Interpretation of anaphoric pronouns across bilingual populations: an exploratory comparison of L2 and heritage speakers of Italian

This study investigates anaphora resolution in bilingualism by comparing two profiles of bilinguals: adult second language speakers (L2ers) of Italian (L1: Dutch) and heritage speakers (HLers) of Italian with Dutch as the dominant language. Previous research has extensively shown that L2ers of null-subject languages tend to refer overt pronouns to topical antecedents more often than monolinguals. Studies focussing on HLers are comparatively limited, and direct comparisons between L2ers and HLers are rare. This study addresses this gap. Results from a sentence-comprehension task indicate that both bilingual groups patterned similarly to monolingual controls when interpreting null pronouns. However, both bilingual groups differed from monolinguals in their interpretation of overt pronouns, possibly due to cross-linguistic influence from Dutch. Moreover, contrary to earlier studies, increased proficiency did not correlate with more native-like interpretations. These findings align with previous research suggesting that age of onset of acquisition effects may not emerge clearly for late interface phenomena such as anaphora resolution. At the same time, they underscore the need for further studies directly comparing L2ers and HLers with diverse language pairings, as such comparisons would help clarify the respective contributions of linguistic input, proficiency, age of onset, and cross-linguistic influence in shaping anaphora resolution in bilingualism.