The Acquisition of the personal preposition a by Catalan-Spanish and English-Spanish bilinguals

The study of linguistic interfaces, namely, the study of the interaction between different levels/domains of linguistic knowledge (syntax, semantics, pragmatics and so on), is crucial to the understanding of the way language works, how it is acquired, and how the system of language is organized in the mind/brain (Bos, Hollebrandese and Sleeman, 2004). Contemporary generative acquisition theory and empirical research are motivated by the hypothesis that acquisition delays in adult L2 acquisition and bilingualism (as well as L1 attrition and first language acquisition) are often related to the complexity of acquiring interface-conditioned properties that involve the integration of information from multiple cognitive modules (e.g. Belleti, Bennati & Sorace, 2007; Muller & Hulk, 2001; Paradis & Navarro, 2003; Rothman, 2007; Serratrice et al., 2004; Sorace, 2000, 2004, 2005; Tsimpli et. al., 2004; to name just a few). These studies have focused on the acquisition of a relatively wide range of structures, some related to the syntax-semantic interface, others to the syntax-pragmatic interface: e.g., the acquisition of overt vs. null pronominal subjects, word order to object expression in different languages and by different learners acquiring a wider range of languages (e.g., French, Italian, Spanish). On the other hand, other studies have revealed that despite this difficulty, adult L2 learners are able to acquire structures involving the interfaces (e.g., Borgonovo & Prevost, 2003; Borgonovo, Bruhn de Garavito & Prevost, 2005; and Borgonovo, Bruhn de Garavito, Guijarro-Fuentes, Prevost & Valenzuela, 2006; Dekydtspotter, Sprouse & Thyre, 2000; among others). These studies have investigated different linguistic phenomena related to the syntax-semantic interface: e.g., from the acquisition of mood, object drop, topicalization to quantification at a distance in a variety of language acquisitional scenarios with different populations of learners. A second interrelated area of research focuses on the level of interaction between the L1 and L2 language systems. Previous research on language transfer in SLA has assumed that the initial stage of L2 acquisition is the first language (L1) (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1994; 1996). Such hypotheses have long pointed to L1 transfer as a possible cause of L1/L2 divergences, claiming that L1 transfer alters significantly (and variably depending on the L1/L2 pairing) the L2 learning task for adult L2 learners (but see Epstein et al., 1996, 1998 for a different view on the matter). Other researchers looking at bilingualism and language attrition, however, have suggested that language transfer from one language to the other needs to meet certain conditions, and interface areas are particularly vulnerable (Hulk and Muller, 2000; Muller and Hulk, 2001). According to Hulk and Muller (2000) and Muller and Hulk (2001), language interference must be due to language internal conditions provided that the following two requirements are complied: (a) cross-linguistic influence occurs at the interface between two modules of grammar, and more particularly at the interface between pragmatics and syntax in the socalled C-domain, since this is an area which has been claimed to create problems also in L1 acquisition (Grinstead, 2004; Marinis, 2003; Platzack, 2001); and (b) syntactic cross-linguistic influence occurs only if language A has a syntactic construction that may seem to allow more than one syntactic analysis and, at the same time, language B contains evidence for one of these two possible analyses. That is to say, there has to be a certain overlap of the two systems at the surface level. Besides these two conditions put forward by Hulk and Muller (2000) and Muller and Hulk (2001) which explain the directionally of cross-linguistic effects between two language systems, there are other external factors which may also influence the directionality of cross-linguistic effects, such as language contact and/or richness of input. Our study addresses two questions concerning the two areas of research mentioned above: