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Subject realization and crosslinguistic

interference in the bilingual acquisition of
Spanish and English: what is the role of the
input?

JOHANNE PARADIS and SAMUEL NAVARRO

Journal of Child Language / Volume 30 / Issue 02 / May 2003, pp 371 - 393

DOI: 10.1017/S0305000903005609, Published online: 05 June 2003

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0305000903005609

How to cite this article:

JOHANNE PARADIS and SAMUEL NAVARRO (2003). Subject realization and
crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: what
is the role of the input?. Journal of Child Language, 30, pp 371-393 doi:10.1017/
S0305000903005609

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J. Child Lang. 30 (2003), 371–393. f 2003 Cambridge University Press
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000903005609 Printed in the United Kingdom

Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in

the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English:
what is the role of the input ?*

JOHANNE PARADIS AND SAMUEL NAVARRO

University of Alberta

(Received 4 February 2002. Revised 25 October 2002)

ABSTRACT

This study investigated whether crosslinguistic interference occurs in

the domain of subject realization in Spanish in a bilingual acquisition
context. We were also interested in exploring whether the source of the
interference is due to child-internal crosslanguage contact between
English and Spanish, as is commonly assumed, or due to the nature of
the language input in a bilingual family, a factor which has not typically
been considered in studies of crosslinguistic influence. The use of sub-
jects in a null subject language like Spanish is a phenomenon linked to
the pragmatics/syntax interface of the grammar, and thus, is a domain
where crosslinguistic interference is predicted to be likely to occur in
bilingual acquisition (Müller & Hulk, 2001). Using spontaneous lan-
guage data available from CHILDES (www.childes.psy.cmu.edu), we
examined the use of overt subjects in Spanish by two Spanish mono-
lingual children (ages : 1 ; 8–2 ; 7 and 1 ; 8–1 ; 11) one Spanish–English bi-
lingual child (age 1 ; 9–2 ; 6) and their parental interlocutors. We looked
at the proportions of overt versus null subjects as well as the discourse-
pragmatic contexts of overt subject use by the children in order to un-
cover bilingual/monolingual differences in the distributional properties
and the functional determinants of subject realization. We also looked at
identical variables in the speech of the children’s parental interlocutors
to investigate the potential influence of the input on the children’s out-
put. Our results suggest that the bilingual child showed patterns in her
subject realizations in Spanish that could be interpreted as due to cross-
linguistic effects from English ; however, there is also evidence that these
effects may have a source in the input, rather than resulting from internal
crosslanguage contact. While our data do not permit us to distinguish

[*] Address for correspondence : Johanne Paradis, Department of Linguistics, University of

Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E7, Canada. e-mail : johanne.paradis@ualberta.ca
371
 PARADIS & NAVARRO

conclusively between these two possible sources, they indicate that future
research on crosslinguistic influence in bilingual acquisition should take
input into account.

Crosslinguistic interference in bilingual first language acquisition

Over a decade ago researchers in the field of bilingual first language acqui-
sition were debating whether bilingual children had one language system or
two in the initial period of development (e.g. Genesee, 1989). More recently,
the discussion has largely shifted from the ‘ one system or two ?’ dichotomy to
subtler questions about the interactions between bilingual children’s two
developing languages. For instance, numerous researchers have reported the
appearance of temporary but systematic structural influence from one lan-
guage to another in the course of bilingual development in the syntactic
(Döpke, 1998, 2000 ; Hulk & van der Linden, 1998 ; Müller, 1998 ; Yip &
Mathews, 2000 ; Müller & Hulk, 2001), phonological (Paradis, 2001) and
morphological (Nicoladis, 2002) domains. Implicit in this research is the
assumption that the bilingual children studied had two linguistic systems,
but that the two systems were not entirely autonomous in development.
However, researchers have not always found crosslinguistic influence to
occur in all domains investigated. For example, neither Paradis & Genesee
(1996, 1997) nor Hulk & Müller (2000) found crosslanguage interference
with respect to the use of root infinitives in Germanic/Romance language
pairs. The absence of crosslinguistic interference in some areas is important
because a new challenge facing researchers is to determine the limits and the
sources of crosslinguistic interference in bilingual acquisition. After all, if the
two developing languages of a bilingual child were to interact anywhere in all
domains of the linguistic system, then there would be little difference be-
tween the current perspective of two separate but non-autonomous systems,
and the perspective of one unitary initial system proposed in the context
of the ‘ one system or two? ’ debate. In other words, in order to claim that
a bilingual child can have separate but non-autonomous systems, we need
to show that crosslinguistic interference is not random, but instead is a con-
trolled and systematic phenomenon.
Towards meeting this challenge, Hulk & Müller (2000) and Müller & Hulk
(2001) have put forth a proposal defining the probable conditions for cross-
linguistic influence to occur in bilingual acquisition. These researchers
suggest that crosslinguistic interference is likely to occur at the pragmatics/
syntax interface of the linguistic system ; the point in language production
where the discourse-pragmatic context influences choices of syntactic struc-
ture. For example, in languages where subject or object arguments can be
omitted, the criteria determining their realization is largely based on dis-
course-pragmatic considerations such as shared knowledge between speaker
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 B I L I N G U A L A C Q U I S I T I O N O F S P A N I S H /E N G L I S H

