monolingual child Raffaello. Downloaded from fla.sagepub.com at UB Wuppertal on May 12, 2011

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100 80 1.

60 %

2. 3.

40 20

tte lie Ju

tte lie Ju

(It .)

(F r.)

.) (b i n ia

Ita l

Fr en

ch

(b i

.)

llo R af fa e

G

ré g

oi

re

0

Figure 10. Subject omissions by person in French and Italian by a bilingual Italian–French child (Juliette), bilingual German–Italian (bi.) and bilingual German–French (bi.) children and the monolingual children Raffaello (It.) and Grégoire (Fr.)

Let us turn to subject omissions in relation to person marking. In French, the monolingual child Grégoire and Juliette only omit 1st and 3rd person pronouns. In Italian, Juliette, as well as all other children, omits pronouns of all three persons. On the basis of what we have seen so far, we can argue that only the language combination German–Italian gives rise to more subject realizations in Italian, whereas the language combinations German–French and, more importantly, Italian–French, do not. Furthermore, the bilingual child Juliette also deviates from the adult norm in that she omits not only 3rd person pronouns in French. However, the monolingual child Grégoire patterns like her. Our study shows that future research should pay more attention to the type of pronoun omitted. This aspect has been treated in much less detail than the overall subject omission rate.

The importance of 3rd person Let us now turn to further qualitative aspects of subject omissions and realizations. Interestingly, if the children omit 1st or 2nd person subjects in French or German,5 the finite verb surfaces with 3rd person morphology.6 This is shown in examples (8a–c) for German, and in (9a–c) for French: (8) German: a. Céline: mhm hat die/ ‘has it’ intended: ich habe die ‘I have itfem’, ref. to her play card (2;6.7) b. Adult: nimm den teller dann kannst ‘Take the plate then (you) can put the die schale da drauf machen/ slice on it’


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Schmitz et al. Céline: nein hat schon ein teller/ c. Céline: dann macht das – das wieder/ (9)

‘no has already a plate’, intended: nein, ich habe schon einen Teller ‘no I have already a plate’ (Céline 2;6.7) ‘then makes that – that again’ intended: dann mach ich das wieder ‘then I’ll do that again’; Céline puts lid on pot (2;11.15)

French: a. Amélie: ça aussi l’a – l’a vu/ ‘also has seen that’, intended: j’ai vu un comme ça ‘I have seen one like that, ref.: tiger (2;6.11) b. Amélie: aussi l’a trouvé/ ‘also has found it’, intended: aussi je l’ai trouvé ‘I also have found it’, ref. to 2nd snake (2;6.11) c. Amélie: va mettre dans le frigo/ ‘goes put it into the fridge’, intended: je vais le mettre. . ., ‘I will go put it. . .’, puts a die in the refridgerator (3;3.11)

We have shown that the German–Italian children produce too many subject pronouns in Italian. Schmitz (2007) has observed that these subjects are expressed overtly using subject pronouns by the children in cases where they would not have a phonetic form in adult language. Italian subjects which are not used contrastively by the children are a good example (taken from a conversation between Carlotta at age 2;9 and the adult Italian interviewer7): (10) Adult: Carlotta: Adult: Carlotta: Adult: Carlotta: Adult: Carlotta: Adult: Carlotta:

ma lo so che hai un pannolino / ‘But (I) know that (you) have a ma devi andare in bagno , diaper / but do (you) need to go to per caso ? / the bathroom?’ io non ce l’ ho / ‘I don’t have it’ non ce l’ hai ? / ‘(You) don’t have it?’ no / ‘no’ e come mai ? / ‘And why?’ ti sei dimenticata ‘Did (you) forget it this morning?’ stamattina? / sì / ‘yes’ ah sì / ma non ti serve più ? / ‘ah yes / but (you) don’t need it anymore?’ no / ‘no’ ah senza pannolino - / ‘ah without diaper – ‘ a letto io prende / ‘I take at bed’ ref: diaper al – a – a notte si prende / ‘One takes at night’ ref: diaper


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Interestingly, these pragmatically ‘odd’ subject realizations mostly concern 1st and 2nd person subjects. Furthermore, these subjects often surface with verbs with 3rd person (singular) morphology, i.e., they are syntactically 3rd person, even if the dropped subject has the feature [±Author] and [±Participant] (= 1st/2nd person, see fourth section). The construction type ‘1st person pronoun + 3rd person finite verb’ occurs with a variety of verbs and in all children: (11) a. Io ora scende / (Jan 2;6.17) intended: Io ora scendo ‘I now go down’ b. Io no è stupido (Aurelio 2;6.5) intended: Io non sono stupido ‘I’m not stupid’ c. Io prima mette le piccole schede (Juliette 3;0.21) intended: Io prima metto le piccole schede ‘I first put the small cards’ Table 2 contains the pragmatically ‘odd’ omissions and realizations (1st/2nd person null/overt subjects with 3rd verb forms in the analysed base of the children presented in this article (see Table 1)). We included in the table also other uses of 3rd person agreement morphology on the finite verb with 1st and 2nd person subject pronouns; this, however,

Table 2. ‘Odd’ omissions and realizations in German, Italian and French (percentages related to the analysed base) Child

Language

Omiss. (%)

Real. (%)

Grégoire Amélie Alexander Caroline Céline Raffaello Aurelio Jan Lukas Juliette Total French Total German Total Italian

Fr. Fr. Ger. Fr. Ger. Fr. Ger. Fr. Ger. It. It. Ger. It. Ger. It. Ger. It. Fr.

