The acquisition of subjects in 2L1 Romanian

The acquisition of subjects in 2L.1 Romanian 39 THE ACQUISITION OF SUBJECTS IN 2L1 ROMANIAN Veronica Tomescu* Abstract: The present paper charts the acquisition of Romanian subjects in a Romanian-Hungarian bilingual context, on the basis of two longitudinal corpora. The main results reveal early acquisition of subject use and relatively early sensitivity to the pragmatic constraints governing overt pronominal subjects. A higher percentage of overt subjects which differs both from the input and from what has been reported for L1 Romanian may however indicate that this is an area vulnerable in bilingual acquisition as a syntax/pragmatics interface phenomenon. Keywords: Romanian-Hungarian bilinguals, subjects, syntactic-pragmatic interface 1. Introduction The overuse of overt subject pronouns in null subject languages in bilingual contexts has been studied both in combinations involving one null subject language and one non-null-subject language (Paradis and Navarro 2003, Haznedar 2007, Serratrice 2002, 2007, Dal Pozzo 2012, Hinzelin 2003, Juan-Garau and Perez-Vidal 2000, Zwanziger et al. 2005, Serratrice 2013, Argyri and Sorace 2007, Villa-García and SuárezPalma 2016) and those involving two null subject languages (Bonfieni 2018, Sorace et al. 2009, Bel 2003). One common explanation is that the null/overt subject alternation is a phenomenon at the syntax/discourse interface (Sorace and Filiaci 2006, Sorace 2011) which makes it more vulnerable, especially in 2L1 acquisition. The present paper documents the acquisition of Romanian subjects in a RomanianHungarian setting, in the early stages of acquisition. The fact that both languages allow null subjects in finite clauses makes this particular bilingual context suitable for examining whether the effects of bilingualism are visible in the acquisition of subjects, independent of cross-linguistic interference. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes and compares the realization of subjects in Romanian and Hungarian. Section 3 presents previous research on the acquisition of subjects in null subject languages, with particular emphasis on bilingual contexts, as well as on the acquisition of subjects in L1 Romanian. Section 4 contains the study itself, and section 5 discusses the results. 2. Romanian and Hungarian subjects 2.1 Romanian subjects Romanian is an Inflection-licensed null subject language (Coene and Avram 2008), As such, it allows null subjects in finite sentences (1a) and lacks expletives (1b). * University of Bucharest, . Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics XX, 1, 39-63, ISSN 2069-9239, E-ISSN 2392-8093 40 (1) VERONICA TOMESCU a. b. Vine. comes ‘He/she is coming.’ Plouă. rains ‘It is raining.’ Another property of Inflection-licensed null subject languages is the availability of pre- and postverbal subjects (2a, b). In Romanian, both lexical and auxiliary verbs move to Inflection (Dobrovie-Sorin 1994, Avram 1999, Alboiu 2002). The basic word order is VSO (Dobrovie-Sorin 1994, Alboiu 2002). According to Cornilescu (1997), preverbal subjects occupy a TopicP in the left periphery of the clause; Alboiu (2002) on the other hand, in line with Dobrovie-Sorin (1994), argues that in Romanian the topicalized subject moves to the Specifier of the IP, an A-bar position. The postverbal subject is base-generated inside the VP and receives Nominative case from the verb which has moved to Inflection (Dobrovie-Sorin 1994, Avram 1999, Alboiu 2002). (2) a. b. Ion vine mâine. Ion comes tomorrow ‘Ion is coming tomorrow.’ Vine Ion. comes Ion ‘Ion is coming.’ Knowledge of subject use is also a matter of discourse pragmatics. According to Alboiu (2002), preverbal subjects normally indicate old/presupposed information, whereas new information is usually conveyed by means of presentational focus and should occur postverbally. Contrastively focused elements may optionally move to the left periphery. Alboiu (2002) proposes that the landing site of the focused constituent is SpecIP, due to the verb adjacency requirement: no constituents can intervene between the preverbal focused constituent and the verb. However, the movement is not syntactically required and the focused element may well remain in postverbal position, with phonological stress indicating focus. Consider the sentences in (3a): (3) a. b. A venit UN COPIL. / UN COPIL a venit. has come a child a child has come ‘It is a child that has come.’ EL a venit, nu ea. he has come not her ‘It is he who has come, not her.’ Overt pronominal subjects are felicitous when contrastively focused – such as (3b) above – or when indicating topic shift. On the other hand Zafiu (2008) argues that Romanian may in certain circumstances allow overt pronominal subjects with topic continuity function (see example 5, taken from Teodorescu 2017). Consequently, the subject in (4a) can be interpreted as having both topic shift and topic continuity The acquisition of subjects in 2L.1 Romanian 41 interpretation (that is the pronoun subject can be coindexed with either the subject or the object of the previous clause). Occasionally, pronominal subjects may serve to disambiguate in the case of different gender (see example 4b). (4) (5) Ion îl caută pe Petre, dar el a plecat. Ion him look for PE Petre but he has left ‘Ion is looking for Petre, but he has left.’ b. Ion o caută pe Maria, dar ea a plecat. Ion her look for PE Maria but she has left ‘Ion is looking for Maria, but she has left.’ Cărtărescu a revoluţionat romanul românesc contemporan. Cărtărescu has revolutionized novel-the Romanian contemporary ?(El) a scris mai multe romane. he has written more many novels ‘Cărtărescu revolutionized the contemporary Romanian novel. He wrote several novels.’ a. When not evidently informative, however, pronominal subjects should be omitted. The overt personal pronoun subject in (6) is pragmatically odd. (6) Copilul a venit acasă, ??el a mâncat şi ??el şia . child-the has come home he has eaten and he himself has scris temele written homework-the ‘The child came home, he ate, and he did his homework.’ 2.2 Hungarian subjects Hungarian, just like Romanian, is also an Inflection-licensed null subject language, with the verb moving to Inflection. It allows null subjects and does not have expletives (É. Kiss 2004). Pronominal subjects are syntactically optional. They may be expressed when indicating focus (7a), topic shift, but also sometimes topic continuity (É. Kiss 1992). Kocsány (1995) argues that the personal pronoun subject may also have topic continuity interpretation. Consider example (7b) below: if the pronoun (Ő ‘he/she’) is unstressed, it indicates topic shift and will refer to the boy. Whereas, if stressed, it will indicate topic continuity and will refer to the girl (The girl was telling the boy to hurry, as she, for her part, had immediately understood). (7) a. b. ŐK jöttek. they came ‘It is they who came.’ A lány már sürgette a fiút. Ő rögtön megértette, the girl a (...truncated)