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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
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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

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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”.

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