12 (1.2) 3 (0.2) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 2 (0.5) 0 (0) 0 (0) 3 (0.2) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 17 (0.4) 3 (0.09) 0 (0)

7 (0.7) 53 (3.7) 6 (0.5) 10 (0.9) 9 (1.4) 6 (1.6) 8 (2.5) 18 (6.8) 3 (0.2) 0 (0) 9 (0.4) 0 (0) 17 (2.4) 2 (0.1) 2 (0.1) 1 (0.04) 3 (0.2) 4 (0.2) 98 (2.3) 29 (0.8) 31 (0.4)


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would demand a much more thorough pragmatic analysis of all subjects in child grammar, which we are unable to offer.8 The percentages in Table 2 are very low. Notice, however, that odd omissions in French and German and odd realizations in Italian are syntactically 3rd person. This might indicate that they have a similar underlying syntactic representation, which we discuss in the fifth section. The general results can be summarized as follows: 1. Children omit subjects of all persons, although to a differing degree in the three languages, irrespective of whether or not they have evidence for omissions in the input. 2. Omitted subjects of 1st and of 2nd person are combined with finite verbs which are inflected for 3rd person. 3. Overuse of 1st and 2nd person pronouns in Italian is combined with finite verbs which are inflected for 3rd person. 4. The children have acquired that Italian is a null-subject language, and that French and German are not.

Theoretical work on pronominal and null subjects The syntax and pragmatics of 1st/2nd person vs. 3rd person pronouns While 1st and 2nd person pronouns differ from 3rd person pronouns because the former are always identified with the speaker and the hearer respectively, 3rd person pronouns typically function as anaphors which are co-indexed with an antecedent in the discourse. A common view on 3rd person is that it is not a person (Kayne, 2000). However, work which has been done on the interface between syntax and morphology indicates that reference to abstract morphosyntactic features, 3rd person included, is needed for a description of the relevant phenomena. Evidence in favour of a 3rd person comes from the Spanish clitic system: as pointed out by Perlmutter (1971), spurious se in Spanish requires a first 3rd person dative clitic in a sequence 3rd dative + 3rd accusative ‘*le lo’ to undergo a morphological change to se: se lo. The constraint shows that a 3rd person dative and a 3rd person accusative cannot occur together as clitics. Nevins (2007) refers to more phenomena (among them English verbal –s), and concludes that ‘the importance of the *le lo constraint . . . is that it clearly requires reference to 3rd person, and cannot be formulated if 3rd person has no representation in the grammar’ (p. 279). As a consequence, 3rd person cannot be underspecified for person. Halle (1997) has proposed to label 1st, 2nd and 3rd person pronouns by the binary features [±Participant], where a positive value denotes that the referring expression contains one of the discourse participants, and [±Author], where a positive value denotes that the referring expression contains the speaker. 1st person pronouns are thus [+Auth, +Part], 2nd person pronouns are [−Auth, +Part], and finally 3rd person pronouns are [−Auth, −Part]. The languages under discussion differ a lot with respect to subject pronouns. German and Italian do not have syntactic subject clitics at all; subject pronouns are all strong pronouns. French, however, has subject clitics (which are not analysed as agreement markers in our study; for further references and a discussion of this issue see


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Table 3. Clitic and strong subject pronouns in German, Italian and French

1st pers. sing. ‘I’ 2nd pers. sing. ‘you’ 3rd pers. sing. ‘he, she, it’ 1st pers. plur. ‘we’ 2nd pers. plur. ‘you’ 3rd pers. plur. ‘they’

German

Italian

French

ich du er, sie, es wir ihr sie

io tu lui, lei noi voi loro

je/moi tu/toi il, elle/lui, elle nous/nous vous/vous ils, elles/eux, elles

Schmitz & Müller, 2008) and strong subject pronouns.9 Table 3 contains the different morphological forms, where we indicate the French forms in the order clitic/strong. We have observed that French, Italian and German all exhibit subject omissions of 3rd person, while only Italian seems to generally make use of the possibility of also omitting 1st and 2nd person subjects. It seems that the [±Part] feature plays an important role if we analyse subject omissions in the three languages. In French, only the expletive can be dropped. Expletives have a person feature in French (3rd person), they are masculine and singular: e.g., (il) faut attendre ‘(one) has to wait’ vs. *(je) travaille ‘*(I) work’. Notice however that from a syntactic point of view they simply spell out that the verb does not assign a thematic role to the subject. German is a good example for the interaction between the [±Part] feature and subject omission. [+Part] pronouns are not omitted, while [−Part] pronouns are, e.g., (das) geht nicht ‘(this) does not work’ vs. *(Du) musst heute arbeiten ‘*(You) have to work today’.10 Finally, Italian is not restrictive at all with respect to the kind of pronoun which is being omitted. We may deduce from the comparison the following generalization: if a language can drop [+Part] pronouns, it can also drop [–Part] pronouns but not vice versa.

