Hispanic Child Languages : Typical and impaired development [1 ed.] 9789027290588, 9789027253118

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Hispanic Child Languages

Language Acquisition and Language Disorders (LALD) Volumes in this series provide a forum for research contributing to theories of language acquisition (first and second, child and adult), language learnability, language attrition and language disorders.

Series Editors Harald Clahsen

University of Essex

Lydia White

McGill University

Editorial Board Melissa F. Bowerman

Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen

Katherine Demuth Brown University

Wolfgang U. Dressler Universität Wien

Nina Hyams

University of California at Los Angeles

Jürgen M. Meisel

Universität Hamburg

William O’Grady

University of Hawaii

Luigi Rizzi

University of Siena

Bonnie D. Schwartz

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Antonella Sorace

University of Edinburgh

Karin Stromswold Rutgers University

Jürgen Weissenborn Universität Potsdam

Frank Wijnen

Utrecht University

Mabel Rice

University of Kansas

Volume 50 Hispanic Child Languages. Typical and impaired development Edited by John Grinstead

Hispanic Child Languages Typical and impaired development

Edited by

John Grinstead The Ohio State University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hispanic child languages : typical and impaired development / edited by John Grinstead. p. cm. (Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, issn 0925-0123 ; v. 50) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Language acquisition. 2. Spanish language--Acquisition. 3. Children--Language. 4. Specific language impairment in children. 5. Bilingualism in children. 6. Language disorders in children. I. Grinstead, John. P118.H58    2009 410'.93--dc22 isbn 978 90 272 5311 8 (Hb; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 9058 8 (eb)

2009029952

© 2009 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents List of contributors

vii

Introduction John Grinstead

xiii

Part I.  Diverse learning conditions and input characteristics Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children Karen Miller and Cristina Schmitt The article paradigm in Spanish-speaking children with SLI in language contact situations Raquel T. Anderson Alejandra Márquez Development in early Basque-Spanish language mixing María José Ezeizabarrena

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Part II.  The developing syntax and semantics of determiner phrases Context and the Scalar Implicatures of Indefinites in Child Spanish Marissa Vargas-Tokuda, John Grinstead and Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach

93

Early determination Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux and Tanya Battersby

117

Part III.  The developing syntax of the verb phrase Before grammar: Cut and paste in early complex sentences Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

143

Subjects, verb classes and word order in child Catalan Anna Gavarró & Yolanda Cabré-Sans

175

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Hispanic Child Languages

Person and number asymmetries in child Catalan and Spanish Aurora Bel and Elisa Rosado

195

Part IV.  The development of inflectional morphology Relationships between linguistic and behavioral measures during development Miguel Pérez-Pereira & Mariela Resches Temporal interface delay and root nonfinite verbs in Spanish-Speaking children with specific language impairment: Evidence from the grammaticality choice task John Grinstead, Juliana De la Mora, Amy Pratt and Blanca Flores Specific language impairment in Spanish & Catalan Vicenç Torrens and Linda Escobar

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239

265

Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment Gareth Morgan, M. Adelaida Restrepo, and Alejandra Auza

283

Index

303

List of contributors Raquel T. Anderson Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences Indiana University 200 S. Jordan Avenue Bloomington, IN 47405–7002 [email protected] Alejandra Auza Department of Speech and Hearing Science Arizona State University Coor Hall 2211 P.O. Box 870102 Tempe, AZ 85287–0102 [email protected] Tanya Battersby Department of Spanish & Portuguese Victoria College 73 Queen’s Park Crescent, Toronto Ontario, M5S 1K7 Canada [email protected] Aurora Bel Departament de Traducció i Ciències del Llenguatge Universitat Pompeu Fabra Roc Boronat, 138 08018 Barcelona Catalunya Spain [email protected]

 Hispanic Child Languages

Yolanda Cabré-Sans Universitat Pompeu Fabra CFA Josepa Massanés C/ Fra Antoni Cardona i Grau s/n 43002 Tarragona Catalunya Spain [email protected] Juliana De la Mora Department of Spanish & Portuguese The Ohio State University 298 Hagerty Hall 1775 College Rd. Columbus, OH 43210 [email protected] Linda Escobar Facultad de Filología Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia Pº Senda del Rey 7 28040 Madrid Spain [email protected] María José Ezeizabarrena University of Basque Country (UPV-EHU). Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies. Unibertsitateko ibilbidea 5 01006 Vitoria – Gasteiz Spain [email protected] Blanca Flores Departamento de Neurofisiología Instituto Nacional de Rehabilitación Calzada México Xochimilco No. 289 Colonia Arenal de Guadalupe 14389 México Distrito Federal [email protected]



List of contributors 

Anna Gavarró Algueró Departament de Filologia Catalana Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 08193 Bellaterra, Catalunya Spain [email protected] John Grinstead Department of Spanish & Portuguese The Ohio State University 298 Hagerty Hall 1775 College Rd. Columbus, OH 43210 [email protected] Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach Department of Spanish & Portuguese The Ohio State University 298 Hagerty Hall 1775 College Rd. Columbus, OH 43210 [email protected] Alejandra Márquez Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences Indiana University 200 S. Jordan Avenue Bloomington, IN 47405–7002 [email protected] Karen Miller Spanish Department 410 Hiemenga Hall Calvin College Grand Rapids, MI 49546 [email protected]

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Hispanic Child Languages

Gareth P. Morgan Department of Speech and Hearing Science Arizona State University Coor Hall 2211 P.O. Box 870102 Tempe, AZ 85287–0102 [email protected] Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux Department of Spanish & Portuguese Victoria College 73 Queen’s Park Crescent, Toronto Ontario, M5S 1K7 Canada [email protected] Miguel Pérez-Pereira Departamento de Psicoloxía Evolutiva e da Educación Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Campus Universitario Sur 15782 Santiago de Compostela Spain [email protected] Amy Pratt Department of Spanish & Portuguese The Ohio State University 298 Hagerty Hall 1775 College Rd. Columbus, OH 43210 [email protected] Mariela Resches Departamento de Psicoloxía Evolutiva e da Educación Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Campus Universitario Sur 15782 Santiago de Compostela Spain [email protected]



List of contributors 

M. Adelaida Restrepo Department of Speech and Hearing Science Arizona State University Coor Hall 2211 P.O. Box 870102 Tempe, AZ 85287–0102 [email protected] Cecilia Rojas Nieto Centro de Lingüística Hispánica Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Circuito Mario de la Cueva s/n Ciudad Unviersitaria 04510 México Distrito Federal [email protected] Elisa Rosado Departament de Didàctica de la Llengua Universitat de Barcelona Pg. Vall d’Hebron 171 08035 Barcelona Catalunya Spain [email protected] Cristina Schmitt Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 [email protected] Vicenç Torrens Facultad de Psicología Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia Juan del Rosal, nº 10 – Despacho: 1.69 Ciudad Universitaria 28040 Madrid Spain [email protected]

 Hispanic Child Languages

Marissa Vargas-Tokuda Department of Spanish & Portuguese The Ohio State University 298 Hagerty Hall 1775 College Rd. Columbus, OH 43210 [email protected]

Introduction John Grinstead

The Ohio State University

1. Introductory remarks Adult linguistic research has advanced by cross-validating linguistic claims against an ever-broader range of languages. While much of this broadening of the languages under consideration has taken place by studying entirely new families of languages, progress has also been made by studying the variation among the nonpredominant varieties of already familiar languages. For example, a great deal of work in generative syntax has profited from the study of the Italian dialects including Trentino, Fiorentino, Cosentino and others, as in Brandi & Cordin (1989), Tortora (2002), Ledgeway & Lombardi (2005) and others. Similarly, over the last 20 years developmental linguistics has gradually increased the number and variety of languages studied. Important steps were taken in this direction with the crosslinguistic research in Slobin (1985), Demuth (1992) and others, which addressed language acquisition in languages outside of Europe. Parallel to the study of non-predominant dialects in adult languages, language acquisition research has also benefited from opportunities to cross-validate theoretical claims in non-standard varieties of familiar languages. The chapters contained in this volume exemplify this trend by investigating, for instance, morphosyntactic development in different sociolinguistic dialects of Chilean and Mexican Spanish. Similarly unique research opportunities are pursued by our contributors who study the syntactic development of language-impaired children who speak Spanish in the home and English at school. This expansion and diversification of the database for studying language development is important because it creates new opportunities for testing theoretical claims. The chapters contained in this volume include a particularly wide variety of language learning situations, while remaining within the large domain of the linguistic variation associated with the languages that originated on the Iberian Peninsula. Our contributors reconsider theoretical claims relating to the purported adult-like nature of children’s morphosyntactic development in both the nominal and verbal domain, co-varying learning condition

 John Grinstead

and language to include typically-developing and language-impaired populations speaking both monolingual and bilingual Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Euskera. A theme running through the chapters is the influence of studies of communicative disorders on developmental linguistics and vice versa. The former discipline has traditionally used a wide variety of methods and large sample sizes, while the latter has sought to cast its descriptions in theoretical terms and test theoretical constructs pertaining to adult grammars by using child language as relevant data. As a result, readers of this volume will discover both theoretically well-informed studies of communicative disorders and methodologically sophisticated studies of typical language development. A second theme running through this volume is that, using multiple methodological tools, authors find less uniformity than has been assumed in previous work regarding the adult-like nature of children’s linguistic development. For instance, several chapters show that going beyond morphosyntax to the semantics of DPs, there appears to be less mastery than expected (Pérez-Leroux & Battersby, Miller & Schmitt). Other challenges to the “adultlike” morphosyntactic competence view, with respect to verbal syntax, come from several contributors who point out previously unnoticed patterns in the acquisition of verbs and their subjects as a function of VP argument structure (Gavarró & Cabré-Sans, Bel & Rosado), subject-oriented clitic use (Torrens & Escobar), tense marking (Grinstead, Pratt, De la Mora & Flores) and modal use (RojasNieto) in both typically-developing and language-impaired populations. 2. Overview of papers While there is some overlap, these chapters can be broadly divided into those that focus on diverse learning conditions or input characteristics, those that investigate the development of DP and those that focus the development of VP. The first of the input-focused chapters reports the results of the latest study by Miller & Schmitt investigating the acquisition of nominal plural marking in dialects of child Spanish in which plural marking is variable within and between social classes. The study shows that children exposed to variable input develop optional plural marking on nouns, though without the extra-grammatical constraints that govern such marking in the adult Chilean dialects studied. More importantly, the studies show that children’s optional plural marking is not merely a production phenomenon, but also governs their interpretations, as the children who received variable input are shown to interpret both singular and plural marked definite noun phrases as plural, unlike the Mexican children who were exposed to a non-variable nominal plural marking rule. In this way, Miller & Schmitt go beyond a dependence on spontaneous production data and are able to tell us something about children’s



