Anaphora resolution in L2 Hungarian
Anaphora resolution in L2 Hungarian

Summary/Abstract: The paper tests the antecedent preferences for the null pronoun, the personal pronoun and the demonstrative subject in L2 and 2L1 Hungarian (with Romanian as the other language) by means of an offline picture selection task. In the null subject condition, both groups show subject bias, confirming previous hypotheses and research. An evident object bias is observable with the demonstrative, again confirming the low accessibility status of demonstratives. The results differ in the case of the overt personal pronoun subject. While it can have both topic shift and topic continuity interpretation in both languages, previous research suggests that in Romanian the former is favoured over the latter, whereas the reverse is true for Hungarian. Whereas the L2 group shows no bias in the personal pronoun condition, thus possibly showing transfer from L1, the 2L1 group shows a strong subject bias, placing the personal pronoun on equal footing with the null pronoun.

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