This paper provides fresh insights on how PIs (Polarity Items) in non-veridical contexts (questions and conditionals) are represented in the grammar of multilingual learners of Catalan at different stages of development. It explores how this non-native grammatical system interacts with other previously acquired systems of negation and the implicit…

Recent studies in the second language acquisition of negation have focused on polarity items and their licensing contexts. Although several studies show a correlation between higher degrees of second language (L2) proficiency and the acquisition of the target L2 structures, less attention has been given to the relation between the acquisition of…

The Portuguese present perfect (P-PP) is an understudied topic in the field of generative language acquisition. In the past decade, Third Language Acquisition (L3A) has enjoyed special attention in studying how multilingualism works. Researchers have concentrated on the examination of the source of transfer at the initial stages. However, there is…

The present study examined the production of inalienable possession with body parts in Spanish among 20 school-age children of Mexican-born parents born and raised in the United States. The results were compared to those of 20 first-generation immigrant parents (main input providers), 27 Spanish-dominant children of similar age, and 12 Spanish…

The purpose of this study was to assess the use of an adapted picture description task described by Eisenberg and Guo to explore the morphosyntactic error patterns of English-Spanish preschool simultaneous bilingual learners. Language samples were collected from 28 bilingual preschool children aged 3 to 5 years. Language samples were elicited in…

The purpose of this study was to assess the use of an adapted picture description task described by Eisenberg and Guo to explore the morphosyntactic error patterns of English-Spanish preschool simultaneous bilingual learners. Language samples were collected from 28 bilingual preschool children aged 3 to 5 years. Language samples were elicited in…

This project examined the acquisition of third person accusative clitics in Spanish by Chinese-speaking learners. Specifically, it focused on the role of cross-linguistic influence and patterns of language exposure and use in the acquisition of the syntactic and semantic properties constraining the production and intuition of overt and null…

Purpose: This study examined the frequency, direction, and structural characteristics of code-switching (CS) during narratives by Spanish-English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) to determine whether children with DLD exhibit unique features in their CS that may inform clinical decision-making. Method:…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to find morphological markers with good diagnostic accuracy to identify developmental language disorders (DLD) in Spanish-English bilingual children. Method: The participants in this study included 66 Spanish-English bilingual children between the ages of 4;0 and 6;11 (years; months) with (n = 33) and without…

Recent approaches to the "that"-trace phenomenon in English include syntactic analyses based on the principle of Anti-locality and a sentence production analysis based on the Principle of End Weight. These analyses have many similarities, but they differ in their predictions for second language (L2) speakers. In an Anti-locality…

Verbal morphology has been identified as a particularly vulnerable domain for adult heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish, especially when it involves the selection of subjunctive mood. A minimal amount is known, however, about the potential effects of the variability associated with these forms on the acquisition of related epiphenomena, such as the…

This study investigates the knowledge of bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish regarding the production of object pronominal clitics (excluding non-reflexive third-person clitics), with a focus on: (i) their morphology, considering the variants that coexist for each form, and (ii) their syntactic placement (proclitic or enclitic) with respect…

Purpose: This study examined the relationship between utterance length, syntactic complexity, and the probability of making an error at the utterance level. Method: The participants in this study included 830 Spanish-speaking first graders who were learning English at school. Story retells in both Spanish and English were collected from all…

Purpose: There is limited research on the writing of young Spanish-English bilinguals and their writing in both languages. In the current study, we addressed whether written syntax features differed by language (English and Spanish) and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program (dual or English…

Purpose: There is limited research on the writing of young Spanish-English bilinguals and their writing in both languages. In the current study, we addressed whether written syntax features differed by language (English and Spanish) and varied as a function of grade level, English learner status, and instructional program (dual or English…