Pronominal Use/Knowledge in Late L1-Attrition and Near-Native L2-Acquisition: The Case of Pro-drop L1 Bulgarian and Non-pro-drop L2 German

Abstract

This paper reports on two studies, investigating the use and knowledge of overt and null pronominal subjects of a speaker in both her attrited L1-Bulgarian and near-native late L2-German. Both studies focus on studying pronominal subjects in a pro-drop-L1/non-pro-drop but expletive- and topic-drop-L2 constellation. Phenomena at the syntax-discourse interface have been claimed problematic in similar cases, namely for attrited L1 Italian-L2 English and L1 English-near-native L2 Italian speakers (Interface Hypothesis, Sorace, Linguist Approache Bilingual 1:1–33, 2011; Sorace and Filiaci, Sec Lang Res 22(3):339–368, 2006; and related work). Both groups overused overt subjects in topic-continuity contexts compared to non-attrited Italians. However, recent studies indicate that this kind of attrition is temporary since L1-knowledge can be reactivated after short re-exposure to L1 (Chamorro et al., Lang Cognit 19(3):520–532, 2016; Genevska-Hanke, Linguistik im Nordwesten: Beitrage zum 8. Nordwestdeutschen Linguistischen Kolloquium, Bremen, pp 1–31, 2017; Kopke and Genevska-Hanke, Front Psychol, 2018). This is confirmed by the present longitudinal investigation of late L1-attrition, supporting stability of fully-developed L1s (Schmid and Kopke, First Language Attrition, pp 1–12, 2007). The results of the L2-study revealed that the use of German subjects of the near-native speaker differed significantly from that of L1-speakers. She failed to differentiate distinct subject types, using overt referential, expletive and arbitrary subjects interchangeably to replace null referential and expletive subjects. Hence differences were found for both grammatical phenomena and phenomena at the syntax-discourse interface.