APPLYING PROCESSABILITY THEORY AND ITS EXTENSION TO SERBIAN AS A FAMILY AND COMMUNITY LANGUAGE IN AUSTRALIA

LUCIJA MEDOJEVI
This chapter presents the first application of Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann 1998a) and its extension (Pienemann, Di Biase and Kawaguchi 2005) as a theoretical framework for the acquisition of Serbian, a highly morphologised Slavonic language, as a family and community language in Australia. A hierarchy of stages for the acquisition of Serbian morphosyntax is firstly hypothesised and formally described using Lexical Functional Grammar (Bresnan 2001). The proposed hierarchy is then used to assess the language processing skills of SerbianAustralian bilingual teenagers through a cross-sectional study involving spoken production by three bilingual informants who acquired Serbian in their home environment. One of the informants, additionally, had formal instruction in the Serbian language. An adult native speaker of Serbian, also residing in Australia, performed the same tasks as a comparison informant. In addition to morphosyntactic development, three hypotheses proposed in the current extension of PT, i.e., the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis, the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis and the Topic Hypothesis, (Pienemann et al. 2005) are applied to assess the range of pragmaticssyntax choices that teenage bilinguals might exercise given the relatively free word order of Serbian (Hammond 2005). A distributional analysis of the results suggests that all three bilingual informants reached the highest inter-phrasal morphosyntactic stage in the proposed Serbian PT-based hierarchy. However, the acquirer who had additional instruction in Serbian demonstrated higher skills in exercising alternative pragmatics-syntax choices than the other two teenage bilinguals. This study extends PT to Slavonic languages and further supports its typological plausibility. It also shows how the new hypotheses are useful in measuring language

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development under specific circumstances of limited domains of use in Australia1.

1. Introduction
The objective of this paper is to apply PT and its recent theoretical extension to the investigation of the development of Serbian as a family and community language among Serbian-English bilingual teenagers in Australia. As for other bilingual first language acquisition in Australia, while the context of acquisition and use of English involves practically all linguistically relevant domains, for Serbian the context is limited, to the home and family domain. Serbian is used in communication with family members and visiting family friends and community members. Such limited context for language input and the lack of opportunities for the language output under the influence of the dominant English language affects the rate and ultimate attainment (in Doughty and Long 2003 terms) of Serbian language knowledge and skills. The present study thus looks at how far the Serbian language is acquired by Serbian-Australian teenage bilinguals using the predictions of Processability Theory. What makes Serbian an interesting language for PT is its complex morphology and its so called free word order (Hammond 2005). In fact, this free word order is not at all arbitrary but is motivated by pragmatic factors such as topicality and prominence (Comrie and Corbett 1993). To my knowledge, PT has not been tested on any other Slavonic language previously and it has not been used to investigate special circumstances of language acquisition such as those prevailing in migration. The aim of this paper is to propose a PT-based hierarchy for Serbian, in order to investigate the stage of morphosyntactic development in three Serbian-Australian teenagers. Intuitively, Serbian-Australian teenage bilinguals who use Serbian in communication with their family members should possibly be at an advance stage of language development, so it would be interesting to test for the hypotheses based on the extension of PT proposed by Pienemann, Di Biase and Kawaguchi (2005). Given that these hypotheses address the interface between syntax and discoursepragmatics, they should help assess whether the teenage bilinguals are able to use the so called free word order and other non-default
1

I wish to express my special gratitude to Dr Bruno Di Biase for his generous advice in various points of writing this chapter. I also wish to thank Dr Satomi Kawaguchi for her comments and advice. I also express my sincere appreciation to the anonymous reviews who gave me invaluable advice to improve my chapter. Remaining errors are solely my responsibility.

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pragmatically motivated choices, some of which require resources placed at higher levels in the developmental hierarchy. This chapter is organised as follows. In the next section I present a short description of the theoretical framework, i.e., Processability Theory and its current extension. Section 3 offers a brief sketch of Serbian typological characteristics and the grammar relevant to this paper. Section 4 presents the proposed Serbian PT-based hierarchy and the corresponding research question and hypothesis. In section 5 the pragmatic-syntax choices (alternative word order and passive) of Serbian are discussed with the corresponding question and hypothesis. Next (section 6) I will describe the informants, settings and data collection which is followed by the results of the study in conjunction with the hypotheses posed in this study (section 7). The discussion and conclusion of the results is presented in section 8.

2. Theoretical framework
Processability Theory (Pienemann 1998a; Pienemann et al. 2005) was chosen as the framework for the present study for several reasons. First, Processability Theory is a universalistic theory of language acquisition, i.e., it is not language-specific, as it focuses on the relation between language processing and language acquisition. The second reason is its typological plausibility tested on distinct languages (Di Biase and Kawaguchi 2002). Thirdly, it has been successfully applied to analyses of first and second language acquisition (e.g., Pienemann 1998b).Finally, the theory has also been used in comparing the development of two first languages of a Japanese-Australian child (Itani-Adams 2007). The study supported de Houwers (1990) Separate Development Hypothesis and showed that both languages follow the hierarchy proposed by PT (Pienemann et al. 2005). Processability Theory describes the nature of computational mechanisms in the process of language acquisition and the way in which they are acquired. It hypothesises a universal hierarchy of morphosyntactic development. PT is based on Levelts (1989) speech production model and relies on Lexical-Functional Grammar (Kaplan and Bresnan 1982; Bresnan 2001) for the formal description of linguistic structures that are psychologically and typologically plausible. The theory has been widely tested on typologically close languages: Swedish L2 (Hkansson and Pienemann 1999), German L2 (Hkansson, Pienemann and Sayehli 2002)

178 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

and Scandinavian languages (Glahn, Hkansson, Hammarberg, Holmen, Hvenekide and Lund 2001) as well as typologically different languages: Italian (Di Biase 1999, 2002), Japanese (Kawaguchi 2000, 2002, 2005a), Chinese (Zhang 2002, 2004) and Arabic (Mansouri 2002, 2005). This theory assumes a set of key grammatical encoding procedures that are arranged according to their sequence of activation in the language generation process as listed in (1). (1) Clause boundary Word order rules S-procedure Phrase procedures Category procedures Word/ Lemma This hierarchy is implicationally arranged, that is, each lower level procedure in this sequence is a necessary prerequisite for the following procedure. Feature unification explains how speakers acquire morphologically and syntactically correct utterances. Learners will follow this empirical sequence in the process of L2 acquisition. If an element is missing from this sequence the learner grammar will be cut off and replaced by direct mapping of conceptual structures on to surface form (Pienemann 1998a). Work on typologically distant languages such as Japanese and Italian paved the way to the new extension of PT (Pienemann et al.2005). This adds three hypotheses to the PT: the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis (UAH), Topic Hypothesis (TOP) and the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis (LMH) which deal with the acquisition of discourse-pragmatic functions and so it goes beyond feature unification presented in the original PT hierarchy. These hypotheses are concerned with the L2 acquisition of nondefault relationships between argument structure (a-structure) and grammatical functions (f-structure) and its representation on the constituent structure (c-structure). Default mapping (in English) is illustrated in (2).

