On the Early Acquisition of (Null) Subjects in Catalan as a Heritage Language

Abstract

Languages vary as to whether subjects must be overtly expressed. Much research has focused on how this phenomenon is acquired by monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children. For the latter, numerous studies have examined the acquisition of (null) subjects in Romance-English bilingual children. Just a few studies have considered the simultaneous acquisition of German and Spanish/Catalan, the former being recently described as a partial and the latter as consistent null subject languages. Our results with thirty Catalan-German children (Ø 5;8) living in Germany indicate that null subject rates, on average, are similar to the monolingual group and are independent of language dominance. Results on (a) subject type, position and (b) age, language dominance, HL-proficiency are examined.