Late acquisition of pronoun use in European Portuguese: Subject–object asymmetries in Portuguese-German bilingual children

This study investigates the use of subject and object pronouns in European Portuguese (EP) by Portuguese-German bilingual children living in Switzerland and their monolingual peers in Portugal. Written narratives from 61 children aged 10-12 were analysed with a focus on null versus overt subject and object realization. Results reveal a striking subject-object asymmetry in the production of the bilinguals: they overspecify subjects, producing overt pronouns more frequently in contexts of topic continuity where more null subjects are expected. Conversely, they underspecify objects, producing null object constructions and avoiding the use of clitics. We attribute the lateness of these phenomena to the complexity of overt subjects and clitic pronouns in the target system. Concerning the observed asymmetry between subjects and objects, we assume that children follow a universal referential hierarchy guiding the distribution of subject and object pronouns while at the same time disregarding discourse-pragmatic constraints.