and hearer. In addition to the notion that the pragmatics/syntax interface is

the most likely locus for crosslinguistic effects, Hulk & Müller (2000) and
Müller & Hulk (2001) further specify that the language pair being acquired
should meet other conditions for the interference to take place. There needs
to be an overlap at the surface level between the two languages for a certain
structure, while the underlying syntactic analyses for this overlap structure
are actually different in each language. Therefore, under these conditions,
the child is presented with competing evidence for what the underlying
representation should be for the overlap structure because the surface forms
from both languages could provide evidence for the grammatical system the
child is converging on in one language. Müller & Hulk (2001) argue that an
example of this kind of overlap exists between V2 Germanic and Romance
languages with respect to omission of object arguments. In V2 Germanic, an
object argument can be omitted entirely from the sentence if it is the topic of
discussion known to both speaker and hearer, whereas, the object cannot be
omitted entirely in Romance. But, in situations where pronominalization is
possible (i.e. information is known to speaker and hearer), a preverbal clitic
is used, and thus the canonical object position is empty, which results in a
possible overlap with the topic drop construction in Germanic. An example
of object topic drop in German from Müller & Hulk (2001 : 3) is given in (1).
In a parallel exchange in French or Italian, a pronominal clitic would be
required instead of the zero object in the answer to the question.

(1) Q : Kommst Du mit zur Titanic ?

‘ Will you come along to the Titanic ?’
Ans : Ø hab ich schon gesehen.
‘ I’ve already seen it. ’

Müller & Hulk (2001) examined object omissions in monolingual and bi-
lingual children and found that a developmental error common to both
monolinguals and bilinguals acquiring Romance, object omissions, was more
prevalent in the context of a Romance language being acquired simul-
taneously with a Germanic language. Thus, they suggested that the bilingual
children’s acquisition of the Romance language was interconnected with the
Germanic language in that the topic drop input from Germanic might
underlie the higher rates of object omission errors in French and Italian.
Although Müller & Hulk propose that crosslinguistic interference is likely
to take place at the pragmatics/syntax interface, they only tested one part of
this proposal in their study because they examined the frequency of object
omission errors without systematically examining the context of those errors.
As Allen (2001) points out, in order to build a convincing account of cross-
linguistic influence at the pragmatics/syntax interface, it is essential to look
at the discourse-pragmatic determinants of argument realization, as well as
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the structural outcomes. Our study looks at subject argument realization

in Spanish monolingual children and a Spanish–English bilingual child. We
examined the frequency of overt and null subjects, as well as the discourse-
pragmatic context of overt subject use, with the objective of addressing not
only the issue of whether crosslinguistic influence occurs, but also whether
the interference includes the pragmatics end of the pragmatics/syntax inter-
face. Previous research on the realization of subjects in the bilingual acqui-
sition of English and Romance has not addressed these issues (e.g. Juan
Garau & Perez Vidal, 2001 ; Serratrice, 2002).
Our study also explores an additional and fundamental question concern-
ing crosslinguistic interference in bilingual acquisition that has not received
much attention in the prior research on this topic, including Müller &
Hulk’s. This question regards the potential effect of parental input on the
crosslinguistic structures apparent in the child’s output. Other researchers
who have examined crosslanguage phenomena in bilingual development have
implicitly assumed that this is a psycholinguistic process internal to the mind
of the child. Even explanations of crosslinguistic effects that focus on overlap
or ambiguity in the dual language input assume that the contact between the
languages that produces target-deviant structures is the result of how the child
processes the input (Döpke, 1998 ; Müller & Hulk, 2001). But, when one
considers that bilingual children have two or at least one bilingual parent, the
kind of input they are exposed to is worth considering in detail. For instance,
bilingual children could receive non-native input replete with transfer errors.
Parents may not strictly adhere to a one-parent one-language rule of pres-
entation to the child at all times, and moreover, if the parents communicate
with each other in one language, one of them will be using their non-native
language. Furthermore, even the native language input bilingual children
receive from bilingual parents may be somewhat different from the input
monolingual children would receive in that language. For example, if a bi-
lingual parent has resided for a long time in an L2 majority community, they
may have developed a contact variety of their native language (cf. Silva-
Corvalán, 1994). In other words, it is possible that a bilingual child is pres-
ented with input that already has some inherent crosslinguistic interference,
and thus some crosslinguistic effects in the bilingual child’s production could
be reflective of the input rather than being the outcome of internal processes.
Accordingly, in our study we examined the parental interlocutors’ frequency
and discourse-pragmatic context of subject realization in Spanish in order
to compare their input with the children’s output. In brief, our study is
concerned with two issues : (1) investigating whether Müller & Hulk’s (2001)
proposal applies to subject as well as to object realizations/omissions, and
whether discourse-pragmatic principles can be part of crosslinguistic inter-
ference, and (2) investigating whether crosslinguistic interference could be
attributed to externally-controlled mechanisms.
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 B I L I N G U A L A C Q U I S I T I O N O F S P A N I S H /E N G L I S H

