<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><a href="http://linguistlist.org/issues/23/23-5281.html">LINGUIST List 23.5281</a></div><div><br></div><div>Institution: University of Connecticut </div><div>Program: Department of Linguistics </div><div>Dissertation Status: Completed </div><div>Degree Date: 2012 </div><div><br></div><div>Author: Elena V. Koulidobrova </div><div><br></div><div>Dissertation Title: </div><div>When the Quiet Surfaces: ‘Transfer’ of argument omission </div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>in the speech of ASL-English bilinguals </div><div><br></div><div>Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition </div><div> Syntax </div><div><br></div><div>Subject Language(s): American Sign Language (ase) </div><div><br></div><div>Dissertation Director:</div><div>Zeljko Boskovic </div><div>Diane Lillo-Martin </div><div><br></div><div>Dissertation Abstract:</div><div><br></div><div>The main research question of this dissertation is the nature of </div><div>language interaction effects observed in linguistic patterns of </div><div>multilingual children. Such effects—often described as syntactic </div><div>transfer/influence of one of the languages on the other—have been </div><div>richly documented in the multilingualism literature. I review an </div><div>influential model (Hulk & Müller 2000) of these effects and propose an </div><div>alternative, which I demonstrate to be more consistent with the </div><div>framework adopted in the dissertation (i.e. the Minimalist Program, </div><div>Chomsky 1995, i.a). In short, I argue that ‘language transfer effects’ </div><div>are instances of a Minimalist-in-spirit code-switching (e.g. MacSwan </div><div>1999), which, for a variety of reasons, I label ‘language-synthesis.’ It </div><div>amounts to the presence of elements from different languages in one </div><div>Numeration and requires that such language alternation be </div><div>unconstrained unless independently blocked. </div><div><br></div><div>I focus the discussion on the predictions made by each of the two </div><div>models for argument omission between null- and non-null-argument </div><div>languages of a bilingual. Using longitudinal data from two balanced </div><div>A(merican)S(ign)L(anguage)-English bilinguals, I show that unlike the </div><div>cross-linguistic influence approach, the language-synthesis alternative </div><div>accounts for the distribution of null arguments in the children’s English. </div><div>On the way to this conclusion, I address an ASL-internal issue—the </div><div>nature of argument omission. I review the standard analyses of null </div><div>arguments in ASL and challenge them. Specifically, I argue that in non-</div><div>agreeing/-inflected contexts, the null argument in ASL is a case of </div><div>argument ellipsis of a bare singular NP and, resembles in many ways </div><div>Japanese-style argument ellipsis. Among the consequences of the </div><div>account are the status of morphological agreement and the nature of </div><div>the nominal domain in ASL. Essentially, the dissertation shows that </div><div>ASL behaves as though it does not project a DP. </div><div><br></div><div>This approach, I suggest, accounts for certain transfer effects found </div><div>in the speech of bimodal bilinguals: the presence of certain lexical </div><div>items from ASL (deemed responsible for argument ellipsis) in a </div><div>Numeration otherwise containing lexical items from English may result </div><div>in ASL-style argument ellipsis in bilinguals’ English. Moreover, because </div><div>in relevant ways, bimodal bilinguals behave differently from unimodal </div><div>bilinguals, the dissertation appeals to the unique nature of bimodal </div><div>bilingualism as a testing ground for language interaction effects in </div><div>multilinguals. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div>
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