This study examines cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in the acquisition of embedded "wh"-questions in L3 English in German-dominant heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian. Specifically, we investigate whether a higher proficiency in the heritage language Italian increases the potential for CLI from that language. To this end, 21 adult-aged…

Conversely to plenty of studies describing how L1 transfer affects L2 systems, where the two grammars, L1/L2, often only come to interact later in life, less is known of dominant language transfer in heritage language grammars. Unlike in L2 speakers, the dominant language of the heritage speaker potentially affects its weaker language already from…

Heritage language (HL) speakers seem to diverge from monolingual speakers in the acquisition of syntax-discourse interface phenomena. However, most of the studies reporting this finding do not make any distinction between different types of syntax-discourse interface structures. Therefore, it is an open question whether these structures are…

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to investigate whether bilingualism confers an advantage on children's conversational understanding. A total of 163 children aged 3-6 years were given a Conversational Violations Test to determine their ability to identify responses to questions as violations of Gricean maxims of conversation…

This study addresses the question of whether language dominance and cross-linguistic influence are related by investigating the acquisition of determiner omission in four bilingual German-Italian children. The study begins by showing that monolingual Italian learners omit determiners less extensively than monolingual German learners. If bilingual…

Compares the results from monolingual children with object omissions in bilingual children who have acquired two languages simultaneously. Claims that the difference between monolingual and bilingual children is due to crosslinguistic influences in bilingual children. (Author/VWL)

Comments are provided by ten authors in response to an article on language separation and crosslinguistic influence in bilingual first language acquisition. (Author/VWL)

Responds to comments by various researchers on an early article presented in the same issue of this journal, claiming that language separation and crosslinguistic influence coexist in bilingual first language acquisition. (Author/VWL)