The acquisition of Spanish
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Jesús Oliva
Abstract
We test the maturational/adjectival analysis theory of development of passives in Spanish. Children perform less well on psychological passives than on actional passives. Since Borer and Wexler (1987), the most prominent hypothesis is that this difference is due to children’s use of an adjectival interpretation of passives. Spanish passives are aux + participle, with different auxiliaries for verbal/adjectival. In Experiment 1, children perform better on actional than on psychological passives. Experiment 2, using the method of Gavarró and Parramon (2017), tests the eventive/stative interpretation of passives directly. As predicted, children often recover an incorrect stative interpretation for verbal passives. Strikingly, the non-commonsensical prediction of the theory that there is a negative correlation between adult-like performance in the theta-role and aspect experiments is confirmed.
Abstract
We test the maturational/adjectival analysis theory of development of passives in Spanish. Children perform less well on psychological passives than on actional passives. Since Borer and Wexler (1987), the most prominent hypothesis is that this difference is due to children’s use of an adjectival interpretation of passives. Spanish passives are aux + participle, with different auxiliaries for verbal/adjectival. In Experiment 1, children perform better on actional than on psychological passives. Experiment 2, using the method of Gavarró and Parramon (2017), tests the eventive/stative interpretation of passives directly. As predicted, children often recover an incorrect stative interpretation for verbal passives. Strikingly, the non-commonsensical prediction of the theory that there is a negative correlation between adult-like performance in the theta-role and aspect experiments is confirmed.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
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Part I. The acquisition of subjects
- French experiencer verbs and the Universal Freezing Hypothesis 7
- Discrimination of passive predicates by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children 31
- The acquisition of Spanish 57
- Favorable processing conditions in the production of passive sentences by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children 91
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Part II. The TP field
- Clitic omission in bilingual Portuguese-Spanish acquisition 119
- Syntactic awareness of clitic pronouns and articles in French-speaking children with autism, specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia 147
- The comprehension of Italian negation in Mandarin-Italian sequential bilingual children 169
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Part III. The CP field and recursion
- Subject position in Spanish as a heritage language in the Netherlands: External and internal interface factors 187
- Acquisition of backward anaphora in European Portuguese by Chinese learners 215
- Sentence repetition and language impairment in French-speaking children with ASD 235
- On the comprehension of recursive nominal modifiers in child Romanian 259
- Name index 279
- Subject index 285
- Language index 287
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. The acquisition of subjects
- French experiencer verbs and the Universal Freezing Hypothesis 7
- Discrimination of passive predicates by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children 31
- The acquisition of Spanish 57
- Favorable processing conditions in the production of passive sentences by Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children 91
-
Part II. The TP field
- Clitic omission in bilingual Portuguese-Spanish acquisition 119
- Syntactic awareness of clitic pronouns and articles in French-speaking children with autism, specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia 147
- The comprehension of Italian negation in Mandarin-Italian sequential bilingual children 169
-
Part III. The CP field and recursion
- Subject position in Spanish as a heritage language in the Netherlands: External and internal interface factors 187
- Acquisition of backward anaphora in European Portuguese by Chinese learners 215
- Sentence repetition and language impairment in French-speaking children with ASD 235
- On the comprehension of recursive nominal modifiers in child Romanian 259
- Name index 279
- Subject index 285
- Language index 287
