Anaphoric biases of null and overt pronominal subjects in child heritage Romanian
Anaphoric biases of null and overt pronominal subjects in child heritage Romanian

Summary/Abstract: This study investigates intra-sentential pronominal subject resolution in ambiguous anaphora contexts by 7- and 10-year-old heritage Romanian-French bilinguals compared to age-matched monolingually raised Romanian children living in the homeland. The data come from a binary sentence picture matching task which assessed the interpretation of (3rd person singular) null and overt pronominal subjects in while clauses as well as the role of differential object marking on pronominal anaphora resolution. The 7-year-olds did not distinguish between the two subject types and had a subject bias irrespective of the nature of the embedded subject. The 10-year-old group distinguished between the two subject types but the distinction was significant only when the object in the matrix clause was differentially marked. They had a target-like subject bias with null anaphoric pronouns and no bias with overt anaphoric pronouns. These results indicate that in spite of input reduction after onset of schooling the child heritage speakers show progress with respect to pronominal anaphora resolution. The comparison with age-matched monolingually raised Romanian children living in the homeland revealed a similar delay and a similar response pattern. At age 10, antecedent choice with overt pronominal subjects is not adult-like with any of the two groups. One single difference was found. The 10-year-old monolingual children distinguished more categorically between null and overt pronominal subjects. The delay is accounted for in terms of the hybrid behaviour of overt pronominal subjects in Romanian and early inability to integrate different information sources in the processing of anaphora resolution, a phenomenon at the interface between syntax and discourse pragmatics.

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