Hostname: page-component-669899f699-2mbcq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-28T17:05:12.791Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Clitic placement in Spanish–English bilingual children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

ANA TERESA PÉREZ-LEROUX ,
ALEJANDRO CUZA  and
DANIELLE THOMAS
ANA TERESA PÉREZ-LEROUX*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
ALEJANDRO CUZA
Affiliation:
Purdue University
DANIELLE THOMAS
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
Address for correspondence: Ana T. Pérez-Leroux, University of Toronto, 73 Queen's Park Crescent, Toronto, ON, M5S 1K7Canadaat.perez.leroux@utoronto.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Can transfer occur in child bilingual syntax when surface overlap does not involve the syntax-pragmatics interface? Twenty-three Spanish/English bilingual children participated in an elicited imitation study of clitic placement in Spanish restructuring contexts, where variable word order is not associated with pragmatic or semantic factors. Bilingual children performed poorly with preverbal clitics, the order that does not overlap with English. Distinct bilingual patterns emerged: backward repositioning, omissions (for simultaneous bilinguals) and a reduction in forward repositioning bias. We conclude that transfer should be defined in lexical terms as the result of priming effects leading to shifts in lexical items.

Keywords

word ordertransferclitic climbingSpanishinterfaces
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 221 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

We thank Liliana Sánchez, Yves Roberge, Mihaela Pirvulescu and Laura Colantoni, and members of the University of Toronto Object Omission Project for their helpful comments on early versions of this work. This work was conducted with partial support from SSHRC Research Grant 410-05-0239 “Object omission and transitivity in child language”.

