Subject pronouns in the L2 Spanish of Moroccan Arabic speakers

The goal of this study is to shed light on the conditions that regulate the interpretation of null and overt third person subject pronouns in ambiguous intra-sentential contexts in bilingual and L2 Spanish. An acceptability judgment task was administered to 26 Moroccan Arabic (MA)/Spanish bilinguals, 26 MA learners of L2 Spanish and 34 native controls. Three variables were manipulated: type of pronoun (null vs. overt), antecedent choice (subject vs. object) and clause order (main-subordinate vs. subordinate-main). The results reveal an effect of pronoun and clause order. Overall, both experimental groups show native-like pronominal preferences but L2 learners differ from native speakers specifically in subordinate-main order as they do not seem to benefit from microvariation between languages in the domain of pronoun interpretation. Keywords: subject pronouns; anaphora resolution; cross-linguistic influence; bilingual acquisition; L2 acquisition