Subject realization in Spanish

Because the focus of our study is the use of subjects in the Spanish of a
Spanish–English bilingual child, it is important to discuss how these two
languages differ with respect to subject realization at the pragmatics/syntax
interface, and how this presents the kind of problem space Müller & Hulk
(2001) identified as being vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence. Like most
Romance languages, Spanish is a null subject language with rich person/
number morphology on the verb and thus, the appearance of overt pronomi-
nal and lexical subjects is grammatically optional and determined largely by
the discourse-pragmatic context. The choice of a speaker to realize a subject
in a null subject language like Spanish depends on considerations such as new
versus old information in the discourse, or functions like contrast or emphasis
(e.g. Silva-Corvalán, 1994; Davidson, 1996). The realization of subjects in
natural conversation in Spanish for adults has been estimated to be approxi-
mately 30 % of declarative utterances with a verb (Grinstead, 2000). In contrast,
overt subjects are grammatically obligatory in non-imperative sentences in
English, with just a few marginal exceptions. Discourse-pragmatic context
like new versus old information plays a role in argument reduction in English,
but argument reduction is achieved via pronominalization, not omission.
The use of subjects in Spanish clearly involves the pragmatics/syntax
interface of the grammar. Several researchers have adopted formal analyses
of overt subjects in Spanish and Italian as residing in a layer of sentence
structure where the grammatical component of the sentence interacts with
other cognitive systems. (Rizzi, 1997 ; Grinstead, 1998; Ordoñez & Treviño,
1999). This analysis of overt subjects in null subject Romance contrasts with
the typical formal analysis assumed for English where subjects reside within
the core inflectional layer of the sentence, rather than at the pragmatics/
syntax interface (e.g. Marantz, 1995 ; Radford, 1997). In spite of the different
underlying syntactic configurations and the relevance of pragmatic determi-
nants for realization, overt subjects appear in both Spanish and English, and
in the same canonical surface position, since both are SVO languages.1
Therefore, it can be argued that from the perspective of a Spanish–English
bilingual child, there is potential crosslanguage ambiguity in the input of the
type defined by Müller & Hulk (2001) as creating the potential for cross-
linguistic interference in bilingual development.

Subject realization in the acquisition of null-subject languages

According to Grinstead (1998, 2000), Spanish- and Catalan-speaking
monolingual children converge on the target grammar with respect to subject
[1] Spanish has much freer word order than English, and postverbal subjects and fronted
objects are not only common, but also can be related formally to the null subject
phenomenon since they are both reflexes of the pragmatics/syntax interface (Contreras,
1991 ; Grinstead, 1998).
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realization early on. He found that there is an initial stage before two years of
age where Spanish and Catalan monolingual children produce no overt sub-
jects even though they can produce utterances with verbs longer than two
morphemes, and so, the context for overt subject use is present. When overt
subjects emerge, they do so in tandem with some other phenomena linked
to the pragmatics/syntax interface such as post-verbal subjects and fronted
objects, and are used at a rate of 16 % of utterances with a verb (averaged
across five children) in the context of a naturalistic play session. Also exam-
ining longitudinal naturalistic data, Ezeizabarrena (2000) found a 20% rate
of overt subject use in both languages of bilingual Spanish- and Basque-
learning children from age 2 ; 0 to 4 ; 0. Interestingly, this approximate 20 %
realization level for two-year-olds also holds for both subject and object
argument realization in Inuktitut (Allen, 2000; Allen & Schröder, in press).
Furthermore, Allen (2000) found that the omission of both subject and object
arguments in these young Inuktitut speakers was determined by appropri-
ate discourse-pragmatic conditions (see also Guerriero, Cooper, Oshima-
Takane & Kuriyama, 2001, for similar conclusions about three-year-old
Japanese speakers).
These acquisition patterns for null subject languages appear quite different
from what has been found for children learning languages like English. Even
though English requires overt subjects, many children acquiring English
go through an early period where they omit subjects in non-imperative sen-
tences. Analysing data from Adam, Eve and Sarah (Brown, 1973), Bloom
(1990) found rates of subject suppliance to be 45 % on average from approxi-
mately two to two-and-a-half years of age. Valian (1990) compared subject
realization in Italian- and English-learning two-year-olds and found that the
English-learning children supplied subjects 69% of the time, while Italian-
learning children had a 30 % rate of overt subject use. Her study clearly
indicates the contrast in rates of subject realization between children acquir-
ing null subject and non-null subject languages. This contrast in frequency of
use, together with Guerriero et al. (2001) and Allen (2000)’s findings on the
discourse-pragmatic context of argument omissions, suggest that children
can converge on the correct properties of the pragmatics/syntax interface of
a null-subject target language at a very young age.

Predictions for Spanish–English bilingual first language acquisition

By examining the structural properties of adult Spanish and English and the
acquisition findings for Spanish and English, we can make predictions about
subject use in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish, in line with Müller &
Hulk (2001)’s proposal. First, a Spanish–English bilingual child may produce
more overt subjects than is typical of monolinguals in Spanish, and may not
exhibit the same two stage developmental pattern. This prediction is based
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 B I L I N G U A L A C Q U I S I T I O N O F S P A N I S H /E N G L I S H

on the supposition that English provides qualitative evidence for a competing

syntactic analysis for subjects (surface word order), and quantitative influ-
ence in terms of the sheer frequency of overt subjects used. More specifically,
we hypothesized that the frequency of occurrence of overt subjects in the
language where it is obligatory to use them (in this case English) may be
influencing the language where it is optional to use them. This influence may
cause the child to experience some period of confusion or delay in conver-
gence on the target system that would result in target-deviant outcomes such
as relatively frequent use of overt subjects, infelicitous application of the
discourse-pragmatic principles guiding overt subject use, or both.