References

Aissen, J., & Perlmutter, D. (1976). Clause reduction in Spanish. In Perlmutter, D. (ed.), Studies in relational grammar, pp. 360–403. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Argyri, E., & Sorace, A. (2007). Crosslinguistic influence and language dominance in older bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10 (1), 79–99.Google Scholar
Bohnacker, U. (2007). On the “vulnerability” of syntactic domains in Swedish and German. Language Acquisition, 14 (1), 31–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bok-Bennema, R. (2006). Clitic climbing. In Everarert, M. & van Riemskijk, H. (eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax (vol. I), pp. 469–518. Malden MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, A., & Shlonsky, U. (2004). Clitic positions and restructuring in Italian. Linguistic Inquiry, 35 (4), 519–557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chang, F., Dell, G., Bock, K., & Griffin, Z. (2000). Structural priming as implicit learning: A comparison of models of sentence production. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 217–229.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cinque, G. (2004). “Restructuring” and functional structure. In Belletti, A. (ed.), Structures and beyond: The cartography of syntactic structures, pp. 132–191. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costa, A., La Heij, A., & Navarrete, E. (2006). The dynamics of bilingual lexical access. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9 (2), 137–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, M. (1992). Analyzing syntactic variation with computer-based corpora: The case of modern Spanish clitic climbing. Hispania, 78, 370–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Döpke, S. (1998). Competing language structures: The acquisition of verb placement by bilingual German–English children. Journal of Child Language, 25, 555–584.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duffield, N., & White, L. (1999). Assessing L2 knowledge of Spanish clitic placement: Converging methodologies. Second Language Research, 15, 133–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenchlas, S. (2003). Clitics in child Spanish. First Language, 23 (68), 193–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finkbeiner, M., Gollan, T. H., & Caramazza, A. (2006). Bilingual lexical access in bilingual speakers: What's the (hard) problem? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9 (2), 153–166.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. D. (1998). Parsing to learn. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27, 339–374.Google Scholar
Gawlitzek-Maiwald, I., & Tracy, R. (1996). Bilingual boot-strapping. Linguistics, 34 (5), 90–926.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Genesee, F., Paradis, J., & Crago, M. B. (2004). Dual language development and disorders. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Harbour, D., Adger, D., & Béjar, S. (2008). Phi-Theory: Phi-features across modules and interfaces. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopp, H. (2002). Cross-linguistic differences at the syntax–discourse interface in off- and on-line L2 performance. In Belikova, A., Meroni, L. & Umeda, M. (eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA), pp. 147–158. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Hulk, A., & Müller, N. (2000). Crosslinguistic influence at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3 (3), 227–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S. C., & Wodniecka, Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9 (2), 119–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., Sumutka, B. M., & Schwartz, A. I. (2005). A cognitive view of the bilingual lexicon: Reading and speaking words in two languages. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 9 (1), 27–48.Google Scholar
Lipka, O., Siegel, L. S., & Vukovic, R. K. (2005). The literacy skills of English Language learners in lessons from research. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 20, 39–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loebell, H., & Bock, K. (2003). Structural priming across languages. Linguistics, 41, 791–824.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lust, B., Chien, Y-C., & Flynn, S. (1987). What children know: Methods for the study of first language acquisition. In Lust, B. (ed.), Studies in the acquisition of anaphora: Defining the constraints, pp. 271–356. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lust, B., Flynn, S., & Foley, C. (1996). What children know about what they say: Elicited imitation as a research method for assessing children's syntax. In McDaniel, D., McKee, C. & Smith Cairns, H. (eds.), Methods for assessing children's syntax, pp. 55–76. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
McDonough, K., & Mackey, A. (2008). Syntactic priming and ESL question development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 31–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masullo, P. J. (2004). Clitics aren't climbers! Presented at the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Linguistics, Salt Lake City, UT.Google Scholar
Meijer, P. J., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2003). Building syntactic structures in speaking: A bilingual exploration. Experimental Psychology, 50 (3), 184–195.Google Scholar
Menyuk, P. (1963). A preliminary evaluation of grammatical capacity in children. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 2 (5–6), 429–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (1997). On the parallels between diachronic change and interlanguage grammars: The L2 acquisition of the Spanish dative case system. Spanish Applied Linguistics, 1, 87–113.Google Scholar
Montrul, S. (2004). Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7 (2), 125–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrul, S. (2008). Form–meaning mappings in the aspectual domain: What about the L1? A response to Bruhn de Garavito & Valenzuela. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11 (3), 337–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, N., & Hulk, A. (2001). Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 1–21.Google Scholar
Myhill, J. (1988). The grammaticalization of auxiliaries: Spanish clitic climbing. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, pp. 352–363. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Napoli, D. J. (1981). Semantic interpretation vs. lexical governance. Language, 57 (4), 841–887.Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (2002). What's the difference between ‘toilet paper’ and ‘paper toilet’? French–English bilingual children's crosslinguistic transfer in compound nouns. Journal of Child Language, 29, 1–20.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. (2001). Do bilingual two year olds have separate phonological systems? International Journal of Bilingualism, 5 (1), 19–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., Nicoladis, E., & Crago, M. (2007). French–English bilingual children's acquisition of the past tense. In Caunt-Nulton, H., Kulatilake, S. & Woo, I-h. (eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 497–507. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Cuza, A., & Thomas, D. (2011). Input and parental attitudes: A look at Spanish–English bilingual development in Toronto. In Potowski, K. (ed.), Bilingual youth: Spanish in English-speaking societies, 149–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y. (2009). Bilingualism as a window into the language faculty: The acquisition of objects in French-speaking children in bilingual and monolingual contexts. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12 (1), 97–112.Google Scholar
Phinney, M. (1987). The pro-drop parameter in second language acquisition. In Roeper, T. & Williams, E. (eds.), Parameter setting, pp. 221–238. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.Google Scholar
Pickering, M. J., Holly, P., Branigan, A., Cleland, A., & Stewart, A. J. (2000). Activation of syntactic information during language production. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29 (2), 205–216.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Platzack, C. (2001). The vulnerable C-domain. Brain and Language, 77, 364–377.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rizzi, L. (1978). A restructuring rule in Italian syntax. In Keyser, S. J. (ed.), Recent transformation studies in European languages, pp. 113–158. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Mondoñedo, M., Snyder, W., & Sugisaki, K. (2006). The parameter of clitic-climbing: The view from child Spanish. In Deen, K. U., Nomura, J., Schulz, B. & Schwartz, B. D. (eds.), The Proceedings of the inaugural conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America, Honolulu, HI. University of Connecticut Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 4, 241–248.Google Scholar
Sánchez, L. (2004). Functional convergence in the tense, evidentiality and aspectual systems of Quechua–Spanish bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7 (2), 147–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., Filiaci, F., & Baldo, M. (2009). Bilingual children's sensitivity to specificity and genericity: Evidence from metalinguistic awareness. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12 (1), 1–19.Google Scholar
Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., & Paoli, S. (2004). Subjects and objects in Italian–English bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7 (3), 183–206.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1993). On the permeability of grammars. In Ashby, W. J., Mithun, M., Perissinotto, G. & Raposo, E. (eds.), Linguistic perspectives on Romance languages, pp. 19–44. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1998). On borrowing as a mechanism of syntactic change. In Schwegler, A., Tranel, B. & Uribe Etxebarria, M. (eds.), Romance linguistics: Theoretical perspectives, pp. 225–246. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorace, A. (2000). Differential effects of attrition in the L1 syntax of near-native L2 speakers. In Howell, C., Fish, S. & Keith-Lucas, T. (eds.), Proceedings of the 24th Boston University Conference on Language Development, pp. 719–725. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Sorace, A. (2005). Selective optionality in language development. In Cornips, L. & Corrigan, K. (eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social, pp. 46–111. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sorace, A., Serratrice, L., Filiaci, F., & Baldo, M. (2009). Discourse conditions on subject pronoun realization: Testing the linguistic intuitions of older bilingual children. Lingua, 119, 460–477.Google Scholar
Strozer, J. (1976). Clitics in Spanish. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Sturner, R. A., Kunze, L., Funk, S. G., & Green, J. A. (1993). Elicited imitation: Its effectiveness for speech and language screening. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 35 (8), 715–726.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thomas, D. (2007). A child's point of view on clitic-climbing: Early acquisition of object pronouns in Spanish infinitival constructions. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association, Saskatoon, SK.Google Scholar
Tsimpli, I. [M.], Sorace, A., Heycock, C., & Filiaci, F. (2004). First language attrition and syntactic subjects: A study of Greek and Italian near-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8, 257–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Unsworth, S. (2003). Testing Hulk & Müller (2000) on crosslinguistic influence: Root infinitives in a bilingual German/English child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6 (2), 143–158.Google Scholar
White, L. (1987). Markedness and second language acquisition: The question of transfer. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 9, 261–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiig, E., Secord, W., & Memeh, E. (2009). Celf Preschool 2 (Spanish edition): Examiner's manual. San Antonio, TX: Pearson.Google Scholar
Winford, D. (2003). An introduction to contact linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wurmbrand, S. (2001). Infinitives: Restructuring and clause structure. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Yang, C. D. (2002). Knowledge and learning in natural language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S. (2000). Syntactic transfer in a Cantonese–English bilingual child. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3 (3), 193–208.Google Scholar
Yip, V., & Matthews, S. (2009). Conditions on cross-linguistic influence in bilingual acquisition: The case of wh-interrogatives. Presented at the 7th International Symposium on Bilingualism, Utrecht, The Netherlands.Google Scholar
Zobl, H. (1980). The formal and developmental selectivity of L1 influence on L2 acquisition. Language Learning, 30 (1), 43–57.Google Scholar