L2 acquisition of Bulgarian clitic doubling: A test case for the Interface Hypothesis

The purpose of this study is to expand the testing ground of the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace, 2006) by investigating the degree to which second language (L2) learners of Bulgarian with English as their first language (L1) had acquired the pragmatic function of clitic doubling as a topicality marker. Advanced and intermediate L2 speakers of Bulgarian, as well as a control group of Bulgarian native speakers, participated in the experiment. The experimental materials included a proficiency test and a pragmatic felicity task. The results showed that the intermediate participants did not differentiate between the felicitous and the infelicitous options in the pragmatic felicity task in a target-like manner as their responses either did not exhibit a statistically significant difference or favored the response closest to the L1. However, the advanced L2 learners had successfully acquired the pragmatic meaning of clitic doubling in Bulgarian and performed in a native-like manner. The study highlights the fact that successful learning at the syntax–discourse interface cannot be excluded, and more research – exploring as many interface conditions as possible – needs to be carried out in order to validate the Interface Hypothesis as a legitimate constraint that permanently hinders native-like performance.

[1]  Jeannette Schaeffer,et al.  The Acquisition of Direct Object Scrambling and Clitic Placement: Syntax and pragmatics , 2000 .

[2]  Lydia White,et al.  GRAMMATICAL THEORY, INTERFACES AND L2 KNOWLEDGE , 2007 .

[3]  O. Arnaudova.  Saliency and Contrast in Colloquial Bulgarian: Clitic Left Dislocation versus Contrastive Topicalization , 2004 .

[4]  Guglielmo Cinque,et al.  Clitic reduplication constructions in Bulgarian , 2008 .

[5]  Lydia White,et al.  Second language acquisition at the interfaces , 2011 .

[6]  A. Sorace,et al.  Theoretical and developmental issues in the syntax of subjects: Evidence from near-native Italian , 2007 .

[7]  Roumyana Slabakova,et al.  Is there a critical period for semantics? , 2006 .

[8]  Antonella Sorace,et al.  Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian , 2006 .

[9]  Tracy Holloway King,et al.  A handbook of Slavic clitics , 2000 .

[10]  Olga Mišeska Tomić.  The Balkan Sprachbund morpho-syntactic properties: An introduction , 2004 .

[11]  Holger Hopp.  Syntactic and interface knowledge in advanced and near-native interlanguage grammars , 2004 .

[12]  Caroline Heycock,et al.  First language attrition and syntactic subjects: A study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English , 2004 .

[13]  S. Montrul.  Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic convergence , 2004, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

[14]  Dalina Kallulli,et al.  Direct Object Clitic Doubling in Albanian and Greek , 2000 .

[15]  Robert W. Bley-Vroman.  THE COMPARATIVE FALLACY IN INTERLANGUAGE STUDIES: THE CASE OF SYSTEMATICITY1 , 1983 .

[16]  Michael Iverson,et al.  Interface vulnerability and knowledge of the subjunctive/indicative distinction with negated epistemic predicates in L2 Spanish , 2008 .

[17]  B. Donaldson.  Nativelike right-dislocation in near-native French , 2011 .

[18]  J. Rothman.  How Pragmatically Odd! Interface Delays and Pronominal Subject Distribution in L2 Spanish , 2008 .

[19]  Antonella Sorace,et al.  Crosslinguistic influence at the syntax–pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English–Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition , 2004, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

[20]  Kevin R. Gregg.  SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR , 2004, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[21]  Cristóbal Lozano,et al.  The development of the syntax-information structure interface: Greek learners of Spanish , 2006 .

[22]  Roumyana Slabakova,et al.  A more careful look at the syntax–discourse interface , 2011 .

[23]  J. Rothman,et al.  The mind-context divide: on acquisition at the linguistic interfaces , 2011 .

[24]  Antonella Sorace,et al.  Pinning down the concept of “interface” in bilingualism , 2011 .

[25]  Antonella Sorace,et al.  Differentiating interfaces: L2 performance in syntax-semantics and syntax-discourse phenomena , 2006 .

[26]  Roumyana Slabakova,et al.  Telicity in the second language , 2001 .

[27]  Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux,et al.  Contemporary Perspectives on the Acquisition of Spanish , 1999 .