METHOD

Participants
The data for the three child participants and their parental interlocutors
consisted of transcribed naturalistic language production samples available
through the CHILDES system (www.childes.psy.cmu.edu ; MacWhinney,
2000). Data are from the following Spanish and Bilingual corpora : Vila
(Serrat Sellabona [no date given]) for the child E, López Ornat (López
Ornat, 1994) for the child L, and Deuchar (Deuchar & Quay, 2000) for the
child M. The bilingual child, M, had a native Cuban Spanish-speaking
father and a native British English-speaking mother. The mother spoke a
Panamanian variety of Spanish, with some Cuban influence, as a second
language (personal communication). Both parents spoke Spanish to each
other and to M at home, and M received English input mainly from care-
takers in the crèche and from her maternal grandmother (Deuchar & Quay,
2000). As a comparison group for M, we included two Spanish-speaking
monolingual children at a comparable developmental stage to M. Both chil-
dren, E and L, were acquiring Spanish in Spain. We recognize the difficulty
in making generalizations across children who are acquiring different dialects
of Spanish (López Ornat, 1988). This is particularly important when we
consider that M’s father speaks Cuban Spanish. Speakers of Caribbean
Spanish dialects use pronoun subjects more frequently than speakers of other
dialects, although these varieties of Spanish are still null subject languages
(Toribio, 1994; Ticio, 2001). We take the possible influence of dialect into
account in our interpretation of both the children’s and the parents’ data.
The children’s ages and MLU’s in words are listed in Table 1. The chil-
dren E and M have longitudinal data spanning 10 and 9 months respectively,
but L’s data span just 4 months, and thus may not reveal developmental
trends. Data for E and M begin with the first transcript from their database
files where the context for the use of subjects is present, i.e. MLU >1.00 and
use of verbs. Overt subjects appear in all of L’s files.
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TABLE 1. Children’s ages and MLUWs in Spanish

M (bilingual) E (monolingual) L (monolingual)

Age MLUW Age MLUW Age MLUW

1 ; 09 1.26 1 ; 08 1.20 1 ; 08 1.99

1 ; 11 1.35 1 ; 09 1.26 1 ; 09 2.07
2;0 1.45 1 ; 10 1.10 1 ; 10 1.84
2 ; 02 2.12 1 ; 10 1.34 1 ; 11 2.07
2 ; 05 2.51 1 ; 11 1.29
2 ; 06 2.08 2;0 1.36
2 ; 01 1.39
2 ; 01 1.52
2 ; 03 1.97
2 ; 04 2.21
2 ; 05 1.89
2 ; 06 2.12
2 ; 07 2.30
2 ; 07 2.12

Coding
All the transcripts were coded by the second author, who is a native-speaker
of Chilean Spanish and a graduate student in linguistics. Coding included
the presence of overt subjects, the types of overt subjects (pronoun versus
lexical), and the discourse-pragmatic function of overt subject use. Utter-
ances from both the parental interlocutors and the children were coded. We
used an experimenter-created coding system, following the conventions of
CHAT, and compatible with the CLAN analysis programme (MacWhinney,
2000). Only structurally declarative utterances with a verb were coded, and
some of these were queries with interrogative intonation. We excluded im-
perative and structurally interrogative utterances, potentially unproductive
routines like que es eso ? ‘ what is that’, sentences with hay ‘there is _ ’, whole
repetitions of a preceding adult utterance, self repetitions, and recitations of
poems or songs.2
In addition to coding for the presence or absence of an overt subject,
we coded for the discourse-pragmatic function of the overt subjects. The
discourse-pragmatic functions we coded for were based on those used by other
researchers examining argument realization in the acquisition of Japanese,
Korean and Inuktitut (Clancy, 1997 ; Allen, 2000 ; Guerriero et al., 2001).
While these languages permit both subject and object argument omissions,
the discourse-pragmatic functions determining argument realization can be

[2] While non-subject interrogatives could in principle have null or overt subjects, the coding
system was made more straightforward by omitting all interrogatives. Most of the chil-
dren’s interrogatives were either ‘ donde esta X ?’ or the formulaic ‘que es eso?’, neither of
which contribute to our analyses. Thus, by omitting structural interrogatives, we were not
eliminating a major data source.
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 B I L I N G U A L A C Q U I S I T I O N O F S P A N I S H /E N G L I S H

applied to just subject arguments in the case of Spanish. We had three cat-
egories of realized subjects : (1) new information ; (2) given information, but
realization serves a discourse-pragmatic purpose, and (3) given information
and no discourse-pragmatic purpose could be identified for realization. The
first category, new information (NI), was employed when an overt subject
introduced a new referent in the discourse, or was referring to an old referent
that had not been mentioned recently (within 5–10 exchanges). Within the
second category, we coded for the following kinds of functions for the realiz-
ation of a subject when the subject could not be considered new infor-
mation : contrast (CON), query, (QUE), emphasis (EMP), and ABS (absent).
Contrast (CON) refers to an overt subject whose function served to dis-
ambiguate between two possible referents (typically two 3rd person referents)
or whose function was to focus on that subject. Query (QUE) was used when
the referent was being questioned (in an intonational interrogative) or used in
response to a question. Emphasis (EMP) was used to code overt subjects that
could be read as if they had more prosodic prominence, in other words, the
speaker seemed to intend to highlight that subject. Very often EMP subjects
were pronouns and in the parent’s speech to the children. Absent (ABS) was
used when the referent was not present in the visual field/space where dis-
course was taking place. Both Allen (2000) and Clancy (1997) found that
arguments were more likely to be realized when they were absent from the
physical space the discourse was taking place in. In the case of the parents
speech, we added an additional category called child directed speech (CDS).
The following kinds of utterances fell into this category : utterances where the
parents’ referred to themselves in the third person, such as Mami te amarra el
zapato ‘ mommy is going to tie your shoe ’, and utterances with the realization
of a known subject referent in a context where it appeared as if the parent was
repeating the argument in order to label the object for the child to teach the
child a new word. The third category of given information with no clear
discourse-pragmatic function was used when none of the other two categories
applied to an overt subject. We called this category low informativeness
(LINF). To summarize, each use of a realized subject in both the parents’
and the children’s speech was coded for which of these functions applied :
NI, CON, QUE, EMP, ABS, (CDS) and LINF. Sample excerpts from the
transcripts illustrating these coding categories are given in the Appendix.
We would like to point out that because our categories for overt subject use
are not exhaustive, we are not claiming that the LINF subjects are necess-
arily completely redundant. Semantic variables such as animacy, or whether
third versus first and second person are being referenced can influence whether
a subject is realized or not (Davidson, 1996 ; Allen, 2000). The purpose of our
LINF category is for relative comparisons between the bilingual child and
the monolinguals, and between the parents of the bilingual child and the
parents of the monolingual children. We sought to find out whether the
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TABLE 2. Children’s percentage of overt and null subjects across all transcripts

