Age of onset, language dominance and dialectal variation: Catalan copula selection in locative contexts with (non-)eventive subjects

Abstract

ABSTRACT Literature on early language acquisition has observed that age of onset of acquisition (AoA) is relevant for certain grammatical phenomena. Simultaneous bilinguals receive regular and extensive exposure to two languages from birth (Müller, 2009), whereas sequential child learners get in extensive contact to LB once the LA has developed to a certain degree (Meisel, J. M. [2013]. Sensitive phases in successive language acquisition: The Critical Period Hypothesis revisited. In C. Boeckx & K. Grohmann (Eds.), Handbook of biolinguistics (pp. 69–85). Cambridge University Press). Exposure to LB can take place early in childhood (eL2 learners, age 3;0) or starting with elementary school (cL2 learners, age 6;0). In this study, 34 participants were recruited from different Catalan-speaking regions and displayed different AoA-profiles (12 simultaneous, 13 eL2 and 9 cL2 learners) and different degrees of language dominance (17 balanced, 10 Spanish and 7 Catalan dominant). We conducted a Preference Task to examine Catalan copula selection in locative contexts with (non-)eventive subjects, since it may pattern differently in Catalan/Spanish: Both languages select ésser/ser for eventive subjects, non-eventive subjects take estar in Spanish but show variation in Catalan. Our study examines whether the factors AoA, language dominance or the speaker’s linguistic variety determine copula selection. In a nutshell, all speakers preferred ésser with eventive subjects. For non-eventive subjects, the results show that language dominance and speaker’s linguistic variety predict copula preference.