Introduction 

semantics of plurals in Spanish – a phenomenon that has been the subject of much interest in the adult syntax-semantics literature (e.g. Farkas & De Swart 2007). Another input-related study is the chapter by Anderson & Márquez, which details the development of nominal gender marking in Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. These Spanish-speaking children receive input in a Spanish-English language contact situation in the US Midwest. Methodologically, Anderson & Márquez innovate by studying 16 children longitudinally for 3 years – an extremely labor-intensive approach not commonly used, though highly informative. The study concludes that typically-developing children exposed to Spanish at home and English in school achieve relatively high levels of performance on article gender marking. However, the language-impaired children in the same environment initially omit articles and then begin providing them consistently but with essentially random gender assignment. Beyond socio-phonetic variation in the input and variation by language-contact in the input we also have a longitudinal study of language development in a familial bilingual input context in the study provided by María José Ezeizabarrena. The two Euskera-Spanish bilingual children whom she follows longitudinally appear to receive as much Spanish as they do Euskera, making them balanced bilinguals between two dramatically different languages. Ezeizabarrena finds that language mixing or code-switching is present from the beginning of two-word speech. Rates of language mixing are low but roughly symmetrical. Ezeizabarrena finds further that these children do not prefer Spanish determiners in code-mixed DPs, contra Liceras et al (2005), whose Minimalist hypothesis is that the language with the highest number of uninterpretable features in the determiner will be the one whose determiners are mostly used (Spanish, by hypothesis in this case). Among the studies focusing on DPs, Grinstead, Vargas-Tokuda & GutiérrezRexach investigate the contributions of compositional syntax and pragmatic implicatures to children’s interpretations of the two Spanish existential quantifiers unos and algunos. After reviewing current work in adult syntax-semantic-pragmatics, the authors turn their attention to child Spanish, using a Truth Value Judgment Task, to show that monolingual Spanish-speaking children in Mexico are able to both compute and cancel the pragmatic implicatures associated with algunos in a relatively adult-like way. They show that children, like adults, appear to know that the quantifier unos is unaffected by pragmatic implicatures, or by the presence of downward-entailing contexts and that it associates with set values as a function of its lexical-semantic properties. The existence of two existential quantifiers, one of which is insensitive to implicatures, allows for the comparison of the development of quantifiers which produce similar set interpretations through linguistically distinct means.

 John Grinstead

Another of the studies looks at the syntax-semantics of DPs. Pérez-Leroux & Battersby ask to what degree determiner production in DPs is similar to the patterns in the adult language. They observe that in the adult language, determiner production in subject position is greater than in direct object and object of the preposition positions. They further point out that determiner production with singular count nouns is greater than with plural count and mass nouns. Finally, they investigate the degree to which there is a correlation between the onset of overt subject production and the onset of determiner production. They investigate these aspects of children’s nominal syntax using longitudinally-collected spontaneous production data. Among the studies of verbal syntax, Cecilia Rojas addresses the question of how children convert their input into the adult grammatical system, by positing, in the spirit of Tomasello (2003), Culicover (1999) and others, that children begin with construction pieces, which are not productive and which do not reflect a system capable of freely-combining operations. Rojas follows a monolingual Spanish-speaking child longitudinally for 10 and half months to study her use of constructions with the verb querer ‘to want’ and finds both adult-like as well as idiosyncratic uses, which she argues to be consistent with a usage-based theory of language development. The first of the two studies of child Catalan verbal syntax is by Gavarró & Cabré-Sans who address the degree to which overt and null preverbal and postverbal subjects are sensitive to verb class. They point out that, in spite of mostly adult-like subject use by children learning Catalan as a first language, subjects of unaccusatives are an exception in that they are much more likely to appear postverbally in child Catalan than in adult Catalan. The authors argue that this is the result of Chomsky’s Universal Phase Requirement, which makes children either misanalyze the construction as an unergative or treat the unaccusative subjects as allowing inherent partitive Case. The second study of child Catalan verbal syntax by Bel & Rosado makes the observation that while children use almost all person-number combinations, many post-verbal subjects of (mostly) unaccusative verbs fail to agree with their verbs. The authors suggest that this is likely due the absence of verb movement in unaccusatives as opposed to structures in which subjects are preverbal, where agreement is much more accurate. Also, in spite of the frequently repeated claim that there are no nonfinite verbs in Southern Romance languages, Bel & Rosado find errors of overt subject use with nonfinite forms. The final four contributions to the book address the development of inflectional morphology, particularly verbal morphology. In the first of these, Torrens & Escobar longitudinally investigate the claims that tense (Rice & Wexler 1996) and agreement (Rothweiler & Clahsen 1996) are impaired in children with SLI. The



Introduction 

authors examine both the verbal and the nominal morphological development of 4 children in an array of input situations. Two are monolingual Spanish-speaking children, one is a monolingual Catalan-speaking child and one is a child growing up in a bilingual Spanish-Catalan-speaking family. All were diagnosed with SLI. The authors conclude that the development of tense, agreement and the “telic SE” clitic in these children is impaired, relative to age-matched control children. Continuing with the studies of morphological development of children with SLI, Morgan, Restrepo & Auza ask whether there is one clinical marker of SLI capable of identifying all children with the disorder. The authors consider a wide array of grammatical constructions, including clitics, derivational morphemes, subjunctive marking and articles, and conclude that, when taken together, these constructions can identify monolingual Spanish-speaking children with SLI (in Mexico), but that there is no single construction capable of doing so, as tense does in English, Dutch and French. Concluding the studies of SLI, Grinstead, Pratt, De la Mora & Flores examine finiteness marking in monolingual Spanish-speaking children in Mexico, both typically-developing children and children diagnosed with SLI. The authors challenge the conclusion that child Spanish does not show an “optional infinitive” stage, in the sense of Wexler (1998), by showing that both typically-developing children and language impaired children receptively allow and expressively produce nonfinite verbs to some degree. The significant differences found supports application of the Extended Optional Infinitive hypothesis of Rice & Wexler (1996) to Spanish. The authors assume a presuppositional account of tense, in which children fail to interpret and produce tense-marked verbs, due to the same syntaxpragmatics interface delay reasons that cause other presuppositional failures in child language (as in Grinstead 2004). Finally, Mariela Resches and Miguel Pérez-Pereira, who carried out one of the first “wug test” studies of child Spanish (Pérez-Pereira 1989), contribute a chapter investigating the relationship between early lexical development and later grammatical and non-linguistic cognitive development. The input conditions for the children studied include monolingual Galician-speaking households as well as bilingual Spanish-Galician households. These children were studied longitudinally between 18 and 48 months of age. Resches & Pérez-Pereira are specifically concerned with whether mean length of utterance (MLU) in Galician correlates with the Galician version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (a parental report measure of lexical development), the Galician version of the Reynell Developmental Language Scales (an expressive and receptive grammar test), later MLU, theory of mind development and later language scores. They conclude that sub-tests of the Reynell Scales measuring both inferential abilities and syntactic complexity in younger children do indeed correlate with the later development

 John Grinstead

of Theory of Mind abilities in older children, consistent with existing theories of Theory of Mind development, including De Villiers & Pyers (2002) and BaronCohen (1995). 3. Concluding Remarks In summary, even with inquiry restricted to the languages of Europe, there is a great deal of linguistic diversity, which can be developmentally studied. Differences in sociolinguistic dialect allow for comparisons of the acquisition of quite different morphosyntactic phenomena in otherwise similar languages. Further differences, and consequently further opportunities, emerge when we consider the development of linguistic systems in language-impaired populations exposed to either monolingual or bilingual input. Finally, it goes without saying that the opportunities provided for basic research into language acquisition using typicallydeveloping monolingual Spanish, Catalan, Gallego and Euskera are far from being exhausted. Hopefully, some of the ideas and observations brought together in this volume will serve to motivate additional research in this domain. References Baron-Cohen, S. 1995. Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Brandi, L. & Cordin, P. 1989. Two Italian dialects and the Null Subject Parameter. In The Null Subject Parameter, O. A. Jaeggli & K. J. Safir (eds), 111–142. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Rothweiler, M. & Clahsen, H. 1993. Dissociations in SLI children’s inflectional systems: A study of participle inflection and subject-verb-agreement. Scandinavian Journal of Logopedics & Phoniatrics 18(4): 169–179. Culicover, P.W. 1999. Syntactic Nuts: Hard Cases, Syntactic Theory, and Language Acquisition. Oxford: OUP. de Villiers, J.G. & Pyers, J.E. 2002. Complements to cognition: A longitudinal study of the relationship between complex syntax and false-belief-understanding. Cognitive Development 17(1): 1037–1060. Demuth, K. 1992. Accessing functional categories in Sesotho: Interactions at the morphosyntax interface. In The Acquisition of Verb Placement: Functional Categories and V2 Phenomena in Language Development, J.M. Meisel (ed.), 83–107. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Farkas, D. & de Swart, H. 2007. Article choice in plural generics. Lingua 9: 1657–1676. Grinstead, J. 2004. Subjects and interface delay in child Spanish and Catalan. Language 80(1): 40–72. Ledgeway, A. & Lombardi, A. 2005. Verb movement, adverbs and clitic positions in Romance. Probus 17(1): 79–113.



Introduction  Perez-Pereira, M. 1989. The acquisition of morphemes: Some evidence from Spanish. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 18(3): 289–312. Rice, M.L. & Wexler, K. 1996. Toward tense as a clinical marker of specific language impairment in English-speaking children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 39(6), 1239–1257. Slobin, D.I. (ed.). 1985. The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Tomasello, M. 2003. Constructing a Language: A Usage-based Theory of Language Acquisition. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Tortora, C. 2002. Romance enclisis, prepositions, and aspect. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 20(4): 725–758. Wexler, K. 1998. Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106(1–4): 23–79.

part i

Diverse learning conditions and input characteristics

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children Karen Miller and Cristina Schmitt

Calvin College, Michigan State University This paper examines the effect of syllable-final /s/ lenition on the production and comprehension of plural marking in Spanish-speaking children. Two varieties of Spanish were examined. The first variety is Chilean Spanish where final /s/ undergoes a process of lenition and is sometimes omitted in the speech of adult speakers. This results in an ambiguous input for plural marking as the plural marker is sometimes produced (as [s] or [h]) and sometimes omitted (zero) in plural noun phrases. The second variety is Mexican Spanish (of Mexico City) where there is no such lenition process and the plural marker is consistently produced as an alveolar fricative. The goal of the experimental studies presented here is to determine how these different types of input (ambiguous input vs. consistent input) affect the language acquisition process. Keywords: reliable input, input ambiguity, number morphology, dialects of Spanish, comprehension tasks

1. Introduction Language acquisition research is concerned with the relationship between the learner’s linguistic experience and their attained underlying grammar. While this question may at first glance appear simple (for example, children exposed to plural morphology will decide on a grammar with plural morphology), careful examination of the linguistic input to children reveals that determining what constitutes the relevant input is not a simple matter, regardless of the view that one takes on the exact nature of the innate mechanism(s) allowing for language acquisition (e.g. nativist view vs. emergentist view). In order to acquire language, the learner must analyze the input data (speech of speakers in their speech community) at various more or less independent linguistic levels (syntax, semantics, phonology,