Child % overt % null

M 35.32 (83)a 64.68 (152)

E 16.95 (59) 83.05 (289)
L 20.13 (31) 79.87 (123)
a
Frequencies are in parentheses.

TABLE 3. Children’s percentage of overt subjects that are pronouns and

lexical subjects

Child % pronouna % lexical

M 31.33 (26)b 68.67 (57)

E 25.42 (15) 74.58 (44)
L 16.13 (5) 83.87 (26)
a
For both M and E the vast majority of pronoun subjects used were the first person singular
yo, 88 and 80%. L used very few pronouns overall, but 4/5 were the second person singular, tu.
b
Frequencies are in parentheses.

bilingual family would display greater frequencies of overt subjects in the

LINF category than the monolingual families. Finally, even though we dis-
tinguished between different discourse-pragmatic functions for subject re-
alization, our purpose was to isolate a ‘ none of the above ’ category, i.e. LINF.
In other words, we were not interested in comparing differences between the
NI, CON, EMP, ABS and QUE categories, but instead our analyses focused
on determining differences between the bilingual and monolingual families
in how their overt subjects distributed across the discourse-pragmatic func-
tions in categories (1) and (2) versus the low informativeness category (3).

RESULTS

Children
We calculated the percent use of overt and null subjects, out of all utterances
where a context for a subject was possible, for each of the three children
and the results are given in Table 2. Both the Spanish monolingual children,
E and L, realized subjects at or below 20 %, which concurs with what
other researchers have found for learners of null-subject languages the
same age (Grinstead, 1998, 2000 ; Allen, 2000 ; Allen & Schröder, in press;
Ezeizabarrena, 2000). On the other hand, the bilingual child M had a some-
what higher rate of subject realization (35 %), although she still produced the
majority of her utterances with null subjects like the monolingual children.
In Table 3, we show the percentage of the overt subjects that are pronouns
versus lexical subjects. Table 3 shows that 31 % of M’s overt subjects were
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60

50

40

30

20

10

0
1:9 1 : 11 2:0 2:2 2:5 2:6
Fig. 1. M’s percentage use of overt subjects over time.

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
1:8 1:9 1 : 10 1 : 10 1 : 11 2 : 0 2 : 1 2 : 1 2 : 3 2 : 4 2 : 5 2 : 6 2 : 7 2 : 7
Fig. 2. E’s percentage use of overt subjects over time.

pronouns, while 25 and 16 % of L’s and E’s overt subjects were pronouns
respectively. Even though M has the highest percent use of pronouns, E’s
rate of use is fairly close.
In addition to overall rate, we also wanted to examine patterns of subject
use over time. For this analysis, we could only compare M and E since L’s
data are not longitudinal. Figures 1 and 2 show the percentage of overt
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60

50

40
M

30 E

L
20

10

0
NI CON QUE EMP ABS LINF
Fig. 3. Children’s percentage use of overt subjects according to discourse-pragmatic function.

TABLE 4. Parents’ percentage of overt and null subjects across all transcripts

Parent (child) % overt % null

MOT (M) 61.76 (168)a 38.24 (104)

FAT (M) 60.00 (174) 40.00 (116)
MOT (E) 42.41 (273) 57.59 (201)
MOT (L) 35.32 (184) 64.68 (337)
FAT (L) 42.90 (76) 57.10 (76)
a
Frequencies are in parentheses.

subjects used out of the possible contexts, at each observation interval, from
1 ; 9 to 2 ; 6 for M, and from 1 ; 8 to 2 ; 7 for E, respectively. The pattern of use
in E’s data lines up with what Grinstead (1998) found: an early period with
no subject realizations, followed by a period where realizations average 20 %.
In contrast, M’s use of overt subjects differs in that there is no early period
with no subject realizations, a middle period where use peaks at 50%, and a
third period where subject realizations appear to stabilize at a about 30 %.
Note that there are transcripts for M in the database that precede 1 ; 9, but
in these transcripts, no contexts for the production of subjects occurred,
which is why they were excluded from our study. A Mann–Whitney U com-
parison of the distribution of percent use of overt subjects for E and M con-
firm the observation that their acquisition patterns are different (z=x2.969,
p<0.01).
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TABLE 5. Parents’ percentage of overt subjects that are pronouns and lexical
subjects

Parent (child) % pronoun % lexical

MOT (M) 52.98 (89)a 47.02 (79)

FAT (M) 37.36 (65) 62.64 (109)
MOT (E) 32.84 (66) 67.16 (135)
MOT (L) 40.22 (74) 59.78 (110)
FAT (L) 35.09 (20) 64.91 (37)
a
Frequencies are in parentheses.

100

90

80

70

60
MOT
50
FAT
40

30

20

10

0
1:9 1: 11 2:0 2:2 2:5 2:6
Fig. 4. M’s mother’s and father’s percentage use of overt subjects over time.

