Abstract
This paper intends to test different accounts of bilingual reference production against the production of referring expressions in Italian by German‒Italian bilingual adolescents. In particular, we investigate to what extent bilingual referring expressions involve transfer from one language to the other, result from processing and dominance variables, and are the outcome of a process of language change. We will show that each of these hypotheses makes a precise prediction about which referential strategy bilinguals should adopt. The production of referring expressions is examined in the context of a story-telling task. Based on the analysis of overspecified forms, clitic omissions, and agreement mismatches, as well as on correlations with dominance factors, we argue in favor of the relevance of dominance and processing factors for bilingual reference production. Finally, we verify the possibility of generalizing our conclusions to a different linguistic domain, concerning the expression of word order in main clauses.
Highlights
When analyzing bilingual language production, it is common to observe the emergence of forms and form-function mappings that may differ from each of the bilinguals’ two languages
In the remaining of this section, we review previous attempts to analyze bilingual reference production in terms of the categories introduced and formulate the hypotheses of our study
We identified all instances of clitic omission, describing the type of structure in which the omission occurred or the type of clitic that was missing
Summary
When analyzing bilingual language production, it is common to observe the emergence of forms and form-function mappings that may differ from each of the bilinguals’ two languages. There has been a tradition of studies proposing a structural account of bilingual language production, based on the analysis of the linguistic features of the two languages in contact. All these studies start from the observation that bilinguals differentiate their two languages from early on (see, for example, De Houwer 1990; Francis 2011; Lanza 2000; Petitto and Kovelman 2003).
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