Licensing empty subjects Recently, Zushi (2003) has developed a theory of licensing null arguments. In essence, the approach tries to eliminate the difference between the pro-drop and the topic-drop parameter by assuming that the presence/absence of null arguments can be derived from particular properties of the head T of the T(ense)P(hrase). In her approach, all parametric differences can be reduced to morphological differences, i.e., to the language-specific forms which allow the necessary elimination of the EPP-feature before Spell-Out. Comparing English, Italian and Japanese, she argues that the occurrence of empty subjects in finite clauses is a consequence of the lexical, rather than the functional nature of T, which is the case in Italian and Japanese, but not in English. In English, a non-null-subject language, the EPP requires overt subjects in all finite clauses. Within minimalism, it is argued that T has an EPP feature that is obligatorily eliminated before Spell-Out. Elimination can either be achieved by movement of a DP to the Spec of TP or by inserting an expletive through Merge. As Schmitz and Müller (2008) have argued for French subject clitics, nominative clitics may have the function to check off the EPP feature in order to enforce the Spell-Out of a set of phi-features. In


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languages like English and French, a structure with pro in Spec of TP is excluded, since pro has no phonological content and ‘thus its movement to Spec of TP is unable to yield phonological contribution. Therefore, pro is not allowed in languages like English’ (Zushi, 2003, p. 586).11 Turning to Italian, a (subject) pro-drop language, Zushi (2003) assumes that T is assigned an EPP feature that must be checked off before Spell-Out as well. The EPP feature of T is eliminated by agreement morphemes, which in turn makes Spec of TP unnecessary. Thus, the EPP feature of T can be checked off without a DP moving or inserting into Spec of TP. The verbal complex V+v moves to T in Italian as well, which brings the agreement morpheme along with it. ‘This yields a configuration in which the agreement morpheme enters into a checking relation with the EPP feature of T via Headto-Head agreement. Due to Head-to-Head agreement, the EPP feature of T is eliminated, and thus no other elements need to move to its Spec’ (Zushi, 2003, p. 587ff.). If the EPP feature can be checked off in Italian without moving or inserting a DP into Spec of TP it follows that overt DPs need not move to Spec of TP. Indeed, overt subjects in Italian appear in pre- or postverbal position. Finally, Zushi discusses so-called topic-drop languages like Japanese. For languages like Japanese which do not exhibit overt agreement morphology, it is assumed that functional categories with interpretable features that are relevant at LF (like T) are present in Japanese, but these categories do not induce Spec–Head agreement. If T has no Spec and the language lacks overt agreement morphology on the verb, T has no features which have to be checked off. Therefore, pro can freely occur in Spec of vP. Since nominal elements in Japanese have no features themselves to check off, it is reasonable to assume that we are dealing with a minimum pro in Japanese, a pro which lacks functional projections altogether. Thus, the language-specific licensing options of Zushi’s approach to null subjects can be summarized as follows (Zushi, 2003, p. 590): 1. Agreement morphemes play no role in feature checking (English, French). 2. Agreement morphemes play a role in feature checking (Italian). 3. No feature checking (Japanese). Null subjects are not allowed under the properties of T in (1), which represents the English case. When pro occurs in the Spec of TP, the Spec of the functional category will not be visible at PF, in other words, no phonological effect is produced and the derivation crashes. When pro occurs in Spec of vP, the EPP feature of T fails to be eliminated and the derivation will be cancelled. In the two other types of languages (2), Italian, and (3), Japanese, pro is allowed, but it is not responsible for checking off the EPP feature of T. In Italian, agreement morphemes have the ability to check the EPP feature. In Japanese, no checking takes place since T is more like a lexical category in that it does not have any features that induce Spec–Head agreement. After having summarized the licensing conditions for empty subjects in the languages, we turn to the identification of null arguments, Zushi suggests with Shlonsky (1997) that the external syntax of pro differs in the languages which allow for the empty pronominal.


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Figure 11. Typology of pros

Figure 12.

• DP-pro requires Agr endowed with a person feature as its identifier. • ΦP-pro requires Agr endowed with a Φ-feature, Number. • Bare-NP-pro does not require Agr to be identified, a (base-generated) zero-topic binds the null argument. The different structures of these pro-types are illustrated in Figure 11. Italian subject pro is of the DP-type, a referential pro whose content is recovered through agreement. A non-referential pro lacks a referential D (a person feature is not specified). Its content is not recovered through agreement, but rather through binding by a discourse-identified topic (Huang, 1984). The content of the ΦP-type of pro should be recoverable through number agreement. NP-pro has no features at all. According to Zushi (2003), spoken Italian seems to instantiate the DP-type of pro. Put differently, null subjects are licensed by an Agr which is endowed with a person feature. If it is correct to assume that pro in this language is not needed for checking off the EPP feature of T, we may also say more radically that there is no pro in Italian since T has no EPP feature if endowed with an Agr endowed with a person feature. Kato (1999) has suggested this kind of analysis for Italian compr-i un libro ‘(You) buy a book’, which we repeat in Figure 12.


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Figure 13.

If T has strong features, it attracts V + v in order to have its features checked. If T has strong D-features, it will attract Dagr, which moves as a head since it is a minimal and a maximal projection (Kato, 1999, p. 19). This syntactic analysis makes correct predictions: overt phonological contribution of subjects is not needed; overt phonological contribution of subjects is regulated by pragmatics. The Avoid Pronoun Principle or a conversational maxim ‘Don’t say more than required’ regulates whether the subject is expressed or not. Overt subject pronouns are located outside the T-domain. Let us now turn to French. French has obligatory phonetically realized subjects. Furthermore, agreement morphemes do not play a role in feature checking in the general case. This is why French needs a clitic pronoun in order to check off the EPP feature of T. We have observed that expletives can be dropped in French rather freely in declarative clauses (these can be either root or non-root clauses). The content of the expletive is recovered through number agreement (in French, the finite verb agrees with the expletive; compare English there come some boys vs. French il arrive des garçons) (see Figure 13). Therefore, we may assume that French marginally licenses the ΦP-type of pro. Since the expletive can be dropped in declarative clauses, we may suggest that it is located inside the T-domain. A referential pro does not exist in French. Spoken German licenses null referential subjects. We have observed that these subjects are mostly 3rd person. It is quite plausible to assume that German topic-drop is analysed in terms of a pro-NP whose content is recovered through a discourse antecedent (indicated by Top in Figure 14, in which the utterance liest ein Buch ‘reads a book’ is analysed syntactically). However, since German pronouns are marked for number, person, gender and case, it is not straightforward to regard omissions in German as NP-omissions in Japanese. Interestingly, German topic-drop is mostly observed with 3rd person subjects in adults. In German, topic-drop is possible only if a discourse topic has been previously introduced. Anaphoric reference to previously mentioned discourse topics is the function of 3rd person subjects, as the following examples clearly show:12 (12) Question: Was ist mit Gerdai ? ‘What about Gerdai?’ Answer: Diei / Siei / Gerdai kommt nicht mit. ‘Shei won’t come with us.’ It seems that 1st and 2nd person pronouns do not function as discourse-anaphoric entities in the same construction, as the unacceptability of (13) shows:


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Figure 14.

(13) Question: Was ist mit diri ? ‘What about you i?’ Answer: ??(Ichi) komme nicht mit. ‘I i won’t come with you.’ The example shows that ich is not anaphoric; it is co-indexed with dir due to the deictic interpretation as the speaker.13 Since ich is not anaphoric, the conditions for topic-drop are not met, one of which is that the empty topic must be co-indexed with a discourse antecedent. Empty subjects in German are empty topics, syntactically pro elements, which are identified via discourse. In other words, all topic-drop constructions in German contain an empty discourse topic which binds pro. German pro is thus of the NP-type, but for other reasons than in Japanese. We have to distinguish from the above discussed cases the well-known drop phenomena like Ø hab schon gegessen ‘have already eaten’, Ø komme gleich wieder ‘come back in a moment’ and the like. Obviously, here the deictic 1st person pronoun ich has been omitted and can be retrieved from the speech situation. These omissions do not constitute topic-drops, unlike 3rd person omissions (see notes 9 and 12). To sum up in less technical terms, we may characterize languages regarding their specific ways to allow (= license) phonetically empty subjects (Italian, Japanese) or to


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disallow them (English, French) according to the role that agreement plays in each case. The languages also have specific ways to identify the content of empty subjects in the context (if they allow them), which we explained by using a typology of null subjects. The languages under investigation here may thus be shortly described as follows: French which allows only the omission of expletives can be said to have a pro of the nonreferential type which is identified by the number feature. German resembles Japanese in having empty discourse topics of the NP-pro type but the precondition for topic-drop in German is that anaphoric reference is given in the context which only works with 3rd person pronouns. Finally, Italian, the only pro-drop language in this article, has a referential type of pro completely recovered by verbal agreement (person, number) allowing null subjects in all persons.

The syntactic analysis of subject omissions in child grammar The first main result of our study is that all children, whether monolingual or bilingual, have acquired early in development that French and German are not null-subject languages and that Italian is. Although the Italian children (who acquire German as their second first language) realize too many subjects, the contrast between the development of subject omissions in Italian and the other two languages is sharp and tends towards the adult systems from early on. This result is in accordance with the literature. Assuming that the null-subject property is parameterized, we can safely assume that bilingual children can also set this parameter early in development. The next main result is that the German–Italian children produce too many subject pronouns. This result as such corresponds to what others have mentioned in the literature for German–Italian and English–Italian bilinguals (Schmitz, 2007; Serratrice et al., 2004). This does not imply that children have mis-set the null-subject parameter (see Schmitz, 2007 for Italian/German and Valian, 1990 for Italian/English). However, the overuse of subject pronouns is absent in our Italian–French child, although French is a non-null-subject language like English and German. We argue that the overuse of subject pronouns is due to cross-linguistic influence in the German–Italian bilinguals. Notwithstanding, our criteria for cross-linguistic influence have to be modified in order to be able to correctly predict the absence of cross-linguistic influence in Italian–French bilinguals. Hulk and Müller (2000) and Müller and Hulk (2000, 2001) have defined two conditions under which cross-linguistic influence is likely to occur: a. The vulnerable grammatical phenomenon is an interface property, e.g., a grammatical property located at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. b. The surface strings of the two languages are similar for the expression of the vulnerable grammatical phenomenon. For the present purposes, condition (a) is important. We have argued that in some languages the null-subject property is an interface phenomenon (see Patuto, 2008; Pillunat