Our final analyses of the children’s subject realizations concerned the

discourse-pragmatic contexts. We calculated the percent use of overt subjects
in each of the following categories, out of the total of overt subjects : NI (new
information), CON (contrast), QUE (query), EMP (emphasis), ABS (absent
[from physical context]) and LINF (low informativeness value=none of the
other categories applied). The first five categories represent use of an overt
subject that serves an identifiable discourse-pragmatic function. The sixth
category refers to overt subjects to which none of the discourse-pragmatic
functions we coded for applied. The results presented in Figure 3 show that all
three children used subjects according to each of the five discourse-pragmatic
functions we identified. This suggests that the monolingual children and the
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100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0
1:8 1:9 1 : 10 1 : 10 1 : 11 2 : 0 2:1 2:1 2:3 2:4 2:5 2:6 2:7 2:7
Fig. 5. E’s mother’s percentage use of overt subjects over time.

bilingual child have grasped some elements about the Spanish system. How-
ever, M’s percentage of overt subjects in the LINF category is over twice
as high as that for L (26% vs. 10%) and E had virtually no overt subjects
coded as LINF. Furthermore, at the two final observation intervals, age
2 ; 5 and 2; 6, 36% (9/16) and 43 % (7/16) of M’s overt subjects were in the
LINF category, indicating that the mean percentage is not skewed by high
proportions at the earliest intervals. In other words, it does not appear to be
the case that M had not grasped the discourse-pragmatic functions of overt
subject use in Spanish at 1 ; 9 or 2 ; 0, but showed patterns like the mono-
linguals by the time she was 2 ; 6. In contrast to her frequency of overt
subject use, which seemed to move close to that of the monolinguals by 2; 6
(as shown in Figure 1), the discourse-pragmatic contexts of her overt sub-
ject use is strikingly different from monolinguals even at 2; 6.

Parents
Similar to the analyses for the children, we calculated the parents’ percentage
use of overt and null subjects out of the total of possible contexts for subject
use across transcripts. The results in Table 4 show differences between M’s
parents and the Spanish-speaking parents. Both M’s mother and father used
overt subjects 60 % of the time, while E’s mother and L’s mother and father
used overt subjects 35–42 % of the time. With respect to use of pronouns,
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50

40
MOT (M)

30 FAT (M)

MOT (E)

20 MOT (L)

FAT (L)
10

0
NI CON CDS QUE EMP ABS LINF
Fig. 6. Parents’ percentage use of overt subjects according to pragmatic function.

percent use of lexical and pronominal overt subjects is given in Table 5. In

this case, M’s father patterns with the other native speakers where approxi-
mately 40 % of overt subjects were pronouns. Thus, contrary to what might
have been expected because of M’s father’s Cuban dialect, he did not show a
high frequency of pronoun use (cf. Toribio, 1994). In contrast to the native
speakers, the majority (53%) of M’s mother’s overt subjects were pronouns.
We next examined the percent use of overt subjects by M and E’s parents
over time, and these data are shown in Figure 4 for M’s parents, and Figure 5
for E’s mother. M’s parents consistently used overt subjects as o50 % of all
subjects (except M’s mother at 1 ; 9), whereas, E’s mother produced overt
subjects f50 % of all subjects (except 2 ; 1 and 2 ;4). In order to assess
whether the patterns of subject realization were significantly different over
time between the monolingual and bilingual families, the percent scores at
each interval for M’s mother, M’s father and E’s mother were compared
using Mann–Whitney U tests. The distribution of overt subjects was signifi-
cantly different between E’s mother and M’s mother (z=x2.324, p<0.05),
and between E’s mother and M’s father (z=x2.894, p<0.01). But, M’s
mother and father did not differ from each other (z=x0.801, p>0.05).
In sum, these data indicate that M’s input in terms of quantity and type of
overt subjects is distinct from that of the other children.
We calculated the percent use of overt subjects by the parents in each of the
following categories out of the total of overt subjects : NI (new information),
CON (contrast), CDS (child-directed speech functions), QUE (query),
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EMP (emphasis), ABS (absent [from physical context]) and LINF (low
informativeness value=none of the other categories applied). The results in
Figure 6 show that all of the six informative discourse-pragmatic functions
are used by all of the parental interlocutors, which is not surprising because
the children also used all of them (with the exception of CDS). However, like
M’s data in Figure 3, M’s parents have the highest percentage of subjects in
the LINF category (FAT=16 %; MOT=20%).