Lucija Medojevi (2) eat < cat, fish> Agent SUBJECT NP subj The cat VERB ate

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Patient OBJECT NP obj the fish.

(a-structure) (f-structure) (c-structure)

According to the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis (UAH) the language acquirer initially preserves canonical word order in the organisation of the syntax in a language. The Topic Hypothesis (TOP) on the other hand captures the beginning of a differentiation of Topic and Subject as discourse functions in SLA. It allows a wider range of syntactic variability and expressiveness predicting the c- to f- structure mapping. For example, the position of the XP adjunct before the canonical word order is the ccorrespondence of the initial differentiation of TOP and SUBJ in English. This structure disrupts the linearity of the canonical order causing the learner not to depend solely on the linear mapping and position of canonical word order. Canonical order is further disrupted at a higher stage when an argument (rather than an adjunct) other than the subject is topicalised, i.e., is given prominence in linear order. The Lexical Mapping Hypothesis predicts how mapping develops from the constraints of the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis to the nondefault mapping principles of the target language, i.e., a- to f- structure correspondence (Pienemann et al. 2005). This hypothesis assumes that learners gradually attain skills to map less prominent thematic roles (i.e. patient) onto the subject function in structures like passives and causatives. This non-canonical mapping of argument roles onto the grammatical function requires additional processing. The investigation of the acquisition of Serbian in Australian conditions offers a good opportunity to test Serbians pragmatically driven free word order and its complex and highly irregular case marking system (Hammond 2005) in the language of the teenage bilinguals. The PT extension provides a firm foundation for predictions about the corresponding mechanisms in the development of bilinguals language.

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3. Typology of Serbian and a brief sketch of its grammar

Serbian is a Slavonic language and can be characterised as a conservative Indo-European language (Comrie and Corbett 1993). A typological characteristic of the Serbian language is its highly fusional morphology. Serbian nouns that fall into masculine, feminine or neuter grammatical gender consist of a stem and inflections that are assigned to it at the lexical level. The inflections indicate the number (singular or plural) and the case on the noun and exhibit form variation. A single inflectional morpheme may be used for several different morphological contrasts which make the case system complex and highly irregular. In English, functional roles are identified through word order while in Serbian, case endings on the nouns identify the subject, object or indirect object (Hammond 2005). There is no one-to-one relationship between form and function. There are seven cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental and vocative) marked in the language, each expressing a different function for each type of noun, adjective or pronoun (Hammond 2005). The order of major constituents is determined not so much by syntactic factors as in English or German with relatively fixed word order as by pragmatic factors. Constituent order in the sentence is determined largely by topic-comment structure (cf. Levelt 1989). Thus, word order in Serbian is flexible and there are six possible permutations (SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV and OVS). Orders where the object precedes the subject are rare even though all orders are grammatically acceptable (Uroevi, Carello, Savi, Lukatela and Turvey 1986). SVO is the most frequent word order in Serbian and the most dominant. Subject and verb features are systematically related to each other and agree in number and gender. Serbian is richly endowed with regular and mixed agreements (Wechsler and Zlati 2000, 2001). Due to the rich inflectional morphology the subject of the sentence can be omitted as the relevant information is retrievable from the verb inflection (Comrie and Corbett 1993). The only element that has a fixed position in the sentence is the clitic. The clitic or clitic group comes in second position in the sentence and displays fixed internal order in the group: interrogative enclitic li + pronominal enclitics + verbal enclitics usually AUX + reflexive enclitic se (Hammond 2005). Learning the pragmatics behind this free word order and its connection with the clitic group as well as the rich inflectional morphology are the greatest difficulties faced by acquirers of Serbian. The main cue used for sentence interpretation is the casemarking system (Slobin 1973).

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The present study thus focuses on the typological characteristics of Serbian nominal morphology and its syntactic representation. A brief sketch of the nominal morphosyntax is presented below. Nouns in Serbian carry case endings that mark their function in the sentence. Nominal modifiers that precede the head noun obligatorily agree in number, case and gender with the head (Hammond 2005). This is illustrated in Figure 1. The elements of the singular NP this blue dress agree in number, gender and case. VP = V DEM Peglam AP A ov-u ( PRED) = iron < SUBJ, OBJ> ( TENSE) = PRESENT ( SUBJ PER) = 1 ( SUBJ NUM) = SING ( SPEC) = this ( NUM) = SING ( GEN) = FEM ( CASE) = ACC ( ADJ PRED) = blue ( NUM) = SING ( GEN) = FEM ( CASE) = ACC ( PRED) = dress ( NUM) = SING ( GEN) = FEM ( CASE) = ACC plav-u haljin-u. ( OBJ) = NP N N

Figure1: LFG c-structure representation of singular NP agreement Nouns, adjectives and adjectival pronouns also have a form without case distinction, used when accompanying numerals 2, both, 3 and 4 (Comrie and Corbett 1993). This form is observed in the quantifier NPs. An example on a quantifier NP is illustrated in Figure 2 below.

