The acquisition of recursively embedded noun modifiers in Romanian by Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals

Abstract

The present study examines how simultaneous bilinguals acquire phenomena which are delayed in monolingual development. It compares how 5- and 7-year-old Hungarian-Romanian bilinguals and Romanian monolinguals comprehend complex DPs with recursively embedded locative Prepositional Phrase and subject relative clause modifiers. The order of acquisition is the same in L1 and in 2L1: during the early stages children assign both conjunctive and recursive readings to complex DPs with embedded modifiers and gradually reduce the number of conjunctive responses to the advantage of recursive ones. At age 7 neither the monolinguals nor the bilinguals behave adult-like. But the results reveal a significant increase in recursive responses from age 5 to age 7 only in L1. In 2L1, at this stage, there is an increase only in the number of conjunctive responses and in errors which target the lexical preposition. Our findings show that the simultaneous bilinguals follow the same acquisition path as the monolinguals but at a slower pace. We argue that when a derivationally complex structure is vulnerable in L1 acquisition, cross-linguistic interference effects may cause an even more prolonged delay in 2L1 acquisition.