Karen Miller and Cristina Schmitt

and phonetics), and the processes that operate at one level may mask features that are crucial at a different level. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the input data is subject to various types of linguistic and extra-linguistic (social class, gender, age, register) variation. In this paper we examine the effect of variation in the input on language acquisition. Specifically, we present research that looks at the effect of phonological variation (syllable final /s/ lenition) on children’s interpretation of plural morphology in Spanish definite noun phrases. In Chile children are exposed to a variety of Spanish in which the plural morpheme is reduced to an aspiration or is omitted. The amount of omissions is governed by a variety of linguistic and extra-linguistic constraints. In many cases, the /s/ is the only way to distinguish a singular from a plural noun phrase (la niña ‘the girl’ vs. las niñas ‘the girls’). If the /s/ is omitted, the noun phrase become ambiguous between a plural and a singular reading. We ask whether the amount of omissions of the plural morpheme delays children’s acquisition of plural morphology or whether it is the case that, as long as the plural morpheme is available in the input some of the time, Chilean children will acquire plural morphology as quickly as Spanish-speaking children who are learning a dialect without syllable-final /s/ lenition. In order to answer this question, we compared the acquisition of plural morphology in two varieties of Spanish: the Chilean variety characterized by lenition of /s/ and the Spanish of Mexico City (henceforth Mexican Spanish). In Mexican Spanish, adults consistently produce all syllable final /s/ (including the plural morpheme) as an alveolar fricative [s] or [z]. An extensive amount of research on syllable final /s/ lenition has been carried out in several varieties of Spanish (Terrell 1979, 1981, Poplack 1980, Lipski 1986, Fox 2006, among many others). This research has focused on the constraints governing /s/ lenition in adult speech. However, studies examining children’s acquisition of /s/ lenition are almost nonexistent (but see Miller 2007) and the effect of /s/ lenition on the development of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children has not received any attention (but see Miller & Schmitt 2006, 2009, and Miller 2007). The study presented in this paper will further our understanding of the patterns of /s/ lenition in Chilean Spanish and at the same time will provide an understanding of how /s/ lenition in adults affects acquisition patterns in children. There have been a number of studies that have examined children’s acquisition of morphological variation (Roberts 1994, Smith et al 2006); however, very few have examined how variation affects the grammar that children initially construct (Moore 1979, Johnson 2005, Miller & Schmitt 2006, Miller 2007). Johnson (2005) compared Mainstream English-speaking children vs. African American Vernacular (AAV)-speaking children on their ability to associate the the third person singular marker to number on the subject noun phrase. She argued that differences in comprehension might arise because the input to AAV-speaking children is variable

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children

with adult AAV speakers sometimes omitting and sometimes producing the third person singular marker in their own speech. Johnson found that AAV-speaking children lagged behind their Mainstream English-speaking counterparts on their ability to associate the absence of the third person singular marker to a plural subject. These findings suggest that ambiguous input for verbal morphology affected children’s acquisition of the third person singular marker. More recently, Miller and Schmitt (2006, 2009) found that unreliable input affects child performance on experimental tasks examining comprehension of plural morphology in indefinite noun phrases. In Spanish the indefinite determiner is identical in form to the numeral ‘one’ (‘one’ = una/uno, ‘some’ = unas/unos). The only difference between the numeral and the plural indefinite is /s/. Miller and Schmitt tested both Chilean and Mexican (of Mexico City) Spanish-speaking children on their interpretation of plural and singular indefinite noun phrases. The results of the study showed that Chilean children were delayed in their ability to associate plural indefinite noun phrases to ‘more than one’ when compared to Mexican children. Specifically, they found that several Chilean children did not associate the plural indefinite to ‘more than one’ even at 5 years of age. The present paper extends on this research by examining whether a similar delay in the comprehension of plural morphology is found when children are tested on definite noun phrases. While we know that the ambiguous input to Chilean children affects their ability to associate plural indefinites to ‘more than one’, we do not know whether this fact is found only for indefinite noun phrases (because the indefinite is also the Spanish word for the number ‘one’) or whether this delay is found for the plural morpheme in general, regardless of noun phrase type. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the process of syllable final /s/ lenition in Chilean Spanish. Section 3 reviews the previous research on acquisition of plural morphology in children. Section 4 presents an experiment that examined the production of plural morphology in Chilean and Mexican adults in order to better understand the input for plural morphology to Chilean children and Mexican children, and Section 5 presents an experimental study that tests Chilean and Mexican children on their interpretation of plural and singular definite noun phrases. Section 6 provides a summary and discussion of the results. 2. Plural Morphology in Mexican and Chilean Spanish In Spanish the plural marker occurs on all elements in the noun phrase: determiners, nouns, adjectives, and quantifiers as shown below.



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Karen Miller and Cristina Schmitt

(1) a. la niña dormilona the.sg.fem girl.sg.fem sleepy.sg.fem ‘the sleepy girl.’ b. las niñas dormilonas the.pl.fem girl.pl.fem sleepy.pl.fem ‘the sleepy girls.’ While all elements within the plural noun phrase are marked with /-s/, there are two other potential indicators of plurality: verbal morphology and the form of the determiner itself. Spanish subjects agree with verbs in person and number, as shown in (2), where the singular quedó (‘stayed.3.sg’) and plural quedaron (‘stayed.3.pl’) forms of the verb quedar (‘return.inf’) agree with singular and plural subjects, respectively. (2) a. el niño se quedó en casa. the.sg.masc boy.sg.masc rfl stayed.3.sg at home ‘The boy stayed at home.’ b. los niños se quedaron en casa. the.pl.masc boys.pl.masc rfl stayed.3.pl at home ‘The boys stayed at home.’ The second indicator of number is the kind of determiner. While Spanish plural determiners carry a plural morpheme, certain determiners guarantee a ‘more than one’ interpretation regardless of whether the listener takes into consideration the plural morphology in the noun phrase, as is the case for quantifiers such as todos (all.pl/every.pl). However, other determiners have different forms in the singular and plural in addition to the difference associated with the presence or absence of the plural morpheme. For example, singular masculine determiners are different in form from plural masculine determiners, as shown in (2) above. This is not the case for the feminine definite determiners, as shown in (1) above. Syllable-final /s/ lenition is a phonological process that reduces all syllable final /s/ to an aspiration or omission and affects both morphological /-s/ and non-morphological /s/. This process is quite common across dialects of Spanish. Terrell (1981) noted that aspiration and deletion of syllable final /s/ is found in all levels of society in the Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico) and in Southern Spain (Andalucia), the Canary Islands, and also in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay (see also Fox 2006). However for Mexican Spanish this is generally not the case. Morgan (1998) cites Lipski (1994) as reporting that “throughout the interior regions of Mexico, syllable-final /s/ rarely deletes or even aspirates” and Canfield (1982) as noting that “[a]mong other speakers of Spanish, a Mexican is recognized by his tendency to lengthen the articulation of /s/...” (Canfield 1982: 82).

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children

In Chilean Spanish the lenition process reduces all syllable final /s/ to an aspiration ([h]) or omission (zero). This process of lenition affects both morphological [-s] and non-morphological [s], as shown below: Possible Pronunciations (3) a. las niñas dormilonas DET: la[s]/ la[h]/ la1 the.pl girls.pl sleepy.pl NOUN: niña[s]/ niña[h]/ niña ‘the sleepy girls.’ ADJ: dormilona[s]/ dormilona[h]/ dormilona b. la niña dormilona la/ niña/ dormilona the.sg girl.sg sleepy.sg ‘the sleepy girl.’ (4) lápiz pencil.sg ‘pencil’

lapi[s]/ lapi[h]/ lapi

The data in (3) show that when the plural morpheme is omitted, the singular form and the plural form overlap, as illustrated by comparing the forms with the plural marker omitted in (3a) to the singular forms in (3b). The phonological variant ([s], [h], or zero) that surfaces is dependent on both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. For example, Cepeda (1995) found that for 34 adult Chilean speakers, plural /-s/ was omitted on 54% of all nouns (4580 tokens) and on 60% of all post-nominal adjectives (785 tokens). Omission rates were also linked to social class, with working-class speakers omitting syllable final /s/ about 50% of the time and middleclass speakers only 35% of the time. 3. Acquisition of plural morphology To become adult-like in their use of plural morphology, Spanish-speaking children must learn the form(s) and distribution of the plural morpheme and then associate the form(s) to an interpretation of ‘more than one’. This means that Spanish-speaking children must learn that all elements in the noun phrase are marked 1. It is important to note that omission of /s/ may affect other positions in the word. For example, it has been correlated with gemination of the following consonant (Terrell 1979) or the lengthening of the preceding vowel (Resnick and Hammond 1975, but see Fox 2006 for an alternative view). However, Lipski (1983) notes that in the speech of the lowest social class speakers, temporal cues are not always available even when there is no trace of final /s/. While some findings suggest that even when there is no trace of /s/ there may still be a difference between the singular and plural forms, more work is needed in Chilean Spanish to determine whether omission of /s/ affects other positions in the word.

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Karen Miller and Cristina Schmitt

with a plural morpheme, in other words, they must learn that the final /s/ on the determiner and noun (and adjectives) are related to each other. For the Mexican child, learning that all of the elements in the noun phrase agree in number seems straightforward because the plural morpheme is consistently pronounced on all elements inside the noun phrase and the form of the plural morpheme is always an alveolar fricative. The learning task for the Chilean Spanish-speaking child, on the other hand, seems possibly more difficult because the form of the plural morpheme varies between [h] and [s] and it is also sometimes omitted on elements within the noun phrase. This means that there is sometimes evidence for agreement and sometimes evidence against agreement, as the examples in (5) indicate.

Possible Pronunciations

Evidence against AGR (5) las vacas [lah βaka] the.pl cow.pl [las βaka] ‘the cows’

Evidence for AGR [lah βakas] [las βakas] [lah βakah] [las βakah]

In addition, the Chilean child must learn that the forms [h] and [s], when they do occur, are related to each other. This task seems quite complex because, unlike English allomorphs of the plural morpheme, the distribution of the various forms of the Chilean Spanish plural morpheme is not categorical but rather is governed by a variety of linguistic and extra-linguistic constraints and research has shown that children take longer to acquire sociolinguistic constraints that govern variation (Roberts 1994, Smith et al 2006)2 and /s/ lenition affects not just morphological /s/ but also nonmorphological /s/. Moreover, due to syllable final /s/ lenition, the plural morpheme can sometimes be completely absent in plural noun phrases, which may suggest to the child that the plural morpheme may not be associated to ‘more than one’. Two examples of this are shown in the phonetic transcriptions in (6).

Possible Pronunciation in Chilean Spanish

(6) a. tres hombres three men.pl ‘three men’

[treh] [ombre]

b. pocas personas few people.pl ‘few people’

[poka] [persona]

2. In other words, if the child does not know that some of the variability is linked to social class, it may seem more random than it actually is.