182 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

VP = V DEM AP Vidim tri ( PRED) = see < SUBJ, OBJ> ( TENSE) = PRESEN ( SUBJ PER) = 1 ( SUBJ NUM) = SING ( SPEC) = three ( NUM) = PL ( ADJ PRED) = big ( NUM) = PL ( GEN) = MASC ( CASE) = GEN ( PRED) = bears ( NUM) = PL ( GEN) = MASC ( CASE) = GEN A velik-a medved-a ( OBJ) = NP N N

Figure 2: LFG c-structure representation of Quantifier NP agreement Two syntactic structures exist that are expressed by count nouns or mass nouns: adjectival and governmental. Adjectival quantification of NP has case, number and gender of the head noun agreeing with all the elements in the NP (Comrie and Corbett 1993). The governmental quantification however has the quantifier imposing a form on the noun and it is observed with numerals two, both, three and four as illustrated in Figure 2 above. These numerals occur with pluralia tantum nouns and induce genitive case. This type of internal case feature distribution is heterogeneous and is known as genitive of quantification GEN (Q) (Franks 1995). Quantifier NPs in Russian (Franks 1995: 95-97) on the other hand, in an oblique case position, appear entirely in the appropriate case (homogeneous agreement). In overt case positions the quantifiers include genitive in the following noun and its modifiers (heterogeneous agreement). The Russian quantifier phrase (QP) projection is labelled as

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structural case. Nevertheless, Franks (1995) states that this theory does not extend to Serbian as GEN (Q) is an inherent case in this language. The quantified NPs in Serbian occur in an oblique case position without marking that oblique case overtly (Franks 1995). All modifiers in the quantificational NP must be in the genitive regardless of the position. Thus, this structure is treated as NP in Serbian language. In the NP three big bears presented above the numeral three imposes the 2342 form on to the adjective and noun that agree in number, case and gender. The morphosyntactic structures described above play an important role in the application of PT on Serbian language in this study. Thus, the nominal morphosyntactic stages for Serbian PT-based hierarchy are proposed in the next section.

4. The proposed Serbian PT-based hierarchy and the processability of the structures
A Serbian PT-based hierarchy is proposed next to assess SerbianAustralian teenage bilinguals language specific-processing routines. The present study focuses on four nominal morphosyntactic structures of Serbian which are only a selection of stages proposed to investigate whether the informants can handle form variation and information exchange between constituents across three PT stages (lexical > phrasal > inter-phrasal). Description of the structures and their status in the proposed hierarchy can be seen in Table 1. This PT derived hierarchy is hypothesised on the basis of information exchange between constituents. It does not predict that whatever can be processed will indeed be acquired but nevertheless one can test whether these features are developmentally entrenched (Pienemann 2005). It is assumed that these structural features are maintained throughout the developmental process and underlie other more complex structures that do not have to be decided on every time a refreshment of parts of the structures is made (Pienemann 2005). In other words the hierarchy is defined as a specific range of morphosyntactic structural options of Serbian available to the learner.

Comrie & Corbett (1993) refer to this structure as 234 form as a remnant of the Proto-Slavonic dual number.

184 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

The selected structures presented in Table 1 distribute over the three stages of the Processability hierarchy: lexical> phrasal> interphrasal. The predictions of the hierarchy imply that: 1) Number and case marking on nouns will be acquired before the number and case agreement in NPs; and 2) The number and case agreement in NPs will be acquired before the Subject predicative adjective agreement. PT stages 4 Inter-phrasal 3 Phrasal Serbian Morphosyntax Subject predicative adjective agreement NP agreement (Number: Sing /Pl & Case: Nom /Acc) Number marking on nouns (Singular /Plural) Case marking on nouns (Nominative/Accusative) -------------------

2 Lexical 1 Lemma / Word level

Table 1: Hypothesised hierarchy for Serbian Each stage or procedure in this hierarchy is discussed separately below. Stage 2 (lexical): LFG is a lexicalist theory where syntactic structure is driven by the lexicon. Word structure is different from phrase and sentence structure as the order of elements in morphology is always fixed (Falk 2001). Lexical and form variation of nouns in terms of number and case is the characteristic of this procedure. Such features characterize one of the major lexical categories, i.e., the nouns. Nominative and accusative cases are assumed to be the default markers for core grammatical relations. Nominative endings of nouns mark the subject function. The recognition of nouns with nominative case inflection is faster than other case inflections (Lukatela, Mandi, Gligorijevi, Kosti, Savi and Turvey 1978; Lukatela, Gligorijevi, Kosti and Turvey 1980) in contrast to verbs and adjectives that show frequency-based processing (Feldman and Fowel 1987; Kosti and Katz 1987; Kosti 1991). The direct object is expressed by accusative case. The lexical form variation of a noun such as medved (bear) is illustrated in (3). This procedure does not require any exchange of information with other constituents and is therefore computed at the lexical stage. The task

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for the learner is to acquire the singular /plural alternation expressing values of the NUM(ber) feature and/or the nominative /accusative variation for the case feature. (3) a. Medved N ( PRED) =bear ( NUM) = SING (GEN) =MASC (CASE)=NOM b. Medved-i N ( PRED) =bears ( NUM) = PL (GEN) =MASC (CASE) = NOM ( PRED) = bear ( NUM) = SING ( GEN) =MASC ( CASE) = ACC ( PRED) =bears ( NUM) = PL ( GEN) =MASC ( CASE) = ACC

c. Medved-a

d. Medved-e

Stage 3(Phrasal): Two types of NP structure discussed previously typically require the phrasal procedure that is, feature unification between constituents in the phrase. The variation of feature value of NPs required for the phrasal procedure to be acquired is illustrated in (4). (4) Noun Phrasal procedures a. Modifier (Nom, Sing) + N (Nom, Sing) Modifier (Acc, Sing) + N (Acc, Sing) b. Quantifier + (Modifier (Gen, Pl)) + N (Gen, Pl) Structures listed in (4a) represent the agreement of modifiers with the noun in number and case as presented in Figure 1 in section 3. An example is given in (5). (5) Ov-u-ACC.S.F plav-u-ACC.S.F haljin-u-ACC.S.F This blue dress

186 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

The quantifier NP in (4b) represents agreement of elements in plural and can occupy an overt or oblique case position. A formal description is presented in Figure 2. The numeral imposes the genitive of quantification onto the adjective and noun that agree in number, case and gender as in (6) below. (6) Tri-PL velik-a-GEN.PL.M medved-a-GEN.PL.M Three big bears In every case the values of the feature(s) expressed in the agreeing elements must be compatible, e.g., if the value of the nominal NUM(ber) feature is S(ingular) then the feature of the agreeing modifier must also be S(ingular). To sum up, in order to achieve the process of unification in the structures presented, the learner must identify the head of the phrase and exchange the feature values information with the modifiers. Stage 4 (Inter-phrasal): This inter-phrasal level of information exchange corresponds to the level of the sentence which requires exchange of information between phrases with different heads (Di Biase and Kawaguchi 2002). The lexical entries in (7) show the information distribution between the various phrasal elements. (7) Devojica N ( PRED) = girl ( NUM) = SING ( GEN) = FEM ( CASE) = NOM je AUX ( PRED) = to be ( TENSE) = PRESENT ( PER) =3 ( NUM) = SING ( PRED) = to be < SUBJ, COMP> ( TENSE) = PAST ( PER) =3 ( NUM) = SING ( GEN) = FEM ( ADJ PRED) = tired ( NUM) = SING ( GEN) = FEM ( CASE) = NOM

bila

umorna.