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et al., 2006; Schmitz, 2007) for which pragmatics chooses between two possible syntactic derivations. Italian is such a language. In other words, syntax opens for the possibility to license null-subjects, whereas pragmatics regulates their use. In non-null-subject languages like German, topics can be omitted in root clauses. Sentences with a dropped subject and with an overt pronominal subject are discoursepragmatically equivalent; they reflect a different speech style, subject omissions belonging to an informal register. French is a non-null-subject language as well. However, subjects can be omitted. In contrast to German, subject omissions are excluded with arguments and restricted to the expletive pronoun. As in German, it is restricted syntactically and the presence/absence of the expletive are sensitive to the register chosen. On the basis of the adult systems, we can formulate the following predictions for cross-linguistic influence: since pragmatics regulates the choice between a null and an overt subject pronoun only in Italian, we expect Italian to be vulnerable, since there is an invasive interplay between syntax and pragmatics. Notice that this does not mean that children (whether monolingual or bilingual) should have problems with the setting of the null-subject parameter. Whether pro is allowed in subject position or not is a syntactic property which should be acquired in the same way as other parameterized properties. Serratrice et al. (2004) assume that the language with more pragmatic constraints, in their case Italian, is more complex than a language with fewer constraints, in their case English. They predict that cross-linguistic influence will affect Italian, the more complex language: Cross-linguistic influence will go uni-directionally from the language with fewer pragmatic constraints in the distribution of overt pronominal subjects (English) to the language where the appearance of pronominal subjects is regulated by pragmatically complex constraints, such as topic shift and focus (Italian). The coordination of syntactic and pragmatic knowledge is a demanding task for young children in general, and even more so in the case of bilingual children since they have to evaluate competing solutions to the syntax–pragmatics problem from two different languages. (Serratrice et al., 2004, p. 201)

According to the syntax–pragmatics interface, we may argue against Serratrice et al. (2004) and assume that the presence and direction of the influence is not a question of MORE-or-LESS constraints, but a question of whether pragmatics decides on syntactic options or not. The invasive function of pragmatics is complex (Italian), non-invasiveness is derivationally neutral (English, German, French). An important result for the study presented so far is that the language combination has a crucial impact on the investigation of cross-linguistic influence. Juliette, acquiring Italian and French simultaneously, shows rates of subject omissions which the bilingual German–Italian children do not and which nearly map the monolingual children. Following the interface condition for cross-linguistic influence, we can correctly predict that Italian is the language affected by the influence. However, the condition falsely predicts that the influence takes place when one of the two languages is complex and the other is not, i.e., also in the case of Italian–French. Patuto (2008) argued that the language combination German–Italian is prone to cross-linguistic influence


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with respect to subject realizations since German exhibits argument omissions like Italian does. The language combination Italian–French does not show evidence for cross-linguistic influence since French disallows argument omissions and only tolerates the omission of the expletive. Patuto (2008) argued that Italian, the more complex language under the syntax– pragmatics interplay, is influenced by the non-null-subject language, German. Furthermore, Italian is not necessarily affected by cross-linguistic influence if it is the more complex language. The language combination Italian–French does not exhibit effects of language influence. We can therefore conclude that condition (a) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the occurrence of cross-linguistic influence. For the case of subject omissions, we may deduce that if the other, less complex language does not allow argument omissions at all (French), it will not influence the more complex one (Italian). The consequence for cross-linguistic influence in general is that in addition to condition (a), grammatical phenomena which are sensitive to cross-linguistic influence must be analysable in terms of the syntactic derivation of one language applied to both languages. In other words, if the complexity of the two derivations differs but the grammatical phenomenon in both languages is expressed in a rather different way, the child will not take the less complex analysis in order to analyse the construction in the more complex language. Thus, we will have to redefine condition (b) for cross-linguistic influence in the following way (Müller & Patuto, 2009): b. The surface strings of the two languages A and B are analysable in terms of the syntactic derivation of one language (which is less complex). We would like to add that for the language combination Italian–French, we could only consider one child, Juliette. In order to verify the importance of the language combination, more children with this language combination have to be studied of course. In this sense, our results are rather tentative. Apart from ‘odd’ subject realizations in Italian, all children produced omissions in French and German which are not expected from the target-language. All children, whether monolingual or bilingual with German and/or French, omitted 1st person subjects. There was variation with respect to whether the children also omitted 2nd person subjects. Since the absolute numbers here are very low, future research will have to determine whether this variation is due to the low numbers or whether the language combination also matters here. Suffice it to say that our Italian–French bilingual child, Juliette, also patterns exactly like the monolingual French and Italian child with respect to what type of pronouns are being omitted. Generally speaking, all children drop subjects of 1st person in all three languages, although they should not drop them in French and German. Even the monolingual children were shown to drop subjects different from 3rd person. If 1st (and 2nd) person pronouns are dropped, the finite verb shows up with 3rd person inflection. In Italian, the bilingual children overtly realize subject pronouns, again mainly 1st person subjects (see Schmitz, 2007), which in the adult language would not be expressed overtly. Again, these subject pronouns occur with 3rd person agreement morphology on the finite verb. Since odd omissions in French and German


