Castro Tammer, Rothman Jason, Westergaard Marit
Department of Language and Culture, UiT Arctic University of NorwayTromsø, Norway.
School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of ReadingReading, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2017 Aug 15;8:1382. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01382. eCollection 2017.
This study explores the interpretation of null and overt object pronouns by Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and European Portuguese (EP) bidialectal bilinguals. Object pronouns are a particularly good domain to examine, given that, particularly with respect to null objects, the underlying syntax as well as the semantic and discourse constraints that regulate their distributions in the two varieties are superficially different but inherently similar. We test the extent to which native BP speakers who moved to Portugal in adulthood and have lived there for a considerable time display cross-linguistic influence in either direction. Each subject is tested twice, once in BP mode and once in EP mode, which allows us not only to test if they have acquired the EP target structure but also to test the extent to which acquisition of EP might have consequences for the same domain in BP. Our results show that the high degree of typological proximity between the L1 and the L2 may contribute to L1 attrition and hinder target-like performance (i.e., processing) of L2 properties. We relate the findings to key theoretical questions and debates within the context of the larger field of bilingual studies, particularly with respect to L1 attrition and L2 acquisition.
本研究探讨了巴西葡萄牙语（BP）和欧洲葡萄牙语（EP）双语者对空宾语代词和显性宾语代词的理解。宾语代词是一个特别适合研究的领域，因为特别是对于空宾语而言，两种变体中支配其分布的底层句法以及语义和语篇限制表面上不同但本质上相似。我们测试了成年后移居葡萄牙并在那里生活了相当长时间的以BP为母语的人在两个方向上表现出跨语言影响的程度。每个受试者都要接受两次测试，一次是BP模式，一次是EP模式，这不仅使我们能够测试他们是否掌握了EP目标结构，还能测试掌握EP对BP同一领域可能产生影响的程度。我们的结果表明，第一语言（L1）和第二语言（L2）之间高度的类型学相似性可能会导致L1损耗，并阻碍L2属性的目标式表现（即处理）。我们将这些发现与双语研究大背景下的关键理论问题和争论联系起来，特别是关于L1损耗和L2习得的问题。