ADJ

Girl was tired.

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The noun Devojic-a (girl) and the predicative adjective umorn-a (tired) must agree in number and case (Singular and Nominative) as well as gender. The copula je bila (to be) also agrees in number and gender but is not assessed in this study as it focuses on information exchange between nominal elements in the sentence. Figure 3 also illustrates the corresponding c-structure to f-structure mapping.

SUBJ

PRED NUM GEND CASE

girl SING FEM NOM NP

S VP V AP V bila A umorn-a.

PRED to be <Subj, Comp> TENSE PAST ADJ PRED tired NUM SING GEND FEM CASE NOM N Cl

COMP

Devojic-a je Girl was tired.

Figure 3: Parallel to c- to f-structure mapping Devojcica je bila umorna To sum up, acquirers must match feature information for gender, number (singular) and case (nominative) across different phrases (noun and predicative adjective). Form variation in terms of gender (feminine, masculine and neuter) is used as a pointer whether the learners have acquired this stage.

188 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

The hierarchy just illustrated above is proposed as a metric to test the language attainment, in Serbian, by Serbian-Australian teenage bilinguals because it shows the level of language processing skills that the bilinguals possess and, indirectly, reveals the rate of this language development in prevailing Australian conditions. Given the restricted conditions of Serbian language acquisition in Australia, the following question is posed: Question 1: Are the language maintenance efforts of Serbian-Australian teenage bilinguals helping them attain the inter-phrasal level of morphosyntactic achievement in the proposed Serbian PT-based hierarchy? It is expected that the teenage bilinguals will be able to communicate effectively, in Serbian, with members of their family. Serbian is one of the numerous community languages in Australia spoken by more than 100000 migrants and their descendants (Dimitrijevi 2004a, b). The process of language shift from Serbian to English in the Serbian community is an ongoing process, and was possibly slowed down by such factors as the continuous migration of Serbs during the period following the Second World War and the 1990s, Australian multicultural policy, and the strong presence of the Serbian Orthodox Church (Dimitrijevi 2004c). Assuming that these teenage bilinguals, attending the secondary Australian school (year 7 to 12), have a positive attitude towards the language maintenance and use Serbian in the home domain, the following hypothesis is proposed: Hypothesis 1: Serbian-Australian teenage bilinguals will reach the interphrasal level in the proposed PT hierarchy. If the predictions of hypothesis 1 are supported, the proposed Serbian PTbased hierarchy will only show the use of limited Serbian language structures by the three bilingual teenagers that are assumed to be developmentally entrenched. Given the richness of the pragmatic-syntax choices in Serbian language and the flexibility of their use, the proposed hypothesis is not enough to assess their use of Serbian language. Thus, PTs extension is used to predict the bilinguals use of some pragmatic features of the language and is discussed in the next section.

5. Pragmatic-syntax choices in Serbian

This part of the chapter describes a selection of pragmatic-syntax choices and non-default mapping of argument roles utilised in Serbian and

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presents the hypothesis for the bilinguals language behaviour using the current extension of PT (Pienemann et al. 2005). The description of the informants non-default mapping skills is necessary to complete the picture of their language use given the typological characteristics of Serbian. As mentioned previously Serbian word order is flexible and its alternation ensures effective communication. However, it may cause learning problems for the bilinguals as skills in handling such structures require higher levels of morphosyntactic development than those proposed in the Serbian PT-based hierarchy for (obligatory) morphosyntactic structure. The deployment of discourse-pragmatic choices minimally requires learning to map grammaticised discourse functions (Bresnan 2001) as well as special lexical features. Thus, if the bilinguals do attain the highest level of the proposed PT hierarchy, that does not imply that they will necessarily have skills in non-default mapping of argument roles or deviate from the canonical sentence schema. The inter-phrasal structure proposed in the Serbian PT-based hierarchy requires default SVO word order and is the order which can be implemented with the least processing cost (Pinker 1984; Pienemann et al. 2005).This implies the use of the basic architecture of syntax with its three parallel levels of structure in a lineal order, that is the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis where the parallel structures are mapped onto each other in a one-to-one manner. This corresponds to the inter-phrasal stage in the Serbian PT-based hierarchy as well as the default SVO word order. Serbian children and adult speakers, as we saw earlier, rely on morphological markings and word order strategy in sentence interpretations (Slobin 1973; Uroevi et al. 1986, 1988). To test the pragmatic-syntax structures of the language, it is necessary to propose a selection of structures that would capture the deviation from the default Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis. Serbian topic-comment structure allows for any constituent in the sentence to be emphasised by assigning a more prominent position, in linear order, to the topicalised element. Differentiation of the Topic and Subject in Serbian can be achieved by alternative word order that disrupts the linearity of the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis. A speaker is able to assign the TOP function to a core argument other than SUBJ by mapping it onto the most prominent (first or early) position in the sentence. For example, (8a) shows default word order in Serbian while (8b) shows an alternative word order with the object being assigned prominence by placing it in initial position (whereas it is canonically post-verbal).

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(8a)

Canonical SVO in Serbian Macka je pojela rib-u. S V O Cat-NOM eat-PAST fish-ACC. The cat ate the fish. Object topicalization in Serbian Rib-u je pojela macka. TOP V S Fish-ACC eat-PAST cat-NOM. The cat ate the fish.

(8b)

In this example, the object of a transitive verb has been topicalized and assigned the first position in the sentence demonstrating the OVS word order. This does not require any change of the morphological properties of the directly marked NPs or any change of lexical mapping as TOPic is a grammaticalized function. The object is still marked by accusative case and the sentence is in active voice. To be able to alternate the word order, the bilingual must rely on morphological markers for the sentence interpretation and not on the default word order. Thus, word orders such as OVS or OSV can be expected as examples of topicalization when the speaker is able to assign the TOP function to a core argument other than SUBJ (Pienemann et al. 2005). This implies that functional assignment (Sprocedure) must be in place. Further, Serbian also allows a different mapping of roles on to grammatical functions altogether, i.e., with the passive voice. Basic passive voice in Serbian requires similar processing procedures and resources that were described for the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis (Pienemann et al. 2005) in section 2. It involves the mapping of the patient onto the Subject function and suppression of the agent role or its demotion to a non-core adjunct function (Bresnan 2001). The use of passive in Serbian is not widely used due to the flexibility and effectiveness of the free word-order (Novakovi 2004). This further deviates from the default SVO and relies on additional mapping principles and exceptional lexical entries. An example is presented in (9).

(9a)

Active voice

Lucija Medojevi Agent SUBJECT VERB Patient ODJECT (thematic role)

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(grammatical function) (constituent structure)

Mack-a je poje-la rib-u. Cat-NOM be-AUX eat-3.S.PAST fish-ACC. Cat ate the fish. (9b) Patient SUBJECT VERB Passive voice Agent ADJUNCT

(thematic role) (grammatical function)

Rib-a je pojede-na od strane Mack-e. (constituent structure) Fish-NOM be-AUX eat -3.S.PASSIVE by cat-GEN. The fish was eaten by the cat. As the patient is mapped onto the subject function it receives nominative case ending. A passive particle (-na) is added to the perfective verb stem and the agent may be expressed as an Adjunct (therefore it is optional) in the by clause that starts with a dual preposition (od strane). Acquirers of Serbian must thus demonstrate the use of these processing routines and morphological marking on the elements of the sentence. Topicalisation and Passivization represent the options available to the learner in the Serbian pragmatic-syntax interface. Based on the theoretical groundings and predictions presented above, the following question is asked: Question 2: Are Serbian-Australian teenage bilinguals able to express the optional pragmatic structural choices through alternative word order and/or passive constructions? Under the assumption that these teenage bilinguals do attain high levels of language processing as well as have positive attitude towards the language maintenance and use Serbian in the home domain, it can also be expected that they will be able to use at least some of the pragmatic-syntax choices of Serbian discussed above. Thus, the proposed hypothesis is:

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Hypothesis 2: Serbian-Australian teenage bilinguals will be able to use some of the pragmatic-syntax choices of Serbian, such as topicalization (alternative word order) and non-default mapping of argument roles (passive constructions). In an experimental study of English voice choices, Tomlin (1995) hypothesises that the speaker marks the referent in focal attention as the syntactic subject of the utterance under current formation. Tomlin (1995) tested the hypothesis with a computer animated clip Fish Film designed to elicit the interaction between the syntactic subject and focal attention. This Fish Film consists of 32 trails where one fish eats another fish identical in shape and size but different in colour. At equal speed the two fish approach each other and one swallows the other. The fish colour is selected randomly and the direction of the agent is counterbalanced. Half of the trails are agent-trails, half patient-trails. Each trail is visually primed with an arrow to attract focal attention on the referent that is either an agent or a patient. The timing between the priming and the jaw closing is less than 150ms, thus blocking the attention movement elsewhere as this is possible in such visual representations. Kawaguchi (2005b) and Wang (2006) demonstrated that learners of English as a second language utilised passive voice constructions only if they had attained the required processing skills. Wang (2006, this book) used the Fish Film task for data elicitation in his study and pointed out the very compelling visual context of it in prompting alternative voice constructions by learners. The present study also utilises this visual task to investigate whether the Serbian-Australian bilinguals utilise word order alternatives and/or passive constructions when visually cued to do so. The following section of the chapter describes the design of the study and the bilingual informants.

6. Method
Informants The design of the study is cross-sectional with a quantitative approach (Doughty and Long, 2003). The three teenage Serbian-Australian bilinguals who participated in this study were born in Australia or migrated to Australia in their infancy with both parents originating from Serbia. Two of the informants were attending a secondary school in Sydney and acquired Serbian in their home environment; the other informant, also a secondary school student who acquired Serbian in a

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home environment and in community but, in addition, he is receiving formal instruction in Serbian through the Saturday School of Community Languages. This latter informant was born in Serbia and arrived in Australia with his family at one and a half years of age. The other two informants were born in Australia. All three informants are acquiring two languages as their first language as in common conditions of bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA) in a migration situation in what Vihman and McLaughlin (1982) called an environment-bound language, with one language (Serbian in this case) at home and another (i.e., English) in the community (cf. Qi, Di Biase and Campbell 2006). In addition, a native adult Serbian speaker participated in the study as the comparison informant to insure that the range of structures to be elicited is actually produced by natives in similar situations of elicitation. The bilingual teenagers parents were all born in Serbia and all speak the same Ekavic dialect as they originate from Vojvodina, a northern part of Serbia. The native speaker also originates from this same region. Each informant is assigned a fictional name to protect their privacy. Ethics approval was obtained from the University of Western Sydney Ethics Panel (Human Subjects) for this study. Table 2 below offers a description of each informant. Name Trish Ned Year at school Year 7 Year 9 Other information Thirteen years of age. Born in Australia. Fifteen years of age. Born in Australia. Seventeen years of age. Arrived in Australia as an infant aged 1.5 years. Two years of attendance of Serbian language classes at the Saturday school of Community languages. Thirty five years of age. Arrived in Australia at the age of 20 and has lived in Australia for 15 years