DISCUSSION

We first discuss the findings for the monolingual children to establish a set of
expectations for the bilingual child. The two monolingual children, L and E,
appeared to have grasped the appropriate frequency of subject realization in
Spanish at two years of age. The children omitted subjects the majority of the
time, and their rates of overt subject use fit into the range defined by other
studies of Spanish-learning and Catalan-learning children the same age
(Grinstead, 1998, 2000 ; Eziziebarrena, 2000). The similarities in the research
findings for monolinguals across Spanish dialects, and the closely-related
Catalan, gives us confidence in comparing M with L and E, even though she
is exposed to a different dialect. In addition to frequency, L and E also ap-
peared to have grasped the function of subject realization in Spanish at two
years of age. They both revealed systematic adherence to the discourse-
pragmatic determinants for subject realization with less than 10 % of L’s
overt subjects, and none of E’s overt subjects, unaccounted for by these de-
terminants (i.e. LINF). That two-year-old children can converge on the
complex discourse-pragmatic component of subject realization concurs with
what Allen (2000) found for Inuktitut-learning children.
When we compare M’s rates and patterns of overt subject use with those of
the monolinguals, she shows a somewhat different profile. Her overall mean
use of overt subjects was 15% higher than L’s and 18% higher than E’s, and
higher than other Spanish and Catalan-learning children reported in the
literature. Longitudinally, her use of overt subjects followed a different pat-
tern from that of E, who followed the pattern documented by Grinstead
(1998). M arguably looks the most different from the monolingual children
with respect to the discourse-pragmatic contexts of overt subject realization.
She had more than twice the proportion of overall overt subjects in the
‘ unaccounted for ’ category (LINF) as L, while E had no overt subjects in
this category. In addition, she had her highest proportions of overt subjects
in this category at the END of the observation period. When we compare M’s
frequency with the context of overt subject use over time, it appears that by
2 ; 6 she had come closer to converging on the frequency of subject realization
in Spanish, while her grasp the discourse-pragmatic functions of subject
realization was lagging behind.
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It is important to bear in mind that even though M’s use of overt subjects
in context has distinct properties from that of the monolinguals, it does not
appear to be completely un-Spanish-like. She omitted subjects the majority
of the time, and most of her overt subjects overall were distributed across the
appropriate discourse-pragmatic functions. Another important point is that
the small sample we are comparing M with (two children plus eight others
from the literature) is not sufficient to determine whether she is outside
the typical monolingual distribution for these measures, or whether she is
at the upper bound of that distribution (cf. Deuchar, 2001). Therefore, our
interpretations and conclusions concerning crosslinguistic interference are
necessarily cautious.
It could be argued that M’s frequency and context of overt subject use
support the interpretation that crosslinguistic interference from English is
the underlying cause for her unique profile. More specifically, the English
input would present more overt subjects overall, and a system where sub-
ject realization is obligatory, rather than being determined by discourse-
pragmatic principles, both of which could influence her effective processing
of the Spanish input, and in turn, influence her developing Spanish grammar.
Why the English input would interfere could be explained by Müller &
Hulk’s (2001) proposal concerning the pragmatics/syntax interface and ambi-
guity on the surface. Because M appears to get close to the 20% rate of subject
realization displayed by the monolinguals by 2 ; 6, we could further conclude
that like the bilingual children studied by Döpke (1998) and Müller & Hulk
(2001), the period of crosslinguistic structures had begun to resolve at that
age. However, M did not show resolution of her incomplete grasp of the
discourse-pragmatic principles for the context of overt subject use by 2; 6. In
sum, the data from M, in reference with that of monolinguals, seem to show
evidence in favour of Müller & Hulk’s (2001) proposal about where cross-
linguistic effects are likely to occur in bilingual acquisition, and moreover,
M’s data demonstrate that crosslinguistic effects can occur in both the syntax
and the pragmatics of the pragmatics/syntax interface.
It is possible that the pattern M shows for use of overt subjects is also
evident in the English and Catalan-learning child studied by Juan-Garau &
Pérez-Vidal (2000). These authors did not examine subject use in Catalan,
because their focus was English and language differentiation, but they pro-
vide data in Tables from the ages of 1 ; 10 to 2 ; 10, which includes the period
of development we have examined for M. Like M, this child had a higher
overall rate of overt subject use during this period, 30 %, than the mono-
linguals described in our study and in that of Grinstead (1998). In contrast,
Serratrice’s (2002) Italian-English bilingual used overt subjects at a rate
closer to the 20 % baseline, 24.7%, over a period 1 ; 10 to 3 ;1. This individual
variation among bilingual children is a reminder that even though cross-
linguistic effects are likely to appear in a certain linguistic domain, and some
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children will display these effects, one cannot expect all bilingual children to
do so (cf. Paradis & Genesee, 1996).
Thus far we have put forth an interpretation based on the children’s data
alone, and suggested that M’s patterns show evidence in support of English
influence on her acquisition of subject realization in Spanish. The question
we now ask is whether the distinct patterns in M’s Spanish might come from
her input in Spanish, rather than being the result of an internal process such
as transfer. Our analyses showed that M was exposed to a model of Spanish
that included a higher proportion of overt subjects than in the monolingual
families, and far more pronoun subjects from her mother than from the
native speaker parents. Over the time period examined, M was exposed to a
variety of Spanish with a 60/40 overt/null subject proportion, whereas, the
monolingual children L and E were exposed to a 40/60 split in their input.
M was also exposed to a model of Spanish where a greater number of overt
subjects appeared in our LINF category than in the model presented to the
monolingual children. As we pointed out in our discussion of the children’s
data, with the limited number of participants in our study, it is difficult to
know just how much this distinction we found between the monolingual and
bilingual families might fall within the typical range of variation. However,
the connection between input and output for M and for the other children
suggests that the distinct model of Spanish M was exposed to might have
exerted some influence. The question remains whether she ever converged
on the same kind of system as the monolingual children because we do not
have data past the age of 2 ; 6.
In conclusion, our comparison of M’s subject realization patterns with that
of two monolingual Spanish-learning children is consistent with the in-
terpretation that crosslinguistic influence is apparent in this bilingual child’s
language production. This crosslinguistic influence occurred in the syntax/
pragmatics interface, as predicted by Müller & Hulk (2001). However, what
these data cannot tell us conclusively is whether what appears to be cross-
linguistic influence is the result of some internal, psycholinguistic mechan-
ism, or whether it was already present in the contact-variety Spanish input
she was receiving, or both sources operating in tandem. Future research
aimed at teasing apart these two very different sources of crosslinguistic ef-
fects needs to be controlled for dialect, so that both the bilinguals and mono-
linguals are exposed to the same variety of Spanish, with roughly the same
frequency of subject realizations in the input. Such a study would indicate
more clearly whether crosslinguistic influence for this aspect of grammar due
to internal mechanisms occurs reliably. A follow-up comparative study of
monolingual and bilingual children acquiring a variety of Spanish with dif-
ferent subject realization patterns would inform us about the role of the
input. Even though our study cannot offer conclusions about the internal
versus external sources of crosslinguistic influence, it does send a message to
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researchers investigating crosslinguistic interference in bilingual acquisition :

the potential impact of the child’s input should be considered, and the
source(s) of crosslinguistic interference may be more multifaceted than we
have thought hitherto.