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children

For a long time, research on the acquisition of plural morphology focused on children’s ability to produce the various allomorphs of the plural morpheme. Initial work was carried out in English by Berko (1958) and later several similar studies were carried out in other languages, including Spanish (Kernan & Blount 1966, Perez-Pereira 1989, Grinstead et al. 2008). Research has confirmed that Spanishspeaking children who are acquiring a variety of Spanish that does not have syllable final /s/ lenition begin producing the plural morpheme consistently on at least one element inside the noun phrase by 1;9 years of age (Kvaal et al. 1988, Marrero & Aguirre 2003) and they consistently produce the plural morpheme on all elements in the noun phrase by at least 4 years of age (Bedore and Leonard 2001, Cantu Sanchez and Grinstead 2004). These findings on the initial production of plural morphology by Spanish-speaking children are consistent with what has been reported for English (Brown 1973, Cazden 1968). While research with Spanish-speaking children has not focused on the effect of /s/ lenition on the acquisition of plural morphology, a few studies have suggested that /s/ lenition may have been responsible for the late production of plural morphology in some children. For example, Marrero and Aguirre (2003) examined the free speech of two Spanish-speaking children from Madrid and one Spanish-speaking child from the Canary Islands and reported that the child from the Canary Islands lagged behind the Madrileño children in the emergence of plural morphology. Specifically, while the Madrileño children began producing the plural morpheme as early as 1;9 years of age, the child from the Canary Islands did not begin to produce the plural morpheme until 3;0 years of age and, at that age, still omitted the plural morpheme about 20% of the time. They suggested that this delay and subsequent omission of plural morphology might have been due to the aspiration of the plural morpheme in dialects of Canary Island Spanish; however, they provided no details about the linguistic input this particular child was exposed to. In another study, Vivas (1979) found that four Spanish-speaking immigrant children living in Colorado (USA) did not begin producing the plural morpheme until around 2;4 years of age and only did so on semantically plural nouns between 50% (7/14) – 65% (13/20) of the time. Even by 3;5 years of age, one Spanish-speaking child produced the plural morpheme on plural nouns only 83% of the time. Their findings show a gradual increase in usage of the plural morpheme and at the same time show that Spanish-speaking children as old as 3;5 still omitted the plural morpheme approximately 20% of the time. They suggested that the omission of the plural morpheme may have possibly been due to the aspiration of the plural morpheme in some dialects of Latin American Spanish; however, they provided no information about the extent of syllable final /s/ lenition in the linguistic input these children were exposed to. This data suggests that syllable final

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Karen Miller and Cristina Schmitt

/s/ lenition may affect Spanish-speaking children’s initial production of plural morphology. Fewer studies have focused on comprehension of plural morphology and the studies that do exist seem to suggest that production precedes comprehension. While Ferenz and Prasada (2002) showed that English-speaking children produce the plural marker by 1;8 years of age, Kouider et al. (2006) found that 24 month old English-speaking children do not associate the plural marker to ‘more than one’ but 36 month old children do. Munn et al. 2006 show that by 3;5 years of age, English-speaking children associate plural definite noun phrases to ‘more than one.’ In Spanish, Miller & Schmitt (2006), (2009) found that Mexican children but not Chilean children associated plural indefinite noun phrases to ‘more than one’ by 5 years of age. This difference between Chilean and Mexican children was attributed to differences in input reliability. In summary, previous research has shown that children exposed to consistent input for plural morphology acquire it in production by at least 2 years of age and in comprehension by at least 3 years of age. There are some suggestions from the literature that Spanish-speaking children exposed to an input with syllable final /s/ lenition are delayed in their production of plural morphology, and it has been shown that Chilean Spanish-speaking children are delayed in their comprehension of plural morphology on indefinite noun phrases. In the following two experiments we examine the input to Chilean and Mexican children and examine whether differences in reliability in the input affect the children’s acquisition of plural morphology in definite noun phrases. 4. Experiment 1: Production of plural definites by Chilean and Mexican adults 4.1

Subjects

Production data was collected from 3 Chilean working-class (ChWC), 4 Chilean middle-class (ChMC), 2 Mexican working-class (MexWC) and 2 Mexican middleclass (MexMC) adults in order to determine what type of input for plural morphology that Chilean and Mexican children are exposed to. Social class was determined by the profession of the children’s parents and the tuition of the school that children attended. The occupations of the working-class Chilean and workingclass Mexican parents included secretary, fisherman, butcher, low-ranking military, taxi driver, homemaker, janitor, and inventory worker. The occupations of the middle-class Chilean and middle-class Mexican parents included business men/ women, high-ranking military officials, doctor, university professors, and lawyer.

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children 

While the working-class Mexican and Chilean children attended free daycare/preschool and kindergartens, the middle-class Chilean children (middle-class Mexican children were not tested) attended private schools which were considered prestigious and had the highest tuition rates in the town in which they were located (in Punta Arenas, Chile). 4.2

Materials and procedure

A Free Speech task, a Naming Task and a Repetition Task were used to collect production data from adults. These tasks varied in level of formality, with the Free Speech Task being the least formal and the Naming and Repetition Tasks being the most formal task. The goal was to determine whether formality of the task would affect plural morpheme production. The Free Speech Task was carried out first and consisted approximately of 10–15 minutes of free speech data from adult participants while they talked about topics of interest (family, work, and their children). For the Repetition Task, participants were presented with pictures and repeated sentences that the researcher read about each picture. The experimental sentences elicited 4 plural bare noun phrases and 8 plural indefinite noun phrases (4 unos/unas ‘some.masc.pl/some. fem.pl’ and 4 algunos/algunas ‘some.masc.pl/some.fem.pl’). Singular indefinite noun phrases were also elicited for comparison (see Miller 2007 for more details). The indefinite noun phrases always occurred in subject position where verbal agreement was also an indicator of nominal number, while the bare noun phrases always occurred in object position because Spanish bare nouns are restricted to object position. For this reason, the plural morpheme on the plural bare nouns in the Repetition Task was the only indicator of number. The research assistants (native speakers of the dialect they were testing) produced the plural morpheme as [s] on all plural lexical items for both the Mexican and Chilean participants. Example experimental sentences are shown in (7) below. (7) a. Unos bomberos están comiendo manzanas. Some.pl firemen.pl are.3.pl eating apples.pl ‘Some fireman are eating apples.’ b. Un bombero está comiendo una manzana. A.sg fireman.sg is.3.sg eating a.sg apple.sg ‘A fireman is eating an apple.’ Because Cepeda (1995) found that syllable final /s/ lenition was influenced by the following segment, we controlled for phonological environment. The plural marker was always followed by words where the initial sound was a bilabial fricative, a

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bilabial nasal, an unstressed vowel, or a sentence final pause. To determine whether participants would reduce the plural morpheme or not, only environments where syllable final /s/ omission was high were included3. Finally, in the Naming Task participants were shown sets of miniature toys and asked to name the toys. The experimental question was always ¿Qué son? (‘What are.PL they?’). The verb son (‘are.3.PL’) was used because it must agree with a plural subject and our intention was to elicit plural noun phrases from participants. The words that were elicited included: vacas [βakas] (‘cows’), perros [peřos] (‘dogs’), muñecas [muñekas] (‘dolls’), lápices [lapises] (‘pencils’), copas [kopas] (‘cups’), autos [autos] (‘cars’), arañas [arañas] (‘spiders’), barcos [βarkos] (‘ships’), peces [peses] (‘fish’), bolitas [βolitas] (‘marbles’) and monos [monos] (‘monkeys’). Given that Chilean subjects always produced bare nouns in this task, the initial sound of the noun would have no effect on the omission of the plural morpheme on determiners. 4.3

Analysis

The data were transcribed by research assistants who were native-speakers of Chilean or Mexican Spanish. A total of 904 plural tokens were collected from Chilean subjects: 646 were from ChMC adults and 258 from ChWC adults. A total of 773 plural tokens were collected from Mexican subjects: 433 were from MexWC adults and 340 from MexMC adults. After transcriptions were finished, all plural lexical items (e.g. nouns, determiners, adjectives) were coded for the pronunciation of the plural morpheme as [s], [h] or zero. All Chilean data were coded for pronunciation of the plural morpheme by two different Chilean Spanish-speaking research assistants. Inter-rater reliability between the two Chilean coders reached approximately 81.4% of all adult plural tokens. In other words, the coders disagreed on 168 of the 904 Chilean tokens (18.6%) and disagreement was between [h] vs. zero. In such cases of disagreement between coders (approximately 18.6% of the tokens), the token was coded as zero under the reasoning that if native-speaking coders could not decide between zero vs. [h], native speaking children would also have difficulty distinguishing between the presence vs. absence of the plural morpheme. The Mexican data showed no variation in the pronunciation of the plural morpheme; it was always pronounced as an alveolar fricative by adults. For this reason, only one Mexican research assistant coded the Mexican data.

3. Stops were not included because Cepeda (1995) found that adult subjects generally did not omit final /s/ when it was followed by a stop.

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children 

4.4

Results

The results confirm that the input for plural morphology to Chilean children is very different from the input to Mexican children. Of the 904 plural tokens collected from Chilean adults, 36% (326) had no plural morpheme (omission) and 64% (578) were marked for plural ([h] or [s]). For the Mexican adults, 99% of plural tokens were marked with a plural morpheme. Table 1 shows the percentage of plural morpheme variants for each adult group. Table 1.  Plural morpheme production. Subject SES

Subject Age

ChMC

Adults

ChWC

Adults

MexMC

Adults

MexWC

Adults

[s]

[h]

Omission (zero)

15% (95/646) 13% (34/258) 98% (332/340) 98% (425/433)

52% (338/646) 43% (110/258) 1% (3/340) 1% (5/433)

33% (213/646) 44% (113/258) 1% (5/340) 1% (3/433)

Table 2.  Formality of the task.

