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ERIC Number: EJ1477928
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Aug
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0142-7237
EISSN: EISSN-1740-2344
Available Date: 0000-00-00
What Bilingualism Can Tell Us about the Semantic Subset Principle: The Case of Disjunction under Negation
First Language, v45 n4 p379-399 2025
This study investigates the interpretation of disjunction words (Italian 'o') in negative sentences by Italian monolingual and bilingual (L1 Italian - L2 English) children and Italian adults. Participants were asked to judge Italian sentences corresponding to the English sentence 'This animal did not eat the carrot or the pepper'. According to the Semantic Subset Principle (SSP), children's initial scope assignment corresponds to the interpretation that makes sentences true in the narrowest range of circumstances (the 'neither' interpretation), even when this is not the interpretation assigned by adults. This study aimed to: (a) replicate previous findings, showing that Italian monolingual children display a binomial group distribution and possibly a three-stage developmental sequence, directly linked to their (delayed) sensitivity to the pragmatic inference of 'exclusivity'; and (b) investigating whether exposure to a second language (in which the default value corresponds to the value expected by the SSP) may trigger attrition effects of the L2 on the L1 at a semantic level, leading children to primarily assign disjunction a -PPI value in Italian, influenced both by the SSP and L1 attrition. Results showed that Italian monolingual children were divided into two groups: one interpreted disjunction as taking scope over negation as adults did, while the other interpreted negation as taking scope over disjunction, as predicted by the SSP. In addition, they displayed the three-stage developmental pattern observed in prior research. All bilingual children, instead, systematically adopted a 'neither' interpretation of disjunction under negation in Italian, showing an attrition effect of the L2 (English) on the L1 (Italian) at the semantics level. We interpret these results as indicating that being exposed to an L2, while still being guided by the SSP, acts for bilingual children as a super-additive factor in setting the Disjunction Parameter in their L1.
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: https://sagepub.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Italy
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy; 2Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain