C03 - Reference management in bilingual narratives
The project aims to account for patterns of variation in the processing of prominence structures. In particular, we investigate how German–Italian and German–English bilingual children ranging in age from 8 to 12 integrate morphosyntactic and discourse information during narrative reading, by using eye-tracking experiments. Bilinguals may differ from each other in their sensitivity to morphosyntactic or discourse information during discourse processing. Among the factors that contribute to this variation, we explore the role of cross-linguistic influence, differences in bilingual profiles in terms of language and literacy exposure, individual cognitive skills and bilinguals’ ability to share discourse strategies across their two languages.
Team
Prof. Dr. Jacopo Torregrossa
Project Leader C03
Office: Goethe University Frankfurtt, Institut für Romanische Sprachen und Literaturen, IG 5.155E-Mail: torregrossa(at)lingua.uni-frankfurt.dePhone: (+49) 69 798-32186
Dr. Sonja Eisenbeiß
Postdoc C03
Office: Luxemburger Str. 299, room 3.06E-Mail: seisenb1(at)uni-koeln.dePhone: (+49) 221 470-89917
Dr. Andrea Listanti
Postdoc C03
Office: Luxemburger Str. 299, room 3.06E-Mail: alistant(at)uni-koeln.dePhone: (+49) 221 470-89917
Vasileia Skrimpa
Doctoral student C03
Office: Luxemburger Str. 299, room 3.06E-Mail: vskrimp1(at)uni-koeln.dePhone: (+49) 221 470-89917
Nassiba Bouzardaoui
Student assistant C03
Office: Luxemburger Str. 299E-Mail: nbouzar1(at)uni-koeln.de
Publications
To appear
- Andreou, Maria. To appear. Language and cognitive aspects of child bilingualism: Research observations and classroom applications. Inquiries in Language Learning. Peter Lang.
- Torregrossa, Jacopo & Christiane M. Bongartz. To appear. Activation of referents in the bilingual mind. In G. Fotiadou and I. Tsimpli (eds.), Individual differences in anaphora resolution: Language and cognitive effects. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Torregrossa, Jacopo, Andrea Listanti, Christiane Bongartz & Theo Marinis. To appear. Adding discourse to sentence repetition tasks: Under which conditions does bilingual children’s performance improve? Research Methods in Applied Linguistics.
2023
- Andreou, Maria, Jacopo Torregrossa & Christiane Bongartz. 2023. The use of null subjects by Greek-Italian bilingual children: Identifying cross-linguistic effects. In Georgia Fotiadou & Ianthi Maria Tsimpli (eds.), Individual differences in anaphora resolution: Language and cognitive effects, 166–191. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Bader, Markus, Jacopo Torregrossa & Esther Rinke. 2023. Pinning down the interaction between animacy and syntactic function in the interpretation of German and Italian personal and demonstrative pronouns. Discourse Processes 60(9). 655–673.
- Carbonara, Valentina, Andrea Scibetta & Jacopo Torregrossa. 2023. The benefits of multilingual pedagogies for multilingual children’s narrative abilities. International Journal of Multilingualism. International Journal of Multilingualism 21(2). 645–669.
- Listanti, Andrea & Jacopo Torregrossa. 2023. The production of preverbal and postverbal subjects by Italian heritage children: Timing of acquisition matters. First Language 43(4). 431–460.
- Listanti, Andrea, Jacopo Torregrossa, Sonja Eisenbeiß & Christiane Bongartz. 2023. Home Literacy Exposure in the Heritage Language Enhances Theory-of-Mind Development: A Study on Greek-Italian Bilingual Children. In Paris Gappmayr & Jackson Kellogg (eds.), Proceedings of the 47th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), 505–518. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
- Torregrossa, Jacopo, Irene Caloi & Andrea Listanti. 2023. The acquisition of syntactic structures in heritage Italian: Assessing the role of language exposure at critical periods. In Francesco Romano (ed.), Studies in Italian as a Heritage Language, 155–194. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
- Torregrossa, Jacopo, Sonja Eisenbeiß & Christiane Bongartz. 2023. Boosting bilingual metalinguistic awareness under dual language activation: Some implications for bilingual education. Language Learning 73(3). 683–722.
2021
- Andreou, Maria, Jacopo Torregrossa & Christiane Bongartz. 2021. Sentence repetition task as a measure of language dominance. In Danielle Dionne & Lee-Ann Vidal Covas (eds.), Proceedings of the 45th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 45), 14–25. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
- Skrimpa, Vasileia, Vasilina Spanou, Christiane Bongartz, Eleni Peristeri, Maria Andreou & Despina Papadopoulou. 2021. Bilingualism effects in pronoun comprehension: Evidence from children with autism. Autism Research 15(2). 270–283.
- Torregrossa, Jacopo, Maria Andreou, Christiane Bongartz & Ianthi Maria Tsimpli. 2021. Bilingual acquisition of reference: The role of language experience, executive functions and cross-linguistic effects. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 24(4). 694–706.
2020
- Andreou, Maria, Jacopo Torregrossa & Christiane Bongartz. 2020. The sharing of reference strategies across two languages: The production and comprehension of referring expressions by Greek-Italian bilingual children. Discours 26.
- Bongartz, Christiane & Jacopo Torregrossa. 2020. The effects of balanced biliteracy on Greek-German bilingual children’s secondary discourse ability. Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 23(8). 948–963.
- Torregrossa, Jacopo, Maria Andreou & Christiane M Bongartz. 2020. Variation in the use and interpretation of null subjects: A view from Greek and Italian. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 5(1): 95. 1–28. pdf
2019
- Torregrossa, Jacopo, Christiane Bongartz & Ianthi Maria Tsimpli. 2019. Bilingual reference production. A cognitive-computational account. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 9(4–5). Benjamins. 569-599.
2018
- Torregrossa, Jacopo. 2018. Distinguishing Focus and Contrast at PF: A view from Italian. In Marco García García & Melanie Uth (eds.), Focus Realization and Interpretation in Romance and beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Torregrossa, Jacopo & Christiane Bongartz. 2018. Teasing apart the effects of dominance, transfer and processing in reference production by German- Italian bilingual adolescents. Languages 3(3). pdf
2017
- Andreou, Maria & Ianthi Tsimpli. 2017. Aspectual distinctions in the narratives of bilingual children. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 55(3). 305-324. Special Issue: Tense, Aspect and Modality in L2. Guest Editors: K. McManus, N. Vanek, L. Roberts & P. Leclercq. pdf
- Torregrossa, Jacopo. 2017. The role of executive functions in the acquisition of reference: The production of demonstrative pronouns by German monolingual children. In Language Acquisition at the Interfaces: Proceedings of GALA (Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition) 2015, 318-331. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pdf
Event organization
- Organization of the Winter School "Biliterate development in diverse contexts" held from 13th-14th December 2018.
- Organization of the workshop "Ways of Reference in Romance Languages" held from 27th-28th September 2018, joint work with C02 and B04.