Demonstratives in Spanish–Catalan simultaneous bilinguals: which system do they prefer?

Emanuela Todisco*, Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes, Harmen B. Gudde, Kenny R. Coventry

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Demonstratives are cross-linguistically widespread deictic expressions. Demonstrative systems exhibit variation in number of terms, and parameters affecting their usage. The present paper assesses the relationship between spatial deixis and bilingualism: how language dominance affects speakers of two languages with different demonstrative systems. Here, we compare the use of demonstratives by 72 European Spanish-Catalan simultaneous bilinguals in Mallorca to 30 European Spanish monolinguals. Our results confirmed a significant effect of physical distance between speaker and referent on demonstrative choice in both languages, and differences between languages in the use of the middle term.We did not find the expected effect of language dominance in simultaneous bilinguals. Moreover, we found no influence of the hearer s position on demonstrative choice in monolinguals or bilinguals in European Spanish or Majorcan Catalan. In view of our results, the present study contributes to the debate on how bilingual speakers employ different deictic expressions.

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages12
JournalBilingualism
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 13 Mar 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • demonstratives
  • European Spanish
  • language dominance
  • Majorcan Catalan
  • simultaneous bilingualism

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Demonstratives in Spanish–Catalan simultaneous bilinguals: which system do they prefer?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this