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Figure 15.

and odd realizations in Italian are syntactically 3rd person, we would like to suggest a unified account for these target-deviant constructions. We assume the following structure for these constructions where CP just means ‘left periphery’ and not the specific CP content (illocutionary type) as in Rizzi’s (1997) split CP-model. Since our syntactic approach focuses on the features represented (or not) in TP we do not give a detailed representation of the left periphery. Starting with German, Figure 15 shows the syntactic representation of the sentences with dropped subjects of 1st (and 2nd) person with a finite verb with 3rd person inflection: liest das ‘reads that’, intending ich lese das ‘I read that’. For French sentences like va mettre ‘goes to put’, intending je vais mettre ‘I go to put’ we may assume the same structure as for German, only with a left-headed TP and a leftheaded VP.


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Figure 16.

For Italian, Figure 16 shows the syntactic representation of the sentences with overt subjects of 1st (and 2nd) person with a finite verb with 3rd person inflection: io prende questo ‘I takes this’, intending prendo questo ‘(I) take this’. The important point here is that we claim that the German T-system is used by the children since in the target-like Italian structure io ‘I’ has to stand outside TP, namely in the left periphery. The next question we would like to address is the type of pronoun in the children’s utterances which exhibit an ‘odd’ overt pronoun of 1st (and 2nd) person in Italian and an omission of 1st and 2nd person pronoun in French and German. If our analysis of the subject in these constructions is correct, pro and overt pronouns must be analysed as pro’s and pronouns of the NP-type, the content of which is not identified by Agr, but by a (base-generated) zero-topic which binds the null (or overt) argument. This structure corresponds to the underlying structure of adult German with respect to topic-drop. NP is only specified for [±Author] and [±Participant] and used anaphorically. With regard to Agr, it results in a default form since verbs must inflect in all three languages. In what follows, we show the target-deviant consequences for Italian, German and French child speech as found in our data: (14) a. Italian realization: Io prende = [NP Io] + prende ‘I takes’ b. French omission: Ø va mettre = [NP Ø] + va mettre ‘will put’ c. German omission: Ø hat das = [NP Ø] + hat das ‘has that’ If our approach is correct, we can also integrate the phenomenon of root infinitives, frequently observed in the monolingual acquisition of German (while absent in the


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acquisition of monolingual Romance and rare, but existing in bilingual German–Italian children). If one analysed ich malen (Carlotta 2;4.7) ‘I paint’, which is ambiguous between malenINF and malen3rdplural, as [NPIch] + malen, thus the verb form as 3rd person plural, this would correspond to [NP Ø] + hat das (singular verb form) and explain the occurrence of root infinitives as plural alternatives used by the children. Since both phenomena, ‘odd’ subject realizations/omissions and root infinitives occur at the same stage of the acquisition process, this seems to be plausible. An interesting question is whether the underlying structure we propose for odd subject omissions in German could also account for the range of contingencies that are usually found with root infinitives, like their absence in V2 positions, in questions and in subordinates. If the morphology of the verb in root infinitives is default morphology, and if the subject pronoun in root infinitives (whether overt as in ich malen or covert as in malen) is co-indexed with an empty topic, then movement higher than Spec, TP should be either blocked or not enforced, and therefore absent in the relevant constructions. We have no explanation for why modals and the copula do not generally figure in root infinitives and why there is singular default agreement in the case analysed here and plural morphsology in the case of root infinitives. It has repeatedly been mentioned in the literature that children have problems with expressing information at the discourse-pragmatic level, with the acquisition of deixis for example (Levinson, 1994, p. 669). With respect to personal deixis, they do not only have to acquire the role of the partners in the speech event (1st person = grammaticalization of the reference of the speaker to him/herself, 2nd person = coding of the reference of the speaker to one or more addressees, 3rd person = coding of the reference of person or entities who are neither speakers nor addressees of the relevant speech part) but also the change of all the coordinates when speaker and addressee change their roles during the conversation. There is a body of work on the acquisition of deictic use of pronouns (to name just a few, see Chiat, 1986; Guerrero, 1998; Oshima-Takane, 1992; Tanz, 1980 for English; Kiebzak-Mandera, 2008 for Russian; Pérez-Perreira, 1999 for Spanish). Most of these studies (and works cited therein) investigate the so-called ‘reversals’, namely the incorrect use of, for example, I for you. Furthermore, research shows another way of interpreting deictic pronouns in a non-deictic way, namely as some kind of personal names, i.e., a fixed reference to particular people, e.g., I for adults and you for children (see E. Clark 1978 in Chiat, 1982 and Oshima-Takane, 1992 for this construal with 1st and 2nd person pronouns). Guerrero’s (1998) study is interesting in this respect: she reports on an English-acquiring child who misinterprets the 3rd person female pronoun her as a proper noun (naming the child) for a period of 12 months. While this child uses this pronoun correctly in the longitudinal study, regularly applied comprehension tests revealed this persistent mistake, which is only corrected at the age of 40 months in favour of a deictic use of her. Although the children studied here do not make errors of reference anymore and clearly have passed the stage during which they use proper names in order to encode the speaker and the hearer, we have argued for an underlying structure in which deictic pronouns are used anaphorically by the children. It is in this sense that our approach would represent further evidence for problems with deictic uses of pronouns.