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APPENDIX
1. EXAMPLE OF NEW INFORMATION (E 2 ; 7)
@Situation : E is talking to Nacho (the interviewer/moderator) about places
the child has visited.
*NAC : a Barcelona fuı́ste ?
%eng : you went to Barcelona ?
*CHI : sı́.
%eng : yes.
*NAC : a +_
*MOT : y con quién fuimos ?
%eng : who did we go with?
*CHI : no sé.
%eng : I don’t know.
*CHI : papa se va a Barcelona.
%eng : Dad leaves for Barcelona.
*NAC : quién se va a Barcelona.
%eng : who leaves for Barcelona ?
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*CHI : que me voy a Francisco.

%eng : I leave for Francisco.
*NAC : que te vas a comprar un disco?
%eng : you are going to get a record ?

2A. EXAMPLE OF CONTRAST (L 1; 10)

@Situation : L is on the terrace. She sits down and takes things out of
a bucket.
*CHI : oto [=otro] pato [=plato] !
%eng : another plate !
*FAT : otro.
%eng : another.
*CHI : sı́i.
%eng : yes.
*FAT : vaya !
%eng : all right !
*CHI : oto [=otro] pato [=plato].
%eng : another plate.
*FAT : no, eso no es un plato.
%eng : no, that is not a plate.
*CHI : oto [=otro] pato [=plato].
%eng : another plate.
*FAT : eso es una cacerola.
%eng : that is a pot.
*CHI : eh!

2B. EXAMPLE OF CONTRAST (E 2 ; 6)

@Situation : E and Nacho are in the same room and E wants to touch
different things.
*CHI : y esto.
%eng : and this one.
*NAC : tampoco.
%eng : neither.
*NAC : no sirve para nada.
%eng : this one is worthless.
*CHI : y esto.
%eng : and this one.
*NAC : eso sı́ que no se toca.
%eng : that one, you don’t touch that.
*CHI : y esto.
%eng : and this one.
*NAC : igual.
%eng : either.
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2C. EXAMPLE OF CONTRAST (E 2 ; 7)

@Situation : E’s mother is asking E to show Nacho how he can ride his bi-
cycle.
*MOT : por qué no?
%eng : why not ?
*CHI : éste.
%eng : this one.
*MOT : ahora.
%eng : now.
*CHI : ahora.
%eng : now.
*MOT : no porque tú te pones nervioso.
%eng : no, because you get nervous.
*CHI : ven agárrate.
%eng : come hold it.

3. EXAMPLE OF QUERY (L 1 ; 9)
@Situation : L is on the terrace with her mother.
*CHI : xxx # a pupa.
%eng : it hurts.
*MOT : qué dices de pupa ?
%eng : what do you say about hurting ?
*CHI : esta. [ % enseña su mano]
%eng : this. (shows her hand)
*MOT : esta hace pupa ?
%eng : this one hurts ?
*CHI : sı́.
%eng : yes.
*MOT : sı́, el rosal.
%eng : yes, the roses.
*MOT : esta mañana se pinchó.
%eng : she pricked herself this morning.

4. EXAMPLE OF EMPHASIS (M 2 ; 6)
@Situation : M and her father are playing with a doll and a pram.
*CHI : donde está el bebé?
%act : looking inside the pram and then looking up at FAT
%eng : where’s the baby ?
*FAT : tú lo pusiste ahı́ !
%eng : you put it there
*FAT : adónde se metió?
%eng : where did it go?
%sit : FAT and M look inside the pram
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*FAT : ah un bebé.
%eng : ah a baby

5. EXAMPLE OF ABSENT REFERENT (E 2 ; 7)

@Situation : E is playing and asks his mother for sugar.
*CHI : ponme azúcar Inés.
%eng : Put me me sugar.
*HER : más.
%eng : more.
*CHI : mira azúcar.
%eng : Look, sugar.
*HER : aquı́ no hay.
%eng : there is none here.
*CHI : esto azúcar.
%eng : this sugar.
*MOT : en la cocina está el azúcar.
%eng : the sugar is in the kitchen.
*NAC : te gusta mucho el azúcar a ti.
%eng : do you like sugar a lot ?

6A. EXAMPLE OF LINF (M 2 ; 5)

@Situation : M and her mother are playing tea party.
*MOT : no hay más qué ?
%eng : there isn’t any more of what
*CHI : no compró más café y té.
%eng : I didn’t buy more coffee and tea
*MOT : no compraste más ?
%eng : didn’t you buy any more
*CHI : si.
%eng : yes
*MOT : ah no importa yo creo que tomé suficiente.
%eng : ah it doesn’t matter I think that I had enough.
*CHI : suficiente.

6B. LINF CATEGORY (M 1 ; 11)

@Situation : M and her father are playing with some boxes.
*CHI : M poopoo.
%eng : M pooh.
*MOT : yo creo ha hecho pupu.
%eng : I think she’s done a poopoo
*FAT : pupu # si # otra vez # otra vez pupu?
%eng : poopoo, yes, again, poopoo again
*CHI : si.
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