ChMC Adults [s] [h] Ø

Free Speech

Repetition Task

Naming Task

4% (19/505) 57% (287/505) 39% (199/505)

46% (43/93) 45% (42/93) 9% (8/93)

69% (33/48) 19% (9/48) 13% (6/48)

3% (6/194) 46% (89/194) 51% (98/194)

24% (10/42) 48% (20/42) 29% (12/42)

86% (19/22) 5% (1/22) 9% (2/22)

ChWC Adults [s] [h] Ø

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Table 1 shows that there is variation in plural morpheme production by Chilean speakers but not by Mexican speakers. While both [s] and [h] are used by Chilean speakers, [h] is used more often than [s]. In addition, Chilean workingclass speakers omit the plural morpheme slightly more often than (44% of the time) than Chilean middle-class speakers (33%). This suggests that the input for plural morphology to Mexican children is reliable while the input to Chilean children is ambiguous, as it contains evidence both for (presence of the plural morpheme) and against (absence of the plural morpheme) plural morphology. These findings are consistent with Cepeda (1995). The results also show that formality of the task affects plural morpheme production for Chilean adults, which is consistent with previous work on syllable final /s/ lenition in other varieties of Spanish (Lafford 1982). Chilean adults produced more [s] in the Naming and Repetition Tasks and omitted the plural marker more often in the Free Speech Task, as shown in Table 2. Table 2 shows that Chilean adults almost never produce the plural variant [s] in free speech. Instead, they produce [h] or omit the plural morpheme. It is important to note that these results are based only on adult-directed speech and not child-directed speech. It may be the case that adults omit /s/ less often when talking with their children than when talking with other adults (see Smith et al 2006). However, the data in Table 2 also show that the [s] variant is used more often than [h] or zero when naming plural sets. This finding is consistent with Miller & Schmitt (2006) where in a different naming task both Chilean adults and Chilean children produced the [s] variant as much as 80% of the time when naming plural sets (see also Miller 2007). The fact that Chilean children and adults produce the [s] variant indicates that they are receiving an input with the plural pronounced as [s] at least some of the time. This is important to note as Experiment 2 tests children on their ability to associate the [s] variant to ‘more than one’. While the data suggest that the input for plural morphology to Chilean children has a fair amount of ambiguity, it is possible that the input is more reliable than we think if we compare omissions by syntactic category. In other words, it is possible that the plural morpheme is always present in certain categories (e.g. determiners) and always absent in other categories (e.g. nouns and adjectives). The results of the production data do indicate that not all elements in the noun phrase are affected equally. Instead, Chilean speakers omit the plural morpheme more often on nouns than on determiners (e.g. demonstrative, possessive, definite, indefinite), as shown in Table 3. These findings are also consistent with Cepeda (1995).

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children 

Table 3.  Plural production by syntactic category.

ChMC Adults [s] [h] Ø ChWC Adults [s] [h] Ø

Determiner

Noun

  4% 81% 15%

23% 38% 39%

  5% 65% 30%

19% 26% 55%

In addition to showing that Chilean adults make fewer omissions on determiners than on nouns, the data in Table 3 also reveal that Chilean adults use both the [s] and [h] plural variants on nouns, while the [h] variant is almost exclusively used on determiners. However, there is still a fair amount of omissions on determiners. Middle-class Chilean adults omit the plural morpheme on determiners about 15% of the time and working-class Chilean adults about 30% of the time. Moreover, while the input to Chilean children may appear more reliable in Table 3 than in Table 1, for the purposes of this paper, we must remember that overall the input for Chilean children is less reliable than for Mexican children, who receive an input with plural morphology on plural determiners and nouns 100% of the time. The data in Table 3 collapses all determiners together and does not show how often the plural morpheme is omitted just on plural definite determiners (los/las ‘the.pl’), the determiner that is tested in Experiment 2 below. If we examine the data more closely we find that the plural morpheme is omitted on definite determiners more often by ChWC adults than by ChMC adults and that overall both groups of Chilean speakers prefer to use the plural variant [h]. This is shown in Table 4. Table 4.  Plural morpheme production on definite determiners. Definite Determiner ChMC Adults [s] [h] Ø ChWC Adults [s] [h] Ø

  0% 92%   8%   3% 64% 33%

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Table 4 shows that the input to Chilean middle-class children has less omissions of plural morphology on definite determiners than the input to Chilean workingclass children. In fact, if we only look at plural definite determiners, we find that Chilean working-class adults omit the plural morpheme on definite determiners about 33% of the time but the Chilean middle-class adults only about 8% of the time. When the input is considered from this angle, it appears much more reliable for Chilean middle-class children than for Chilean working-class children. To summarize, if we consider all instances of plural tokens in the input, the data above indicate that the input for plural morphology is ambiguous for Chilean children but not for Mexican children. Moreover, the data show that while [h] is the preferred variant in the free speech of Chilean adults, the plural variant [s] is used quite often in more formal tasks. In earlier work Miller & Schmitt (2006), Miller (2007) also find that both ChWC and ChMC children use [s] in their own speech. This indicates that Chilean children receive an input with the plural morpheme pronounced as [s] at least some of the time. While the input for plural morphology to Chilean children is ambiguous and the input to Mexican children is not, it is possible that the Chilean input is more reliable than we think if we consider just definite noun phrases. In other words, the results show that while both ChWC and ChMC adults omit the plural morpheme overall about 50% and 30%, respectively, ChWC adults omit the plural morpheme on definite determiners about 33% of the time and ChMC adults only do so about 8% of the time (Table 4). Hence, the input for plural morphology on definite determiners is still unreliable for Chilean working-class children but to a lesser degree while the input to Chilean middle-class children appears much more reliable than we might have originally thought. Experiment 2 tests whether these differences in input across the three groups (ChWC, ChMC and Mexican children) will affect their acquisition plural morphology. The discussion above highlights the complexity of the input data. Yang’s (2002) Variational Learning Model provides a way of dealing with input variation in acquisition. Under this model, to acquire a language is to weed out unwanted hypotheses that are not successful in parsing the input. Assuming all grammars have equal probability of being chosen at the start (a child is born with the capacity to learn a language with or without grammaticalized number), the course of acquisition will depend on how quickly unwanted grammars can be ruled out. The problem of selecting the best grammar is then the problem of selecting the most compatible grammar with the input, which is not a trivial task, since the same grammar can be rewarded for one string and punished for another, creating what has been called the interference problem. Chilean children are exposed to an input that provides evidence both for (plural marker is produced) and against (plural marker is omitted) plural morphology in the grammar they are constructing. The question

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children 

is whether this type of input will cause an interference problem for the Chilean child. Another issue arises, however, with respect to whether children analyze any string in the input or a (possibly pre-determined) subset of it and there are at least two competing views in this respect: Yang’s model argues for a Naïve Learner who will take a random sample of the data against which s/he will test the competing hypotheses. There is, however, a body of literature arguing for a Smart Learner who can actively filter the input in search of particular types of strings (Pearl 2007; Pearl and Weinberg 2007; among others). Although Yang showed that a Naïve Learner is good enough to learn various syntactic parameters (whether the language has Verb second or not or whether it has V-I or not, for example), in learning meaning-form pairings (one-substitution, for example) it may be that overall frequencies are not enough and Smart Learning is necessary (Pearl 2007). If we assume a naïve learner that does not filter the data, the differences between Mexican adults, on one hand, and Chilean middle-class and working-class adults is a difference between 0 to 33–43%. Based on this, we might predict then a difference in comprehension between Chilean children v. Mexican Children. If we assume, however, that the learner is filtering the data in such a way that she is taking into consideration the amount of plural morphology only in definite noun phrases, for example, then the difference between the Mexican input and Chilean middle-class input becomes smaller (less than 10%) and the difference between the input to Chilean middle-class children v. Chilean working-class children becomes much larger (more than 20%). Based on these numbers, the prediction would be that Chilean middle-class children would behave more closely to Mexican children, than to Chilean working-class children. These two scenarios can be further complicated by the fact that the mapping between the plural morpheme and its pronunciations is a one-to-many mapping. 5. Experiment 2: Child comprehension of plural morphology in definite noun phrases The experimental study presented here has two goals: first, our previous work showed that Chilean children lagged behind Mexican children in their ability to associate plural indefinites to ‘more than one’. We want to determine whether this is also the case for definite noun phrases. Secondly, we want to examine the smart learner vs. naïve learner models of language acquisition. The naïve learner model is supported if we find that overall Chilean children behave differently than Mexican children. In other words, the overall difference in amount of plural morpheme omissions between the Chilean children and Mexican children is what drives acquisition patterns. On the other hand, the smart learner model would be supported

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if we find that Chilean middle-class children pattern with Mexican working-class children and behave differently from Chilean working-class children. In other words, if Chilean children are paying attention just to the distribution of plural morphology in definite determiners, then Chilean middle-class children, like Mexican working-class children, receive an input where plural marking is almost always produced in the definite determiner while Chilean working-class children do not. In other words, with respect to definite noun phrases, the input to Chilean working-class children, but not Chilean middle-class and Mexican working-class children, is unreliable. Following Heim (1988) we assume that definite noun phrases have a uniqueness presupposition. This means that, in general, a plural and a singular DP are not felicitous in the same context. For example, if we have two glasses of water on top of a table, we can ask for ‘the glasses’ but it is infelicitous to ask for ‘the glass’, since by saying ‘the glass’ we presuppose that there is a unique glass in the domain of the discourse. In cases of inalienable construal, (Guéron 1985, Vergnaud and Zubizarreta 1992, Perez-Leroux et al 2004) illustrated in (8) below, however, for reasons that are still not completely understood, although there is more than one element that fits the description, the singular definite can be used. (8) a. Marisol se levantó la mano. Marisol rfl lifted the.sg hand.sg ‘Marisol lifted her hand.’ b. Marisol se levantó las manos. Marisol rfl lifted the.pl hand.pl ‘Marisol lifted her hands.’ Although Marisol has more than one hand, it is possible to say (8a) and refer felicitously to just one hand. The fact that the same context can be used for both singular and plural definites in inalienable construal constructions makes it ideal for testing plural and singular definites. On the other hand, the fact that very few contexts (for another context see Munn et al. 2006) make plural and singular definite descriptions felicitous, suggests that only in a few cases do children need to pay attention to the plural/singular morphology in definite DPs. In other words, most of the time, the context is sufficient to determine the referent of the definite description. For example, the referent in a sentence like ‘Give me the markers/ marker’ can be determined by context (i.e., the markers that are visible). However, in a sentence like ‘Lift her hand/hands up’, the child must rely on the plural marker on ‘hands’ when deciding to lift up one or both of a doll’s hands.

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children 

5.1

Subjects

Eighty-one subjects participated in this study: 12 Mexican working-class children (4;7–5;6, Mean: 5;1), 16 Chilean working-class children (4;5–5;11, Mean: 5;3), 10 Chilean middle-class children (4;6–5;11, Mean: 5;2) and 20 adults (12 Chilean and 10 Mexican) were tested on their ability to associate the plural variant [s] to ‘more than one’. Additionally, 14 Chilean working-class children (4;8–6;4, Mean: 5;4) and 7 Chilean middle-class children (4;11–6;1, Mean: 5;6) were tested on their ability to associate the plural variant [h] to ‘more than one’. The Chilean children were recruited from preschools and daycares in Punta Arenas, Chile and the Mexican children from a daycare in Mexico City. Chilean adults were undergraduates at the Universidad de Magallanes in Punta Arenas, Chile and the Mexican adults were undergraduates at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de Iztapalapa in Mexico City. Both working-class and middle-class Chilean children were tested to determine whether differences in the input to these two groups affect comprehension patterns. Moreover, Mexican working-class children were also tested to ensure that any differences found between the three groups can be attributed to the input and not to differences in their educational experiences. We also made sure that Mexican children were either of the same age or younger than the Chilean children to ensure that any problems found for Chilean children would be attributed to the input and not to age. 5.2

Materials and procedure

An Act-out Task was used. Subjects were shown dolls as in Figure 1. One of the dolls was placed in front of the subject who was then asked to respond to the commands as in (9a) and (9b) below.

