Crosslinguistic influence on the syntax/pragmatics interface: the grammatical subjects in the languages of an adult bilingual speaker of Macedonian and English

Abstract

The present study is an experimental study on the grammatical subjects in the languages of an adult bilingual speaker of English and Macedonian. Three structures are tested in order to verify the existence of crosslinguistic influence claimed to involve the syntax/pragmatics interface. The structures include: 1) use of pronominal subjects in [-topic shift] contexts in Macedonian, 2) interpretation of anaphoric condition in English and Macedonian, and 3) placement of subjects in predicate-focus contexts in Macedonian. The first two structures revealed no influence between English and Macedonian. The third structure was the only one where crosslinguistic influence was found. Several possible reasons for this outcome are discussed, including: age of participants, experimental design, saliency and frequency of structures in the input.