Acrisio Pires

Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter

Month of Publication: June

Year of Publication: 2009

ABSTRACT:

The volume is a collection of original articles that present new research on first and second language acquisition from the perspective of current generative linguistics, using a detailed case study of Portuguese as a first, second and third language. The book focuses on studies exploring both empirical/experimental and theoretical aspects of the acquisition of syntax and its interfaces with morphology, with semantics/pragmatics, and language change. The...

International Journal of Bilingualism. 19p. Published online 09/2015.

ABSTRACT:

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: This study investigated the acquisition of Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM) by bilingual and monolingual Spanish teenagers, evaluating to which extent their knowledge of DOM can be explained by different theories of acquisition.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Two experiments with bilingual and monolingual Spanish teenagers (ages 10 to 15) were conducted. The experiments included an Elicited Production Completion Task,...

2015. Proceedings of the 6th GALANAlGenerative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America. University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.

ABSTRACT:

This paper presents an experimental study to re-evaluate the Feature Interpretability Hypothesis (see Hawkins & Hattori, 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007; Tsimpli & Mastropavlou, 2007), a theory of learnability in adult Second Language Acquisition (SLA) that has received a substantial amount of attention in SLA research. This paper re-evaluates the predictive and explanatory power of the Interpretability...

Name of Periodical: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition Volume Number: 17 Issue Number: 1 Year of Publication: 2014 Page Numbers: 38-55

This paper investigates the acquisition of syntax in L2 grammars. We tested adult L2 speakers of Spanish (English L1) on the feature specification of T(ense), which is different in English and Spanish in so-called subject-to-subject raising structures. We present experimental results with the verb parecer “to seem/to appear” in different tenses, with and without experiencers, and with Tense Phrase (TP), verb phrase (vP) and...

2013. Oxford Bibliography in Linguistics. Ed. M. Aronoff. New York: Oxford University Press. 

ABSTRACT:

Linguistics began in the 19th century as a historical science, asking how languages came to be the way they are. Almost all of the work dealt with the changing pronunciation of words and “sound change” more broadly. Much attention was paid to explaining why sounds changed the way they did, and that involved developing ideas about directionality. Work on syntax was limited to compiling how different languages expressed clause types differently, notably Vergleichende...

Name of Periodical: International Journal of Bilingualism Volume Number: 17 Issue Number: 5 Year of Publication: 2013 Page Numbers: 634-52

ABSTRACT:

This study investigates the extent to which advanced native-English L2 learners of Spanish come to acquire restrictions on bare plural preverbal subjects in L2 Spanish (e.g. gatos “cats” vs. definite plurals such as los gatos “the cats”). It tests L2 knowledge of available semantic readings of bare plurals and definite plurals in Spanish, where [+specific] and [+generic] interpretations are syntactically...

2009. International Journal of Bilingualism 13.2: 211-39. Special issue Understanding the Nature of Early Bilingualism.

Article included in the “top 20 most cited articles ever published in the International Journal of Bilingualism”, as part of the 20th Anniversary Virtual Special Issue of the journal.

ABSTRACT:

This article brings to light an important variable involved in explaining a type of competence divergence in an instance of bilingual acquisition: heritage speaker (HS) bilingualism. We present...

2008. In Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction, ed. G. Ferraresi and M. Goldbach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. p. 27-72.

ABSTRACT:

This paper explores ways to synthesize methods from generative linguistics and historical linguistics to develop explanatory criteria that need to be satisfied by different attempts to carry out syntactic reconstruction. It addresses various questions such as (i) the need to define exactly what it means to reconstruct a language; (ii) characterizing the formal entities that count as the basic elements in the analysis of the empirical...

Syntax: A Journal of Theoretical, Experimental and Interdisciplinary Research 8.1: 65-80.

ABSTRACT:

 This paper has two goals. First, it provides a solution to an important and particularly recalcitrant problem regarding non-control infinitival complements of derived nouns, which have been argued to provide independent motivation for the retention of the EPP in T. Second, it presents an unnoted problem regarding the elimination of the EPP in infinitival complements of underived nouns, proposing an analysis for them that need not appeal to the EPP in T. To reach...