Don

Year 12

Nicole

-------

Table 2: An overview of the informants Procedure

194 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

Data elicitation was dyadic in nature (the informant and the researcher who is a native speaker of Serbian) and was conducted in the informants homes. The session with each informant consisted of four parts reflecting different tasks used for data collection. Besides some spontaneous conversation (part 1) informants were asked to perform a variety of communicative tasks including a spot-the-difference task (part2), narration (part 3) and an online description of a video (part 4). Interviews lasted 3540 minutes, in an attempt to elicit a high number of contexts for producing the test structures. The audio data was transcribed using the transcription conventions in Di Biase (2000). Part 1 was a short spontaneous conversation where informants were asked some personal experience questions for the purpose of gathering information on language maintenance strategies. Part 2 was a Spotthe-difference task where the informants were presented with two pictures both with a park scene with minor differences. They were asked to pick one of the pictures and not to reveal to the interviewer which one they picked. The task was to spot at least seven differences between them by asking questions. Part 3 of the session was designed to elicit a narration. This is a story-telling task where informants were presented with a sequence of pictures with illustrations of a well known story for children, Goldilocks and the three bears. They were asked to re-tell the story in Serbian following the pictures. These tasks were used to elicit, through near-naturalistic conversation, a range of structures presenting various degrees of complexity or processing problems. The tasks were obtained from the COASIT Teachers Inservice CD (Di Biase 2003). Part 4 was a short 4 min 40 second video clip Fish Film by Tomlin (1995) as described earlier. This particular task elicits on-line speech production by informants in conditions that would usually make native English speakers use passive constructions (Tomlin 1995).The instructions for the task were translated literally into Serbian from Tomlins (1995) design. Data analysis A full distributional analysis was used to analyse the data according to language specific structures (cf. Di Biase & Kawaguchi 2002). The theoretical framework of this study is Processability Theory (Pienemann 1998a; Pienemann et al. 2005) which specifies emergence criteria for syntactic and morphological structures in determining the stages of the informants language acquisition rather than using accuracy measures. Emergence is defined as a point in time corresponding to the first systematic and productive use of structures (Pienemann 1984). In this

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cross-sectional design emergence means presence (Palotti 2007) that will show that the structures in the proposed hierarchy have emerged at some time and are now being used systematically and productively. The acquisition criterion in this study is based on types rather than on tokens. More precise representation of actual morpheme production by these bilinguals would not provide us with a clear understanding of their basic language use in terms of processing. Reducing the complex Serbian noun morphology to a particular inflectional type would require well controlled tasks that would not embrace the purpose of this study. A precise criterion for establishing what emerges must therefore be provided. The following exclusion criteria were formulated. All nouns and phrases were included in distributional tables expect a) echoes of words or phrases uttered by the interviewer, b)self-repetitions of words or phrases by the informant c) uninflectible nouns and d) words with inaudible morphological endings. Turning to factorization, case assignment (NOMinative / ACCusative) and number assignments (Singular / PLural) on nouns as well as noun and modifier agreement in case and number were considered for stage 2 and 3, disregarding gender. For the inter-phrasal stage in the Serbian PT-based hierarchy gender (feminine, masculine and neuter) was used to verify lexical and form variation due to subject and predicative adjective agreeing in same case (NOM) and number (S). For each informant a distributional table was formulated for each stage separately. Each category of noun (NOM.S, NOM.PL, ACC.S and ACC.PL) in the lexical stage, category of phrasal (NP agreement) and inter-phrasal (Sub-pred,adjective agreement) was classified as being supplied, oversupplied or not supplied in obligatory context. For example, at the lexical stage supplied meant the use of category ACC.S in an object-like function. Oversupplied meant the use of the ACC.S inflectional morpheme in a function other than direct object (replacing another case requirement). Not supplied in obligatory context meant that the ACC.S was not used in (for ex. NOM.S used instead of ACC.S) in the function of direct object. Productive use is demonstrated if at least two morphological and /or morphosyntactic minimal pairs are produced at the given hypothesised stage in the hierarchy. The requirement that the structure should occur more than once ensures that the structure produced is not formulaic in nature. All distributional tables for the proposed hierarchy were summarised in one table presented in the results section based on the first three parts of the interview with each informant. The total number of

196 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

occurrences of respective structures and the number of valid positive instances were counted and recorded in tables presented in the results.

7. Results
The results for the proposed Processability hierarchy for Serbian are presented in Table 3 below. The broken line in Table 3 marks the level in the PT hierarchy that the informants attained in this study. The results show that all informants produced a sufficient number of structures for each hypothesized level and attained the inter-phrasal stage in the proposed Processability hierarchy for Serbian in accordance with the emergence criteria specified in the previous section. The total number of contexts where a particular feature or structure has been supplied is marked by (+) if used in appropriate context, by (-) if not supplied in obligatory context and by (>) if the feature or structure appears to be oversupplied. An example of the interpretation of the table is given for stage 2. Some examples are provided for lexical and form variation in respect of number and case features. Trish, for example, supplied 12 occurrences of accusative singular nouns (ACC.S) in appropriate contexts (+12). An example is presented in (10). (10) Moja samo ima one blue Mine-POSS.PRO only have-3.S that blue i onak i and then and

yellow suknj-u. yellow skirt-ACC.S.F Mine only has that blue and then and, yellow skirt Trish however failed to provide the accusative plural (ACC.PL) in one obligatory context (-1) in an example presented in (11) below. She used genitive plural marker on the noun krevet (bed) instead. (11) Onak su videli krevet-a to su bili tu. Then see-3.PL.PAST bed-GEN.PL.M that be-3.PL.PAST here. Then they saw the beds that were there

Trish

Ned

Don

Nicole

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Stage 4: S-Pred. Adjective Agreement Neuter Masculine Feminine Stage3: NP agreement +1 (1), -1 +1 +2, -1 +1, -1 +4 +1 - - +2, -1 +4 +1 +2 +2

NOM. S +4 ACC. S +8, >11 NUM + (mod) + N +5 (1) Stage 2: Category & features NOM. S ACC. S NOM. PL ACC. PL +1 , >1 +12, >12 L +2 +7, -1

+17, >2 +14, >11 +6 , -1

+9 +11, >2 +6 (2)

+13 +18 +10 (1)

+2, >1 +10, >10 L - - +2

+5 +5, >7 L, -3 +1 +4, >1

+7 +12, >1L +3 +6

Table 3: Results for the proposed PT hierarchy for Serbian Trish also oversupplied singular accusative endings in 12 contexts (>12). An example is presented in (12). The accusative case feature was used instead of more marked oblique cases (in this example locative case), while the number feature is correctly supplied. (12) Ali radim samo malo u kol-u. But work-1.S.PRES only little in school-ACC.S.F. But I only do a little bit of work at school.

