Bidirectionality in bilingualism? Asymmetry in L1 Spanish-L2 English vs. L1 English-L2 Spanish bilinguals

Abstract

Anaphora Resolution (AR) is a complex phenomenon at the syntax-discourse interface, which is problematic in the acquisition of an L2. Previous studies show that late sequential bilinguals (i.e., adult L2 learners) with different language pairs accept and produce more explicit referring expressions (REs) than pragmatically required. This can be accounted for by the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis (PPVH), which claims that L2 learners violate the Informativeness/Economy Principle more frequently than the Manner/Clarity Principle, which results in L2 learners being more redundant than ambiguous. Crucially, it is not known to what extent this redundancy strategy is modulated by L2 learners’ language pair and proficiency level. This study investigates whether the acquisition of AR is asymmetrical by comparing two mirror-image language pairs (L1 Spanish-L2 English vs. L1 English-L2 Spanish) across proficiency levels (A2-C2) under the same methodological conditions. We used two equally-designed and comparable corpora (COREFL and CEDEL2) and manually annotated the anaphoric written production of L2 learners plus two monolingual (English and Spanish) control groups (N = 138) using the same annotation scheme. The results not only confirmed the redundancy strategy previously reported, but, importantly, revealed that the acquisition of anaphora resolution is asymmetrical between language pairs and across development. These findings are captured by proposing an updated version of the PPVH, the PPVH2, which paves the way for new studies on bilingualism at the syntax-discourse/pragmatics interface.