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Finally, we have to discuss the nature of the analysis of odd omissions and realizations in terms of an empty topic binding an empty subject or an ‘oddly’ realized one, both being of the NP-type. We would like to argue in the same vein as Müller and Hulk (2001) for object omissions that the children make use of a universal strategy, discourse licensing, when they use empty subjects in French and German and odd subject realizations in Italian.14 Children do so as long as the development of the fine structure of the left periphery in each language will lead them to integrate language-specific rules on discourse licensing. Our study shows that discourse licensing via en empty topic coexists with language-specific licensing. Target-like behaviour is late in all children, even in the monolingual children. Our approach predicts that children make use of universal discourse licensing to different degrees, German being the most susceptible language since it is topic-drop. ‘Odd’ subject realizations and omissions should not only be a characteristic of bilingual grammar, but they should also occur in monolinguals. It would be interesting to study odd subject realizations in monolingual Italian children. We know from our own study that French monolingual children exhibit odd subject omissions, i.e., omissions which are licensed via an empty topic and identified via the discourse. It is in this intriguing way that bilingualism matters. The universal strategy resembles the analysis of topic-drop as required for adult German (with one important exception, namely that topic-drop is syntactically constrained in adult German). The German input is thus analysable in terms of discourse licensing. As a consequence, omitted subjects are interpreted as empty topics in child grammar, identified by the discourse. These topics are syntactically 3rd person, even if the speaker or the hearer are intended. Adult Italian, which exhibits argument omissions, is also analysable in terms of discourse licensing. Interestingly, the bilingual German–Italian child uses discourse licensing in Italian, although s/he has acquired finite verb morphology and s/he has acquired that Italian can license and identify empty subjects via person agreement morphology. It is very difficult to find ‘odd’ omissions in bilingual (and monolingual) Italian due to the null-subject character of the language. But we found ‘odd’ realizations which we interpreted as indicating that the child has used discourse licensing in this language as well. If seen this way, i.e., if odd realizations in Italian have the same underlying structure as odd omissions in German, the German–Italian bilingual child can be observed to use discourse licensing in Italian (and German, of course). The bilingual Italian–French child does not do so (or does so to a much lower degree) in Italian. Since adult French does not show argument omissions at all, discourse licensing fails; in other words there are no input strings which are analysable in terms of discourse licensing. This could be the reason why the Italian–French child behaves exactly as the two monolingual children.

Conclusion In this article, we presented data from bilingual children with three different language combinations: German–Italian, German–French and Italian–French and analysed them with respect to both qualitative and quantitative aspects. With respect to frequencies, it turned out that the German–Italian children realized too many subjects. The German–French children patterned like the monolingual child in French. The bilingual