Figure 1.  Experimental materials.



Karen Miller and Cristina Schmitt

(9) a. Tócale la rodilla. touch.her the.sg knee.sg ‘Touch her knee.’ b. Tócale las rodillas. touch.her the.pl knees.pl ‘Touch her knees.’ All subjects were tested by native speakers of Spanish who lived in the same city as the subjects. The plural morpheme was pronounced as [s] in the first experiment administered to Mexican and Chilean children and as [h] in the second experiment administered only to Chilean children. Various combinations of the plural variants could have been tested (see (10) below), because these combinations are found in the input that Chilean children are exposed to. However, we chose only to test those combinations shown in (10a) and (10b) because little is known about whether Spanish-speaking children start out interpreting number on the determiner or on the noun or on both. If children performed poorly on (10c), for example, we would not know whether this was because they interpret number on the determiner only or because they do not associate [s] to ‘more than one’. Future studies will need to take into consideration other possible combinations. (10)

a. b. c. d. e. f.

las manos lah manoh la manos las mano lah manos lah mano

Because the variant [h] is the most frequent among speakers, it is important to verify for Chilean children whether their behavior when tested in [h] or [s] show any differences. One could argue that children do not have [s] as a plural marker but rather [h], given its prominence in the input (Miller 2007). There were four trials of the plural definite noun phrase and 4 trials of the singular definite noun phrase. All nouns were feminine so that the only difference between the plural and singular was the presence v. absence of the plural morpheme. To ensure that children would act out commands with both plural and singular sets, controls involving feminine plural and singular definite noun phrases (Dame las vacas ‘Give me the.PL cows.PL’ vs. Dame la vaca ‘Give me the.SG cow.SG’) were included. All target experimental sentences are shown below in (11) – (14).

Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children 

(11) Tócale la rodilla/ touch.her the.sg knee.sg / ‘Touch her knee/ knees.’

las rodillas. the.pl knees.pl

(12) Tírale la oreja/ las orejas. pull.her the.sg ear.sg / the.pl ears.pl ‘Pull her ear/ ears.’ (13) Levántale la pierna/ las piernas. lift.her the.sg leg.sg / the.pl legs.pl ‘Lift her leg/ legs.’ (14) Levántale la mano/ las lift.her the.sg hand.sg / ‘Lift her hand/ hands.’

manos. the.pl hands.pl

Subjects were presented first with the 4 singular definite target and control trials followed by the 4 plural definite target and control trials. Experimental sentences were presented in this order to avoid priming a plural response in Chilean children. Given that the plural morpheme can be omitted in Chilean adult Spanish, it might be the case that children who first hear a plural target trial might believe that subsequent singular trials are actually plural trials and that the researcher is simply omitting the plural morpheme. Masculine definites were not tested because the singular masculine definite article is different in form from the plural masculine definite (el ‘the.M.SG’ vs. los ‘the.M.PL’). 5.3

Results

Although all children performed 100% on controls, they did not all perform the same in the target conditions. The dependent variable is the number of plural responses. Moving two body parts was considered a plural response. Moving only one body part was considered a singular response. Figure 2 shows the overall percentage of plural responses for Mexican working-class, Chilean middle-class, and Chilean working-class children. Adults always treated the plural definite as plural and the singular definite as singular.



Karen Miller and Cristina Schmitt

100% 80% 60% 40%

las

20%

la

0% MexWC

ChMC

ChWC

ChMC

[s]

ChWC [h]

Figure 2.  Percentage of plural responses for children.

The results show that Mexican working-class children associated the plural definite to ‘more than one’ 71% of the time. When tested on the plural morpheme [s], the Chilean middle-class and the Chilean working-class children associated the plural definite to ‘more than one’ only 50% of the time and 58% of the time, respectively. When we examine individual children, we find that 5 ChWC children and 4 ChMC always provided a singular response in all four trials of the plural definite condition. For the Mexican children, only one child seemed to ignore plural morphology and provide a singular response in all four trials in the plural definite condition. The rest of the Mexican children did not make mistakes or only did so on one of the four trials in the plural definite condition. Moreover, no Mexican children associated the singular definite to ‘more than one’, but 1 out of 10 of the Chilean middle-class did and 3 out of 16 of the Chilean working-class children did so in all 4 trials of the singular definite condition. The number of plural responses in the plural definite condition was entered into a one- way ANOVA. The results showed a significant difference between the four [s]-groups (F(1,59)=5.582,pMass. Examining the results above, we see that Carlos’s plural data has too much variability to clearly evaluate the intermediate category: the number of plural tokens is low, and either exceeds or is lower than the adult means. Carlos’ mass nouns and his singular count nouns approach the parental ranges from the beginning, but do not quite meet them. For Eduardo the results are clearer: count singular nouns are in the target range from the outset, whereas mass nouns initially behave like count nouns, and then drop to the target range. Plural nouns stabilize around the target range later, at 3;4. So, the data for Eduardo provides not only evidence for a structural asymmetry, but also the possibility of a developmental asymmetry. To the extent that the inference here is correct, this type of result is difficult to explain within the standard parametric approach. As for the interface delay stage, the relevant ages are 2;3 for Carlos and 1;10 for Eduardo, dates which coincide with our rise in NP productivity – unsurprisingly so, since the higher the NP count, the more likely the probability that an overt subject will be produced. To examine this hypothesis, we considered the data from truncated NPs as optimal, since it abstracts from the other syntactic issues. Carlos’s



Early determination 

production of determiners starts to climb around 2;2, and the rate of determiners in truncated NPs radically climbs up after 2;4. For Eduardo, there is no seeming association between his IDH ages, and increased production of determiners in truncated NPs. Thus, as suggested by Kupisch (2006), the determiner domain does not exhibit interface-dependent effects. 8. Conclusion Our review of early determiner use shows that Spanish-speaking children have determiners from a very young age, but their initial use is not as generalized as it is in the adult grammar. The data attest to production of bare nouns in contexts where they are excluded (preverbal subjects); in several optional domains children are under the adult average range of determiner production. One limitation of our study is that although the overall amount of data is fairly large, some of the target categories have low numbers of tokens. Plural nouns are rare in the initial files, as are preverbal subjects. However, despite these limitations, our results allow us to draw some conclusions about the patterns of acquisition in Spanish, at least for these children. We note these Spanish-speaking children have determiners from the initial files, which contain potentially determined NPs. We conclude from this that there is no bare noun stage. However, their initial determiner use is not as generalized as the adults’. Their overall rates of production in syntactically-isolated NPs suggest they reach adult productivity around 2;7–2;8, well beyond the ages predicted for the interface delay hypothesis. This indicates that there is no interface delay for determiners. We also note that during the transitional stages, between first emergence and reaching parental baselines for context and category, children show syntactic asymmetries. Their transitional data indicates sensitivity to the function-position asymmetry, and sensitivity to the categorical status of singular count nouns. There are individual differences in learning the lexical distinction, as one of the two children treats mass nouns as count nouns. The data also suggest sensitivity to input variability, as these children are slower in reaching adult baselines for plurals than for singular count nouns. Local variability, such as introduced by the lexical mass/count distinction, has some effect but does not fully determine order of convergence into the adult range of use. We suggest that children attend to the categorical distinctions and are able to use the asymmetries in the data to identify the target parametric space. They are not misled by the mixed distribution of determiners in Spanish. There are indications that both the semantic and the syntactic factors are identified early. We conclude that this data shows that while children are sensitive to local variability in the input, developmental patterns are not fully determined by differences in the variability of domains and categories. Instead, the patterns observed

 Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux and Tanya Battersby

in this study suggest that children interpret the asymmetries in the input, and select from the outset a system compatible with these asymmetries. Thus the results are compatible with the version of the parametric hypothesis where determiners are predicted to show asymmetries from the onset of productive use. At the same time, local variability does seem to be having some effect on the timing of convergence, a fact that is not readily interpretable within fully parametric models. Language acquisition appears input-sensitive, but grammar-driven. References Aguado, G. 2000. El desarrollo del lenguaje de 0 a 3 años. Madrid: CEPE. Alexiadou, A. & Anagnostopoulou, E. 1998. Parametrizing Agr: Word order, verb- movement and EPP-checking. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16(3): 491–539. Bedore, L. & Leonard, L. 2005. Verb inflections and noun phrase morphology in the spontaneous speech of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics 26(2): 195–225. Chierchia, G. 1998. Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics 6: 339–405. Chierchia, G., Guasti, M.T. & Gualmini, A. 1999. Nouns and articles in child grammar and the syntax/semantics map. Paper presented at the GALA ’99 conference, Potsdam, September 1999. Chomsky, N. 1986. Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use. New York NY: Praeger. Farkas, D. & de Swart, H. 2003. The Semantics of Incorporation. Stanford CA: CSLI. Gavarrò, A., Perez-Leroux A.T. & Roeper, T. 2005. Definite and bare noun contrasts in child Catalan. In The Acquisition of Syntax in Romance Languages, V. Torrens & L. Escobar (eds), 51–68. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Grinstead, J. 1998. Subjects, Sentential Negation and Imperatives in Child Spanish and Catalan. PhD dissertation, UCLA. Grinstead, J. 2004. Subjects and interface delay in child Spanish and Catalan. Language 80(1): 40–72. Guasti, M.T. & Gavarró, A. 2003. Catalan as a test for hypotheses concerning article omission. In BUCLD 27 Proceedings, B. Beachley, A. Brown & F. Conlin (eds), 288–298. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press. Guasti, M.T., Gavarro, A., de Lange, J. & Caprin, C. 2008. Article omission across child Languages. Language Acquisition 15: 89–119. Hernández Pina, F. 1984. Teorías psicosociolinguísticas y su aplicación a la adquisición del español como lengua materna. Madrid: Siglo XXI. Hudson Kam, C.L. & Newport, E.L. 2005. Regularizing unpredictable variation: The roles of adult and child learners in language formation and change. Language Learning and Development 1: 151–195. Kupisch, T. 2006. The Acquisition of Determiners in Bilingual German-Italian and GermanFrench Children. PhD dissertation, Universität Hamburg. Legate, J.A. & Yang, C. 2007. Morphosyntactic learning and the development of tense. Language Acquisition 14: 315–344.



