Room 52.939 (Campus Poblenou) / Zoom
12:30 Juana M. Liceras (University of Ottawa) "Formal linguistics and bilingualism: the “two in one” paradox and the psychological reality of lexical transparency" (Abstract)

Abstract: We would like to discuss two theoretical issues that have methodological implications and will approach the two issues from a linguistic and a psycholinguistic perspective.

We would first like to address how 2L1 speakers compare to their respective L1 speakers. This comparison has implications for representation, processing, and acquisition. From the point of view of representation, the relevant question would be whether a bilingual is the addition of two monolinguals (Grosjean, 1989). In the case of processing, it would be important to determine how the bilingual and the monolingual child operationalize lexical access: does the bilingual child access the lexicon of one language in the same way as the respective monolingual? When it comes to acquisition, we would ask, on the one hand, whether both developmental stages are comparable and, on the other, whether the divergence from their respective adult production and comprehension is similar. In this respect, while overgeneralization patterns can be shared, crosslinguistic influence can only occur in the case of the bilinguals. Given this, it could be the case that for a given representation the difference is linked to crosslinguistic influence and we could, for instance, address whether monolingual English is going to have less “foot-s” or “tooth-s” than bilingual English, and, if so, why. 

The second issue that we would like to discuss is the so-called psychological reality of the different levels of language structure and usage (Sapir, 1933; Beeman 2012; Al Mubaideen, 2015). For instance, is it the case that we use a productive rule to utter “dogs” (dog -> dogs)? or do we retrieve the plural “dogs” as a unit? On a different level, what is the representation of null categories in the mind of the bilingual and the monolingual child and how are they processed and acquired?

Taking as a point of departure the two axes “two-in-one” and “psychological reality”, the main objective of this presentation is to revisit our research on 2L1 acquisition of child English-Spanish and L1 acquisition of child English and child Spanish (Fernández Fuertes & Liceras, 2010; Liceras, Fernández Fuertes & Alba de la Fuente, 2012; Liceras & Fernández Fuertes, 2019). The specific topics that constitute our focus of attention are the following: (1) the acquisition (production/omission) of sentential subjects; and (2) the acquisition (production/omission) of copula verbs. In the case of both subjects and copulas, we have compared child bilingual and child monolingual data, which speaks to the issue of “two in one”; and we have accounted for crosslinguistic influence in terms of lexical transparency which can be considered an instantiation of “psychological reality”.