30

First Language

Italian–French child patterned like monolingual children in both languages. Therefore, it is implausible to define cross-linguistic influence only from the perspective of the more complex language (Italian); our results show that the respective other language also has to be taken into account. All children, including the monolinguals, omitted 1st (and some also 2nd) person subjects in French and in German, contra the adult systems. The overuse of Italian subject pronouns was also mainly found with 1st person pronouns. We therefore tried to argue in favour of a unified analysis of odd omissions and realizations in terms of discourse licensing. Oddness surfaces syntactically as 3rd person. As already pointed out, more research on the data of monolingual children concerning both odd realizations and omissions would be interesting. We would predict that monolingual Italian children also produce ‘odd’ realizations but less often than bilingual Italian children with German as second first language. We would further predict that ‘odd’ realizations occur in monolingual French children, but less than in German monolingual children, which have to be investigated. If we are right, bilingual German– French should not show cross-linguistic influence in French as in the documented Italian–French case since both differ in all important aspects for a common analysis on the basis of one language (i.e., no cross-linguistic influence). Funding The research project on which this article is based was financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Notes 1. Omission = subject omission, DP = realization of the subject as a DP like It. la ragazza ‘the girl’, clitic = realization of the subject as a clitic like Fr. je lis le livre ‘I read the book’, an option which is non-existent in Italian and German, strong pronoun = realization of the subject as a strong pronoun like Ger. ich lese das Buch ‘I read the book’, weak pronoun = realization of the subject as a weak pronoun like Ger. es regnet ‘it rains’, an option which is non-existent in Italian and French (notice that the expletive in French is a clitic). 2. Since adults also produce speech errors, we included the category omiss. −targ. which equals target-deviant omissions. Figures 2, 3 and 4 nicely show that this category does not exist. Realization = realization of the subject position with a phonetically non-null element, omiss. + targ. = target-like omission. In German and French, target-like omissions are omissions in first position of root clauses. 3. The research project was directed by Natascha Müller at Bergische Universität Wuppertal ([email protected]). For further details see Cantone, Kupisch, Schmitz, and Müller (2008), Hauser-Grüdl, Witzmann, Leray, Arencibia Guerra, and Müller (2010), Müller, Cantone, Kupisch, and Schmitz (2002) and Müller, Kupisch, Schmitz, and Cantone (2007). 4. We added the German–French bilingual child Caroline to Hauser-Grüdl’s original diagram here. 5. Clahsen (1982) was the first to notice that monolingual German children use constructions like ich macht ‘I makes’. It would be necessary, according to our approach, to analyse these in terms of the discourse-pragmatic contribution. 6. Note that in French, only a few irregular verbs have phonetically different forms for 1st and 3rd person (singular), e.g., aller: je vais vs. il va; avoir: j’ai vs. il a. 7. The subject realizations and omissions produced by Carlotta are presented and discussed in detail in Schmitz (2007) and therefore not included in this article.


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8. There are examples in the corpus where the children have combined a 1st person pronoun with a 3rd person finite verb, such as: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f)

ich [ə] ein krone hat, so ein krone / (Caroline, 3;1.0) intended: ich habe eine krone, so eine krone ‘I have a crown, such a crown’ da bleibt ich/ (Amélie, 2;10.17) intended: da bleibe ich ‘there I stay’ ich fährt wieder weg nach hause/ (Jan, 2;10.8) intended: ich fahre wieder weg nach hause ‘I drive again away home’ weil du keine hat/ (Céline, 2;8.29) intended: weil du keine hast ‘because you don’t have any’ moi, j’a à boire/ (Alexander, 2;8.12) intended: moi, j’ai à boire ‘me, I have (something) to drink’ je m’a fait mal/ (Amélie, 2;7.6) intended: je me suis fait mal (additional auxiliary error) ‘I have hurt myself’ (g) moi est dedans/ (Grégoire, 2;3.0) intended: je suis dedans ‘I’m inside’

Generally, these uses are analysed as agreement errors in child language (which are rare, however). It would be interesting to study examples as those in (8), (9) and (11) as cases of a kind of default agreement too (see fifth section). However, one would have to analyse the subject pronoun pragmatically (and find out whether it is used deictically or anaphorically) in order to integrate these examples into our approach. 9. Since we are mainly interested in subject omissions in the present article, we cannot include a discussion about the different subject pronouns. Strong subject pronouns are analysed as pronouns which double the subject clitic (see Schmitz & Müller, 2008 for references and a discussion of French clitics and strong pronouns in terms of the external and internal structure) in constructions like the following: Moi, je pense que la vie est devenue plus difficile ‘Me, I think that life has become more difficult’. Acquisition seems to be sensitive to the internal structure of pronouns (independently of whether they are clitic or not): Schmitz and Müller (2008) observe that pronouns with an N-layer (a referential layer) are acquired before those who lack this layer. Thus, it is the internal structure of pronouns which matters for acquisition, not their external structure (i.e., whether they project a full DP or only a deficient structure). 10. Much more research will have to be done concerning the German system, since, although we did not find many examples in the adult interactions we studied (see Figure 3), omission of 1st person pronouns are possible, but under discourse-pragmatic conditions which still have to be defined. Only in cases where the role of the participant does not change are subject omissions of 1st person grammatical, e.g., Speaker A: Kannst du mir mit dem text helfen? ‘Can you help me with the text?’, Speaker B: Nee, (ich) hab jetzt keine zeit ‘no, (I) don’t have time’ vs. Speaker A: Ich werde den unterricht allein vorbereiten ‘I will prepare the teaching by myself’, Speaker B: *(ich) hab keine zeit ‘(I) don’t have time’. Notice that verbal morphology


32

11.

12. 13.

14.

First Language

hab is unambiguously 1st person, notwithstanding, the 1st person subject pronoun cannot be dropped. As we have outlined before, expletive il is the only type of omitted subject in adult French free conversation. We have also argued that the expletive can only be omitted in declarative clauses. In interrogative clauses, only a special morphology (qui) can tolerate empty expletives. A more thorough description in terms of features is needed. We want to thank Joachim Jacobs for the following German examples. In the ungrammatical example mentioned in note 10, ich is not anaphoric like in this case, but it is not co-indexed with du either. More research is necessary in German in order to come up with a much more refined analysis of topic-drop in this language. Roeper (1999) refers to this strategy as part of a Minimal Default Grammar.

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The null-subject parameter at the interface between

The null-subject parameter at the interface between

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