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Detail of contribution

Auteur: Anna GAVARRÓ

Titre:
Objects and (2)L1 crosslinguistic variation, and the import of pragmatics


Abstract/Résumé: Two issues have often been regarded as pivotal in studies of (2)L1 crosslinguistic influence: (i) the pragmatic analysis of misproduction or omission of subjects and objects, and (ii) the vulnerability of pragmatics (embodied in the Interface Hypothesis). In the first part of my talk I will consider one empirical case, that of pronominal objects (1) and their attested omission (2), which I will argue can be accounted for in terms of narrow syntax and maturation (Gavarró, Torrens & Wexler 2010). (1) L’has tirat. (Pep, 2;3,10) cl have-3s trown ‘You have thrown it.’ (2) Fico [e] aquí dins. put-1s here inside. ‘I put (it) here.’ I will show how the proposed analysis extends to other clitic phenomena, in particular indirect object clitics, while an alternative pragmatic account (along the lines of Serratrice et al. 2004, Tedeschi 2008) does not extend beyond direct object clitics and fails to account for cross-linguistic variation. Pragmatic factors are more relevant when we turn to languages for which a null object pronoun is available, licensed by discourse factors similar to those that operate with null subjects (as shown in several talks in this workshop). Beyond this case of object clitics, in the second part of my talk I will consider the Interface Hypothesis and the theoretical assumptions on which it rests (based on Sorace 2011 and previous work).