Early determination  Lleó, C. 2003. Child prosody and filler syllables: Looking into Spanish through the optimal window of acquisition. In Linguistic Theory and Language Development in Hispanic Languages, S. Montrul & F. Ordoñez (eds), 229–253. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press. Lleó, C. & Demuth, K. 1999. Prosodic constraints on the emergence of grammatical morphemes: Crosslinguistic evidence from Germanic and Romance languages. In BUCLD 23 Proceedings, A. Greenhill et al. (eds), 407–418. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press. Longobardi, G. 1994. Reference and proper names: A theory of N-movement in syntax and LF. Linguistic Inquiry 25: 609–655. López-Ornat, S. 2003. Learning earliest grammar: Evidence of grammar variations in speech before 22 months. In Linguistic Theory and Language Development in Hispanic Languages, S. Montrul & F. Ordoñez (eds), 254–274. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press. Marinis, T. 2003. The Acquisition of the DP in Modern Greek. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Marinis, T. 2005. Subject-object asymmetry in the acquisition of the definite article in Modern Greek. In Advances in Greek Generative Syntax [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 76], A. Terzi & M. Stavrou (eds), 153–178. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Miller, K. L. 2007. Variable Input and the Acquisition of Plurality in two Varieties of Spanish. PhD dissertation, Michigan State University. Ordoñez, F. 1997. Word order and clause structure in Spanish and other Romance languages. PhD dissertation, CUNY. Soler, M.R. 1984. Adquisición y utilización del artículo. In Estudios sobre psicología del lenguaje infantil, M. Siguan (ed.), 139–165. Madrid: Ediciones Pirámide. Yang, C.Y. 2004. Universal grammar, statistics or both? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(10): 451– 456.

part iii

The developing syntax of the verb phrase

Before grammar Cut and paste in early complex sentences Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México This paper presents early complex constructions with querer ‘want’ produced by a young Mexican Spanish-speaking child. It argues that constructions in the complement position, regardless their infinitive or subjunctive marking, result from simple cut and paste operations and do not involve any complex syntactic operations. Crucial for this proposal is the fact that these marked constructions have an independent exposition before they get into any combination, and the frequent and distributed occurrence of anomalous two-predicate combinations that result from the adjunction of unrestricted constructions from the child’s construction inventory. A functional-pragmatic motivation is proposed. Evidence is interpreted within the Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition (Tomasello 2003), taking into account recent work on child’s early complex constructions (Diessel & Tomasello 2005; Givón 2007, 2008). Keywords: Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition, conservative learning, before complexity, clause combining, free subjunctives, free infinitives.

1. Introduction1 Current studies on the emergence of complex constructions in child language are radically reconsidering the widespread assumption that children’s early linguistic constructions, and particularly early complex sentences, are dependent on equally complex operations and abstract knowledge. A similar and long-standing reluctance to attribute adult linguistic knowledge to children can be found in earlier pioneering work on children’s early word combinations and clause combining. 1. I am deeply grateful to two anonymous reviewers and particularly to John Grinstead, editor of this volume, for their comments and suggestions. Needless to say, I am fully responsible for the final result.

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

Some foundational pieces of research proposed that children’s first word combinations are not abstract structures generated by rules, but rather item-based constructions resulting from the application of reduced scope formulae (Braine 1976). Similarly, early complex sentences were considered to result from simple processes, like the union of sentence fragments and low-level generalizations (Bowerman 1979: 286; Clark 1974; Limber 1973). More recently, similar proposals have been advanced in socio-constructivist research. In a critical synthesis of the features of children’s early grammar, Michael Tomasello (2000) has assembled considerable evidence showing that children’s early constructions do not present the abstract properties of their adult counterparts. Instead, what clearly emerges, both from naturalistic data and experimental designs, is the reduced productivity and item-based properties of children’s constructions, their gradual and asynchronous access to productivity, with children’s concrete experience with the exemplars of parental usage as the driving force. In effect, the properties of developing constructions in early child language might well be related to the unequal distributed frequency and functional bias currently found in general adult usage (Bybee & Hopper 2001; Barlow & Kemmer 2000; Langacker 1988, 2000). Linguistic regularities are not equally present in everyday language; some regularities are more frequent and distributed, and hence prominent, in language usage; similar and probably more radical biases characterize the parental language children are exposed to (Tomasello 2003, for a general report). The coherent integration of this type of findings has lead to what is currently known as Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition (Tomasello 2003). Supported by massive data on children’s development of various constructions and linguistic units Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition (onwards UBT, for short) emphasizes that language structure emerges from language use. Concrete exemplars of utterances that have been heard or said previously are the basis for the very modest beginning of early grammar, whose gradual construction relies “on children’s intention reading and pattern finding capacities” (Tomasello 2003: 6): a major point in UBT perspective. The UBT view on how children become productive users of language proposes a gradual integration of units –items, chunks, and constructions–, together with children’s sensitivity to lexico-constructional collocations, and a slow building and extraction of schemas upon the regularities to be found in the experienced exemplars of the target language. Always under the guidance of communicative intentions, both read in the interlocutors utterances, and organizing the speaker’s own productions. Studies of children’s naturalistic data, and experimental results have firmly proved the item-based origin and restricted and gradual productivity of constructions. Experiments controlling the conditions under which children hear particu-



Before grammar 

lar word combinations and constructions have shown that individually experienced exemplars have an impact in what children are able to produce, or even repeat. For example, verbs uniquely experienced in transitive construction exemplars are used in transitive frames; verbs only heard in a 3sg inflexion are first used in the same inflected form; more notably, verbs experienced in passive constructions are used in passive frames rather than in active constructions (Brooks & Tomasello 1999; Theakston, Lieven & Tomasello 2003; Tomasello & Brooks 1998). The single form hypothesis and non-generalized development of early verb inflexion in Spanish, supported by naturalistic data, adds positive evidence to this view (Gathercole, Sebastián & Soto 1999 and 2003; Rojas-Nieto 2003). Even the aspectual bias detected in early Spanish verb inflection – Jackson-Maldonado & Maldonado (2001) and Jackson-Maldonado (2004), confirming Shirai & Andersen’s proposal (1995)–, could easily be read from the context of a UBT scenario. A further point to be made on children’s path towards more elaborate constructions considers the possibility that they are produced by means of simple combinatorial operations rendering equally simple adjoined constructions. Fine grained analysis of a dense corpora (Lieven, Behrens, Spears & Tomasello 2003) shows that children’s early syntactic creativity may be accounted for by the constructions they have previously produced and some simple operations applying to them: substitute, add, drop, insert, rearrange, and possibly and later blend. For instance, to build new word combinations, a 25 months old child may have simply executed just one of those operations (74%) or, on occasions, two or more at once (2 operations = 20%; 3 or more operations = 6%). She produces novel constructions mainly with a substitution (62%), or an addition (11%) compared to previously produced exemplars, as she does, though infrequently, by dropping some previous component of others (1%) (Lieven, Behrens, Spears & Tomasello 2003: 344). In short, UBT findings and proposals for language development may be related to the fortunate characterization of the child as a “conservative attentive learner” (Culicover 1999). This emblematic phrase –notably said by a well-known formalist– recognizes that the child pays fine attention to the specific and concrete exemplars of constructions provided by parental usage. She extracts units and fragments out of concrete experienced exemplars, the models of her early constructions; she builds a construction inventory; she detects and works out their distributional regularities and patterns, and gradually builds abstract schemas –more or less abstract templates– that are assumed to form a grammar (Langacker 1991). Children would learn a language in the form of a structured inventory of constructions (Tomasello, 2003, 2006), and only gradually would build schemas, find analogical relations across structural patterns, and develop a hierarchical network of interrelated constructions (Abbott-Smith & Behrens 2006; Genter & Markman 1997; Gentner & Medina 1998; Tomasello 2003; 2006).

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

The grammar that the child will gradually build is expected to reflect the diversity and concrete character of her individual experience with her target language. This grammar has very modest beginnings out of piecemeal elements, chunks, fragments, formulaic constructions and item based combinations (Lieven, Pine & Baldwin 1997; Peters 1983; 1985). It is lexically sensitive, restricted and isolated (Tomasello 1992, 2000, 2003). Its driving force is functional and it is characterized by its pragmatic and communicative efficiency (Bowerman 1985). The formal and disputed properties attributed to adult grammar –coherent organization, abstractness, correlational regularities– (vid. Givón 1979), would be in the best case a late achievement; and if Usage Based and Construction Grammar (Croft 2001; Goldberg 1995; Goldberg 2006) are right, the optimal organization that formal models propose would be just a prefigured goal in an ongoing organizational movement. Grammar would be an emergent product, even if partially and selectively crystallized, not a natural beginning (Hopper 1998), and the disputed comparative adequacy of different models should be tested not as a better starting point but as a better and attainable result. 1.1

Extending UBT proposals to early clause combining

Considering early clause combining from a UBT perspective constitutes a research space that has just started to develop during the last decade. Much work has to be done to understand how the development of complexity fits the foundational assumptions of UBT. Although the main findings of UBT refer to simple basic constructions, it has been proposed that they also apply to early complex constructions (Tomasello 2003: 242). This is not, in fact, an undisputable position. Even if early child language is accepted to be characterized in UBT terms, it is not necessarily the case that complex constructions must be built in a similar way. The fact is that recent UBT studies on the acquisition of complex clauses with complement taking verbs or relative constructions argue that complex constructions may add new pieces of information to the well known UBT scenario of grammar development; without again the need to appeal to abstract categories or complex rules (Diessel 2004; Diessel & Tomasello 2000, 2001, 2005; Kidd, Liven & Tomasello 2006; Rojas-Nieto 2009). For example, Diessel and Tomasello have proposed that English complement taking verbs (CTV) like think or say, which would be expected to have an embedded clause as a complement, are a modal operator in children’s early constructions. In this way, what would be considered a complex sentence does not present a complex embedding structure but rather corresponds to a simple clause –the supposed subordinate one– juxtaposed to a parenthetical or marginal modal operator: the CTV. The result is a simple construction that needs no complex rules to be produced.



