| This dissertation investigates cross-linguistic influence in child bilingualism by exploring the ways in which the syntactic possibilities for representing a given semantic target in one of a bilingual's languages affect the productions representing that target in their other language (and vice versa). Muffler & Hulk (2001) propose that cross-linguistic influence occurs when two languages overlap; that is, when one of the languages allows for more than one syntactic realization for a given semantic target and the other uses one of these syntactic realizations exclusively or predominantly. In this situation, Muller & Hulk predict that the child will use the form that applies to the two languages, in some cases resulting in non-target-like forms. This prediction is tested through a case study of naturalistic data produced by an English-Spanish simultaneous bilingual child between the ages of 2;3 and 5;6. The results show that Muller & Hulk's hypothesis predicts only some of the non-target-like forms arising from cross-linguistic influence.; The analysis focused on three domains: generic nouns, nominal possessor phrases, and extraction constructions involving the object of a preposition. In each domain, evidence of cross-linguistic influence is isolated by comparing the bilingual data to data from monolingual children acquiring Spanish and English, and to the transcribed input provided to the child by adults.; The bilingual child showed substantial evidence of cross-linguistic influence in the use of pied-piping versus preposition stranding, despite a lack of overlap in the adult input data: The Spanish adult data contain only pied-piping, the English adult data contain only preposition stranding, but the bilingual child uses both constructions in both languages. In the use of generic nouns, the child showed evidence of an effect of English in Spanish, but not vice-versa. The English adult data contain only bare generics, while the Spanish adult data contained these as well as generics with a definite determiner. As for nominal possessors, English and Spanish both allow post-nominal of/de possessives, whereas English also allows pre-nominal's to mark possessor. The input data reflect these three options, and cross-linguistic influence occurred in both directions. |