The three examples used above illustrate how the spoken performance of the informants was scored in respect to the required number and case features. According to the emergence criteria discussed previously, Trish

198 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

supplied sufficient positive evidence of lexical and structural variation in obligatory contexts required for the (noun) category procedure (NOM.S = 1, ACC.S = 12, NOM.PL = 2, ACC.PL = 7). Other informants in the study also supplied lexical and structural variation in all the required procedures as Table 3 shows. Thus, the inter-phrasal stage in the developmental hierarchy is attained by all three informants in this study. The results in terms of the informants performance in response to the Fish Film task, used to elicit topicalization and/or passives in Serbian, show their range of responses in handling these pragmatic-syntax choices. The patient-cued episodes (sixteen) in this task are represented in Figure 4. Responses were divided into four possible categories, each representing structures elicited by the task. The Agent-active category represents responses in active voice that start with the agent in initial position (as subject) despite the patient being cued. In active voice the lexical verb is formed from an INPER(fective) verb stem and tense markers as given in (13). (13) Crven-a Red-NOM rib-a je fish-NOM be.AUX poje-la eat.INPER-3.S.PAST

plav-u rib-u. blue-ACC fish-ACC. The red fish ate the blue fish. Here informants utilise the Unmarked Alignment Hypothesis (Pienemann et al. 2005), i.e., they map argument roles canonically onto the surface form. An example is in the canonical SVO in Serbian that corresponds to this category. The second category is labelled passive. An example is given in (14). (14) Plav-a rib-a je pojede-na Blue-NOM fish-NOM be.AUX eat.PERF-PASSIVE od strane crven-e rib-e. by red-GEN fish-GEN. The blue fish was eaten by the red fish. The Lexical Mapping Hypothesis (Pienemann et al. 2005) predicts that this kind of structure may be produced by learners who have acquired the S- procedure, but we need to remember that using a passive

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rather than active construction is an option for the speaker. In passive voice the lexical verb is formed from a PERF(ective) verb stem and passive particle na. The category of Patient-actives, on the other hand, refers to the informants missed attempts to form passives. The patient in these utterances is mapped onto the subject initial position, however the passive morphosyntax is inappropriate e.g., inappropriate passive particle ending on the verb or the use of a verb in active voice as in (15). (15) Plav-a rib-a je poje-la Blue-NOM fish-NOM be-AUX eat.INPER-3.S.PAST od strane crven-a rib-a. by red-NOM fish-NOM. The blue fish ate by the red fish. The category Alternative WO represents the informants use of alternative word order (OVS, OSV etc.), which is perfectly grammatical in Serbian, and follows the predictions of the Topic Hypothesis (Pienemann et al. 2005) as presented in (16). (16) Plav-u rib-u TOP Blue-ACC fish-ACC crven-a je be-AUX poje-la V eat.INPER-3.S.PAS

rib-a. S red-NOM fish-NOM. The red fish ate the blue fish.

200 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

Fish Film result for 16 patient-cued episodes

16 14 12 10 Passive 8 6 4 2 0 Trish Ned Don Nicole Agent-active Patient-active Alternative W O

Figure 4: The informants individual speech production results in the Fish Film task To detail the interpretation of the results in the graph, the findings are summarised in Table 4 below. Then the findings are discussed for each informant individually. Informants Trish Ned Don Nicole Agent-active (UAH) 12 7 1 13 Passive Patient-active Alternative WO (LMH) (Missed) (TOP hypothesis) -4 5 -4 5 -1 --VOS =5 OVS =5 OVS =2

Table 4: Summary of findings for the Fish Film in Serbian

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Trish acquired Serbian in a limited home environment. She attained the inter-phrasal level of language processing as demonstrated previously in this chapter. She made four attempts to formulate the passive construction in patient-cued trails of the Fish Film task. She failed to make a clear distinction between the past tense ending and passive particle suffixed to the verb. Instead, they were used together. An example is given in (17). A lexical verb in the Serbian passive construction does not contain the information about the tense (perfective verb stem + passive particle). This is perceived from the auxiliary accompanying the passive form of the lexical verb. Nevertheless, the patient in Trishs example was mapped onto the subject first position following the predictions of LMH and was put into the category of patient-actives. (17) Ima jopet crna i bila je pojeda-na-la za drugi. Have again black and was eat- PASSIVE-PAST for other. There is a black one again and it eaten-ate by the other one.

Out of 16 patient-cued events Trish produced four patient-actives discussed above where the patient was mapped onto the subject position. She produced agent-actives in all other events even though the arrows cued the patient fish as (18) shows. (18) Sada ima jopet dve .. i bel-a je poje-da-la Now have again two ..and white-NOM eat.PERF-PAST ov-u drug-u. other-ACC one-ACC. There are two again and the white one ate the other one. Ned, the second informant, also acquired the inter-phrasal level of processing skills in a limited home environment. He produced four passive constructions as exemplified in (19). (19) Roza riba je bila ubije-na Pink-NOM fish-NOM was kill.PERF-PASSIVE od crven-u rib-u. from red-ACC fish-ACC. The pink fish was killed by the red fish.

202 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

In five out of sixteen patient-cued episodes of the Fish Film, Ned mapped the cued patient onto the subject position but used a verb in active voice that consequently allowed for the patient to be interpreted as an agent in the sentence. These examples are treated as patient-actives, as in (20) where he used the verb je umrla (died). This verb does not require a by clause and the patient fish became the experiencer. (20) Crvena riba je umr-la Red-NOM fish-NOM be-AUX die-PAST od siv-u rib-u. from grey-ACC fish-ACC. The red fish died by the grey fish. Ned demonstrated the use of passive construction and utilized non-default mapping of argument roles. However, this was not consistent as he also produced seven agent-active examples despite the cue. Don also acquired Serbian at home and, in addition, he has been attending Saturday community school classes for two years. He produced five passives. Further, Don produced alternative word order to topicalize the patient in the sentence following the predictions of Topic Hypothesis. He used the OVS word order where he mapped the patient onto the first position in the sentence while maintaining object mapping as in (21). (21) rib-u O White-ACC fish-ACC crn-a Bel-u poje-la V be-AUX eat.INPER-PAST je

rib-a. S black-NOM fish-NOM. The black fish ate the white fish. Don also used VOS word order as in (22).

