Crosslinguistic influence in English-Greek bilingual acquisition*

Abstract

This study tests the proposal that structures which involve the syntax-pragmatics interface and instantiate a surface overlap between the two languages are vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence in bilingual acquisition (e.g. Muller & Hulk 2001). We investigate whether crosslinguistic influence occurs only in one direction – from English to Greek, in this case – in older bilingual children. The study considers experimental data from 32 English-Greek bilingual children, 16 Greek-dominant living in Greece and 16 English-dominant living in the UK and monolingual control groups regarding particular syntax-pragmatics interface and narrow syntax structures. Results reveal that certain structures are selectively vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence but only in the English-dominant bilinguals’ grammar, which offers only partial support to the hypothesis.