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Chapter 1. Acquisition of clitic climbing by European Portuguese children

  • Maria Lobo and Inês Vitorino
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L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning
This chapter is in the book L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition of clitic climbing by European Portuguese speaking children considering spontaneous production data from three children aged 1;5 to 3;11 (Santos’ corpus: Santos et al., 2014) and data from an elicited production task administered to 64 children aged 5;2 to 8;2. The study shows that: clitic climbing is acquired early, as expected for a parametric property that is dependent on the specification of the functional domain; there is early sensitivity to properties of the adult grammar, although children take a while to determine which specific verbs allow or disallow clitic climbing. In optional contexts younger children prefer clitic climbing constructions over non-climbing constructions. We discuss these results in light of the notion of complexity in language development.

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition of clitic climbing by European Portuguese speaking children considering spontaneous production data from three children aged 1;5 to 3;11 (Santos’ corpus: Santos et al., 2014) and data from an elicited production task administered to 64 children aged 5;2 to 8;2. The study shows that: clitic climbing is acquired early, as expected for a parametric property that is dependent on the specification of the functional domain; there is early sensitivity to properties of the adult grammar, although children take a while to determine which specific verbs allow or disallow clitic climbing. In optional contexts younger children prefer clitic climbing constructions over non-climbing constructions. We discuss these results in light of the notion of complexity in language development.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part 1. Syntactic complexity and intervention effects in the L1 acquisition of Romance
  5. Chapter 1. Acquisition of clitic climbing by European Portuguese children 13
  6. Chapter 2. Strategies in the production of PP relative clauses in Brazilian Portuguese 39
  7. Chapter 3. Cost-reducing strategies in the production of Brazilian Portuguese relative clauses 67
  8. Chapter 4. Some thoughts on (the acquisition of) control 83
  9. Chapter 5. The production of variable number agreement in Brazilian Portuguese 109
  10. Chapter 6. Assessing children’s syntactic proficiency through a sentence repetition task 133
  11. Part 2. Crosslinguistic influence in 2L1 acquisition and L2 learning
  12. Chapter 7. L1 effects in the L2 acquisition of long-distance binding in European Portuguese 173
  13. Chapter 8. On the nature of crosslinguistic influence 203
  14. Chapter 9. Can explicit instruction help L2 learners overcome persistent L1 interference? 229
  15. Part 3. Language acquisition at the interface in various learning settings
  16. Chapter 10. Combining Focus VS and Topic constructions 259
  17. Chapter 11. Gender marking in L1 and L2 French 289
  18. Chapter 12. The acquisition of disjunction under negation and recursive ni in French 315
  19. Chapter 13. Deriving scalar implicatures with quantifiers by Romanian children 331
  20. Chapter 14. The acquisition of mood in child Spanish 355
  21. Index 379
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.65.01lob

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Introduction 1
  4. Part 1. Syntactic complexity and intervention effects in the L1 acquisition of Romance
  5. Chapter 1. Acquisition of clitic climbing by European Portuguese children 13
  6. Chapter 2. Strategies in the production of PP relative clauses in Brazilian Portuguese 39
  7. Chapter 3. Cost-reducing strategies in the production of Brazilian Portuguese relative clauses 67
  8. Chapter 4. Some thoughts on (the acquisition of) control 83
  9. Chapter 5. The production of variable number agreement in Brazilian Portuguese 109
  10. Chapter 6. Assessing children’s syntactic proficiency through a sentence repetition task 133
  11. Part 2. Crosslinguistic influence in 2L1 acquisition and L2 learning
  12. Chapter 7. L1 effects in the L2 acquisition of long-distance binding in European Portuguese 173
  13. Chapter 8. On the nature of crosslinguistic influence 203
  14. Chapter 9. Can explicit instruction help L2 learners overcome persistent L1 interference? 229
  15. Part 3. Language acquisition at the interface in various learning settings
  16. Chapter 10. Combining Focus VS and Topic constructions 259
  17. Chapter 11. Gender marking in L1 and L2 French 289
  18. Chapter 12. The acquisition of disjunction under negation and recursive ni in French 315
  19. Chapter 13. Deriving scalar implicatures with quantifiers by Romanian children 331
  20. Chapter 14. The acquisition of mood in child Spanish 355
  21. Index 379
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