This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Liceras, J. M. Articles by Díaz, L. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Topic-drop versus pro-drop: null subjects and pronominal subjects in the Spanish L2 of Chinese, English, French, German and Japanese speakers

University of Ottawa

Lourdes Díaz

Univesitat Pompeu Fabra

Recent developments within the so-called Principles and Parameters model of acquisition argue for a clear-cut separation of Universal Grammar (UG) principles from parametric options and locate all parameters within functional categories (Borer, 1984; Lebeaux, 1988; Chomsky, 1991). This has led Tsimpli and Roussou (1991) to propose that adult L2 (second language) learners have access to UG principles but do not reset the parameters of the L2, which amounts to saying that null subjects in the adult Spanish L2 may or may not have the same status as native Spanish null subjects, depending on the speakers’ L1 (first language) and the UG principles at stake. In the case of L1 acquisition, Rizzi (1994) and Hyams (1994) provide a competence account of null subjects in early child English which relate them to adult English Diary Drop and German-style topic-drop rather than to Spanish-style pro-drop. They specifically argue that these missing subjects are restricted to the first position of non-wh root clauses and that fixing the null subject parameter will consist of incorporating the ROOT=CP principle into this grammar. In this paper, we analyse the Spanish L2 oral spontaneous data produced by adult L1 speakers of pro-drop and topic-drop languages in an attempt to provide a competence account of null subjects in adult nonnative Spanish. Our data show that, unlike early English grammars,all the Spanish non-native grammars contain null subjects both in matrix and subordinate clauses, and that this is the case at the early and advanced stages. It also shows that many non-native pronominal subjects do not have the same value as native Spanish subjects and that subject pronouns are used for identification purposes. It is suggested that these data provide evidence for a model of L2 acquisition where adult non-native grammar construction resorts to a default licensing procedure which allows null pronouns provided they can be identified.

Second Language Research, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1-40 (1999)
DOI: 10.1191/026765899678128123


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. Rothman Knowledge of A/A'-dependencies on subject extraction with two types of infinitives in non-native Portuguese adult bilingualism International Journal of Bilingualism, March 1, 2009; 13(1): 111 - 140. [Abstract] [PDF]

				C. Lozano Focus and split-intransitivity: the acquisition of word order alternations in non-native Spanish Second Language Research, April 1, 2006; 22(2): 145 - 187. [Abstract] [PDF]

				H. Oshita Is there anything there when there is not there? Null expletives and second language data Second Language Research, April 1, 2004; 20(2): 95 - 130. [Abstract] [PDF]

				S. Wakabayashi The acquisition of non-null subjects in English: a minimalist account Second Language Research, January 1, 2002; 18(1): 28 - 71. [Abstract] [PDF]

				J. M. Liceras, E. Valenzuela, and L. Diaz L1/L2 Spanish grammars and the pragmatic deficit hypothesis Second Language Research, April 1, 1999; 15(2): 161 - 190. [Abstract] [PDF]