Subject position in Greek and Spanish monolingual and bilingual production: Exploring the influence of verb type and definiteness

ABSTRACT

This research study aims to capture linguistic variation in subject distribution in monolingual and bilingual speakers of an understudied language combination of two null subject languages, following the premises of the Interface Hypothesis (IH). Greek and Chilean Spanish are examined with a focus on subject-verb (SV) inversion in neutral contexts as influenced by two factors: verb type and subject definiteness. Oral semi-structured narratives were elicited from 116 participants: Greek and Spanish monolinguals (N = 40) and Greek-Spanish bilinguals (N = 86), namely immigrants, heritage speakers (HS), and L2 speakers of Greek. The findings show crosslinguistic differences between Greek and Spanish regarding verb-subject(-object) [VS(O)] orders, which are allowed more liberally in Greek than in Spanish. The bilingual groups behaved similarly on subject placement regarding verb type. The effect of definiteness, which was statistically significant in all the other groups, was not obtained in the HS data, indicating a relaxed distinction between definite and indefinite subjects in the heritage grammar. The findings are discussed in the light of the Interface Hypothesis (IH) and provide valuable insights into bilingual language production in relation to vulnerability in heritage and bilingual grammars, involving an insufficiently researched linguistic phenomenon.

Acknowlegments

The study is supported by the Phonetic Lab of the University of Nicosia. All participants gave their written consent for their participation in the study according to the Declaration of Helsinki. We would like to warmly thank all participants and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

Data will be made available on request.

Notes

¹ The VSO order is also considered a basic word order in Greek under certain analyses (e.g., Philippaki-Warburton 1985).

² Different varieties of Spanish allow (but do not require) the definite article with personal proper names (anthroponyms) depending on “syntactic, semantic, pragmatic or sociolinguistic conditions” (Helmbrecth 2022:138). Chilean Spanish and specifically the variety spoken in Santiago demonstrates a high frequency of definite article use preceding anthroponyms (De Mello 1992, Tieperman & Regan 2023).

³ Percentage of grammatical clauses to establish proficiency: 62-72%: Basic, 73-83%: Intermediate, 84-94%: Advanced, 95-100%: Near-native.

⁴ As suggested by an anonymous reviewer, another strategy for resolving the issue of where to put the subject for speakers of a NS language is simply not to produce an overt subject. For differences among the groups in rate of subject expression see Giannakou and Sitaridou (2022).

Additional information

Funding

There is no funding to disclose.