Lucija Medojevi (22) Pojela je siv-u rib-u . V O Eat.INPER-PAST be-AUX grey-ACC fish-ACC plava riba. S blue-NOM fish-NOM. Blue fish ate the grey fish.

203

Don demonstrated skills in non-default mapping of argument roles and the appropriate use of morphosyntax of passives. Unlike Trish and Ned, Don is also able to use alternative word orders to topicalize the patient-cued fish. Nicole, the comparison informant, is a 35 year old native speaker of Serbian. She produced two examples of OVS word order, such as in (23). (23) Roza riba pliva .. nju je proguta-la Pink fish swim-PRES ..her-ACC be-AUX swallow-PAST O V plav-a ribic-a. blue-NOM fish-NOM. S The pink fish is swimming .The blue fish swallowed her.

She also had one example of what I would call patient-active presented in (24). The cued patient was mapped onto the initial position. However, Nicole reversed the roles of the agent and patient as she used the verb progutala (swallowed) after a brief pause possibly out of confusion. She turned the mapped patient into an agent of the utterance. (24) Ljubiast-a ribic-a .. proguta-la je crven-u ridic-u. Pink-NOM fish-NOM .. swallow-PAST red-ACC fish-ACC. The pink fish (pause) swallowed the red fish. In the rest of the patient-cued trails, Nicole overwhelmingly used agent-actives. As a native speaker Nicole utilizes topicalization in two examples from the task. She did not produce passives to demonstrate nondefault mapping of argument roles.

204 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

8. Discussion and conclusion

The results for all informants suggest that the proposed Processability hierarchy for Serbian was successfully utilized to test the bilinguals morpho-syntactic processing skills. Using the proposed Serbian PT hierarchy, the hypothesis tested was supported. Results show that all informants attained the inter-phrasal level of processing skills in the proposed PT hierarchy. However, they also suggest that not all informants are equally accurate in the language. It simply shows that they have the capacity to process these structures. The use of the case marking system, for example, shows significant differences between the informants. The generalized use of accusative instead of other oblique cases (Locative, Dative, and Instrumental) in the language of the two bilinguals who did not attend additional Serbian language classes (hence the high occurrence of oversupplied ACC.S presented in Table 3) points towards a reduced case system in these speakers. An example of oversupplied accusative case instead of genitive was given in (20) and presented in (25) below. The preposition od (from) typically requires genitive case in this context. (25) Od siv-u rib-u. From grey-ACC fish-ACC

This characteristic has also been observed in the use of Serbian language by immigrants in diaspora (urovi 1983; Dimitrijevi 2004a, b, c). The limited use of the case marking system in the bilinguals language is important when discussing the options that they may choose when assessed for pragmatic-syntax interface of the language with the Fish Film task. The hypothesis regarding the pragmatic-syntax choices produced by bilinguals was also supported. The bilingual informants in this study were able to produce some discourse-pragmatic choices. However, some differences observed between the bilingual informants are apparent especially in the processability of non-default mapping of argument roles and the use of alternative word order. The acquirer who attended additional instruction in Serbian attained a higher level of alternative word order production and skills in non-default mapping of argument roles as well as an effective use of passive than the two bilingual informants who only acquired Serbian in a home based environment. While the first uses all the options available i.e. topicalization and passives, the latter are only pragmatically aware (hence the use of missed passives called patientactives) of the mapping principles available or possible but we do not know

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whether they are developmentally ready to produce these structures (inaccurate use of the morphological markings on missed passives) given their limited case system. It is possible to assume that instructed acquirers of Serbian may have an advantage over the acquirers that learn Serbian only at home in terms of having an extra domain of language input and use. Research on second language acquisition demonstrates that language instruction helps the learner notice the form of marked structures that are less frequent in language production (Pavesi 1986; Van Patten 1996). Instruction is effective as attention to form promotes development of interlanguage grammar and acquisition (Daughty 1991; Di Biase 2002). At the same time, Pienemanns (1989, 1998a) Teachability Hypothesis holds that while stages of acquisition cannot be skipped as a result of formal instruction, formal instruction is, nevertheless, most beneficial if it focuses on the next stage of acquirers development. In other words, it may accelerate the rate of acquisition as Di Biase (2002) shows. This may impact on the importance of community language schools and its role in the maintenance of minority languages in Australia (cf. Medojevi 2007). Furthermore, the native speaker overwhelmingly used agent actives and only two object-first examples in her speech production regarding the required pragmatic-syntax choices. The results from her speech production are in line with Myachykov, Tomlin and Posner (2005) findings for Russian adult native speakers who also utilise agent-actives (SVO) overwhelmingly irrespective of the cuing in the Fish Film task. The observed differences between the speech production by the native speaker and the bilinguals are possibly due to the more automatic linguistic processing skills that the native speaker possesses. The load of language processing is minimised and the native speaker can devote time to other processing skills such as thinking (Myachykov, Posner and Tomlin 2007). The speech production for this task is restricted by the constraints of the speakers linguistic knowledge. The bilinguals two languages do not necessarily reach the same automatic processing level (Pienemann 1998a) particularly in this study due to the restricted home domain of Serbian language use compared to dominant English. The differences observed between the bilingual informants may therefore be due to the manner of language processing in terms of non-default mapping of argument roles and the use of alternative word order. It would be interesting to investigate whether there is a correlation between the limited use of pragmatic-syntax choices and the limited use of the case-marking system that potentially hinders the use of these structures.

206 Applying Processability Theory and its Extension to Serbian as a family and community language in Australia

In conclusion, the empirical data from this study has some implications on the applicability of Processability Theory and its current extension. As a universal theory of language acquisition, PT has been applied to Serbian, a language not tested for previously. Thus, this study supports and extends its typological plausibility. The predictions of the current extension of PT (Pienemann et al. 2005) proposed for second language acquisition (in particular the Topic hypothesis and the Lexical Mapping Hypothesis) were also profitably utilised for hypothesising the pragmatic-syntax choices used by the Serbian language acquirers and in fact proved useful in discriminating between advanced and less advanced speakers, thus helping to characterize bilinguals who have acquired one of their languages in more limited contexts. The results of this study show, then, that this theoretical framework is suitable to test the acquisition of bilinguals mother tongue in relatively constrained conditions of development. The study also throws some light on Serbian language degrees of attainment by Serbian-Australian teenage bilinguals.

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