Before grammar 

Following the same line of argumentation with respect to simple processes in complex syntax, Kidd, Lieven and Tomasello (2006) have presented empirical data showing that children are sensitive to lexico-constructional collocations of individual CTVs. Young children’s ability to remember and repeat sentences instantiating a complex construction is dependent on the relative frequency of the CTV in that construction. For the same type of constructional frame, more frequent CTVs (e.g., look) get better results than infrequently used ones (e.g., hear). We could propose as a sort of generalization that these UBT proposals on CTVs’ developing complexity have entered this research area with a kind of ‘starting small’ hypothesis (Elman 1993). In fact, ‘starting small’ proposals have been considered in various cognitive tasks, language development and beyond, as a possible way to explain how complex issues may be solved by simple means in a kind of minimization scenario (Elman 1993; Givón 2007 and 2008; Newport 1990; Rojas-Nieto 2009; Seidenberg & MacDonald 1999). Indeed, early complement taking verbs adopting a simple juxtaposed-parenthetical construction constitute a ‘starting small’ phenomenon. If local regularities in lexico-constructional collocations are the source and guide of complex constructions, we are facing again a ‘starting small’ process at work. Both proposals are also commensurable with adult Usage-Based Grammar (Bybee & Hopper 2001; Barlow & Kemmer 2000; Langacker 1988, 2000). Previous studies on adult’s usage have found parenthetical use of epistemic verbs (Thompson & Mulac 1991) and collocational restrictions and preferences have long been noted in Usage-based analysis and corpora studies. On the basis of these results, we may consider children’s early complex clause constructions as a research environment that will allow for the evaluation of models in parental usage and lexical biases in the emergence of sentence combinations. And we can add to this scenario the possibility that early CTVs take a clause complement by means of the simple operations proposed for simple constructions (Lieven, Behrens, Spears and Tomasello 2003). In fact, we acknowledge Givón’s proposal (2008: 79) that “earlier paratactic structures, with the two clauses packaged under separate intonation contours, condense into later syntactic structures with the two clauses falling under a joint intonation contour”. From this view, the raising of complex two-predicate clauses would emerge from paratactic two-clause configurations, a point Givón has made since his earlier works on language change and origins (Givón 1979) as Heine & Kuteva (2007) do in some recent work, now also attributed to child language in most recent work (Givón 2007 and Givón 2008). In sum, we may consider as a possible scenario one in which children’s early complex sentences would result from various starting small processes (Elman 1993), which will be operating in a particular linguistic environment on the basis of concrete parental exemplars showing specific sequences and collocation regularities, and by appealing to combinatorial processes like add or blend resulting in

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

paratactic, simply adjoined collocations. In order to expand the UBT analysis to complex constructions, this paper addresses the early development of clause combining in Mexican Spanish. We will focus centrally on the possibility that children might produce complex constructions by putting together previously adopted construction frames. And the possible and apparent complexity of these constructions would be in fact the simple result of a adding previously adopted construction frames: a “cut and paste” type of procedure. 1.1.1 The adult models In effect, even if children were simply carrying out adding or blending operations in building complex sentences, the resulting constructions could easily present some features considered to define them as complex subordinate clauses. This could be a possible result of children having adopted in their construction inventory some clause constructions marked as dependent in adult models, and extracted them as isolated pieces. Let us go into this point for a moment. In adult grammars, clause linkage usually goes together with various clause adaptations. There are different types of work in clause combining that adult models are expected to show and children are supposed to have access to in modeled usage. In a necessarily short summary, we may consider how clause sequencing is affected by being made through dependence – independence associations and the corresponding marking. The more general and typologically sensitive studies (Aissen 2006; Givón 1980, 1990, 2006, 2007, 2008; Lehman 1988; Van Valin & La Polla 1997) have designed a multi-dimensional working space (1), including different syntactic domains involved in such combinatorial processes, under the assumption that particular languages make different selections and mark various levels of clause combination-integration differently. (1)

Some clause properties to be considered in clause linkage Independent vs. unified illocutionary force Argument independent exposition vs. sharing Tense-Aspect independent marking vs. integration Mood & polarity non-effects vs. marked effects (subjunctive ~ other) Zero marking vs. conjunction vs. linking-morpheme vs. other.

As for illocutionary force (IF) (Van Valin & La Polla 1997), complex clauses are expected to code a single speech act, hence the impossibility of putting an imperative verb in a dependent clause, since they would form a single proposition if one were really subordinated. Similarly, argument calibration of every verb involved in a complex construction would lead to a combination of uniquely inflected verbs when every verb shows its own participants. To the contrary, argument identity may allow clause union, which in the more integrated situation may correspond



Before grammar 

–as in Spanish– to a dependent verb not marked for person inflection; let’s say an infinitive (INF) or a gerund (GER). This is one of the reasons underlying the competing selection between finite verbs versus uninflected nonfinite verbs in dependent clauses. Tense and aspect calibration leads to similar effects and adjustments: independent exposition or dependent coding adjustments (a well recognized and complex phenomena referred to in Spanish as consecutio temporum, which we will not consider here). Effects of mood and polarity in the CTV clause are also involved in the Spanish selection of a subjunctive verb (SBJ) in a dependent clause. Equally, clause combining may be marked by the Spanish conjunction que ‘that’, which functions as a linking mark (LM) and boundary flag. Dependent clauses in adult language usage will normally show some adaptations in terms of their formal properties. As a conjunct, adult successive exposition of different exemplars will make accessible to children the various available construction frames for complex clause constructions in their target language. Children are hence expected to experience all this complexity in their parental models, together with all the frequency bias to be shown in concrete language usage. A rule-governed view would predict a gradual acquisition of the more complex, more marked constructions, starting from the simpler ones. This is in fact a tricky subject to consider in language development. The relative complexity of integrated frames (INF) against marked clause constructions (with tensed verbs –maybe subjunctive- and conjunction marking) is not a trivial mater, but rather the topic of a sustained debate on markedness and defaults (Bresnan 2001; Givón 2006; Van Valin 2001). The general assumption that development necessarily proceeds from simple to complex, or from unmarked to marked, joins the debate on the features that characterize ‘simplicity and markedness’. Both concepts are theory-dependent, and are inherently related to theory-internal principles and assumptions. Thus, the two main construction frames in Spanish for dependent clause linkage are: i. uninflected verb integration under argument sharing, time reference agreement conditions and unified illocutionary force, such as an infinitive (INF) clause; or ii. inflected verb sequences, different arguments, tense exposition –possible subjunctive (SBJ)–, and unified illocutionary force; each would equally qualify as simpler or more complex in different frameworks. What would be considered most probably unmarked –even pre-grammatical– would be the simple sequencing of predicative frames, with no linking operations among them. As in fact Givón does in talking about parataxis, or pragmatic linking mode and condensation (Givón 1979, 1990, 2006, 2007, 2008). Certainly, the markedness topic is not without interest. However, it is not central for an acquisition theory that assumes a pre-grammatical initial state as the starting point, and gives more weight to imitative learning (Tomasello 1999) and distributional regularities of parental usage than to abstract a priori presumptions.

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

On this view, a natural unmarked beginning is not crucial. (Apparent) formal complexity is not out of reach by definition, since starting small processing may imprint simplicity into a complex task by disregarding its eventual complexity and finding an alternative, simpler analysis or operation to get a complex result (Elman 1993). What has to be emphasized from the outset is that adults’ exemplars of complex constructions may expose unmarked and marked options (infinitive clauses, subjunctive clauses, and the like), which will be at children’s disposal. Children may extract marked clauses as isolated chunks, or adopt marked constructions naturally produced in isolation in the course of conversational interaction. When children produce an early marked clause as a complex exemplar, we may be more likely witnessing a simple example of concatenation, performed independently of adult competence (Clark 1974), and not facing a case of marked complex embedding. So, to end this long preamble, the objective of this study is to present evidence of how a conservative attentive learner, based on parental usage, may enter complex grammar by putting together previously adopted frames. The issue to be developed in this paper is the relevance of applying simple adding operations to constructions that have been independently acquired on the basis of modeled usage, as detected by a child processor that tends to enter complex problems by ‘starting small’. 1.2

Methodology

We have selected as our target subject an early talking girl by the first half of her third year of age (from 20 to 30 months). This age range selection acknowledges Tomasello’s arguments (2000) that this age period is a pre-grammatical one, previous to what he calls “the revolution of three years”. Effectively, there is evidence that around the 36 months of age, many item-based constructions start to be productive and schematized. Similarly, previously isolated constructions may start to be variously related to other construction frames (e.g. transitives to intransitives; actives to passives, an so forth) (Tomasello 2000: 228). So, to look for the first steps in developing complexity, early data must be tested to explore the developmental path before the grammar of the child is expected to be already emerging. For this purpose, complex sentences have been obtained from a naturalistic data base ETAL (Etapas tempranas en la Adquisición del Lenguaje), which has been collected and is kept in the Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (Conacyt 30798) under the author’s direction and participation (Rojas-Nieto 2007). The name of the target subject in this study has been changed to protect her confidentiality. She will be referred as Flor (in examples F.). She is an early talking and only child in a Spanish monolingual educated middle-class Mexican urban family. Parents are the child’s main caretakers, but Flor also interacts with her grandparents and aunts, who are frequent



Before grammar 

interlocutors and companions. Data was obtained and video recorded every 7 to 10 days in spontaneous conditions while Flor, her parents and close members of the family were involved in joint habitual activities: playing, feeding, preparing for bed, having a bath, gardening, dancing, reading, painting, and the like. Flor’s verb lexicon had already reached 63 verb types at 23 months, when she offered first and almost simultaneous evidence of complex two-verb constructions with four different verbs: mirar ‘look, ver ‘see’, ir a ‘go to’, querer ‘want’. Among the lexical inventory of verb types (n = 209) she builds during the ten months of reported observation –from 1;08,15 to 2;06,4– almost a fifth of them (n = 43) are CTVs and occur in complex constructions. Most of these verbs are token-infrequent, which makes them unsuitable for fine-grained analysis. Since verb frequency has been proposed as an important feature in development of clause complexity (Kidd, Lieven & Tomasello 2006), attention will be paid exclusively to querer ‘want’, the most frequent, distributed, and solid verb in this child’s early lexicon and one of the most frequently used in complex two predicate constructions during this period. (2)

Data summary Flor: female, only child 1;08,15 – 2;06,4 32 observations (2 hrs/each, every 7 ~ 10 days) MLU-words range in the period: 1.64 – 3.67 Child’s conversational turns: 21,013 during this period First complex clause construction: 1;11,03 First complex clause construction with querer: 2;00,0 Querer ‘want’ in complex frames: 444 tokens.

In fact, querer is not just the most frequent verb for this child. A highly similar situation occurs in adult speech. In lexical counts of the Diccionario del español de México (vid. Lara, Ham & García 1979), querer ‘want’ is the 12th most frequent verb in adult Mexican Spanish. 1.2.1 Complexity in constructions with querer ‘want’ as a matrix verb In adult grammar, complex clause constructions with querer show the two competing frames we have already mentioned, related to argument sharing properties. Under equi-subject conditions (=S), querer occurs in construction with an infinitive verb (INF) that aligns in subject reference with the CTV querer (3a). Under different subject identity (≠S), querer has to be built with a dependent verb in an inflected form, and subject reference is independently determined for each verb (3b). (3) a. =S

quiero ir want.prs.1s go.inf ‘I want to go’.

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

b. ≠S

quiero que vayas want.prs.1s lm go.sbj.2s ‘I want you to go’.

Complex clause constructions with querer also give evidence of various phenomena involved in clause linkage: the presence of a linking mark (LM), que ‘that’, strongly required in Spanish with tensed clauses (especially so under ≠S conditions for querer); irrealis subjunctive marking (SBJ) on the dependent verb, which some matrix verbs like querer demand in every ≠S case (Levy 1983). A rule-governed view would predict protracted acquisition of more complex, more marked constructions, and would need to face the problem of selecting what would be a possible default, if any. A ‘starting small’ view associated to parental usage would lead us to expect the possible incorporation of various frames, with children’s preference for the construction with a more distributed frequency –not necessarily massive– in modeled parental usage (Ambridge, Theakson, Lieven &Tomasello 2006; Childers & Tomasello 2002). On these grounds it could be possible to have the presence of disfavored construction options, if salient in parental usage; or the possible reanalysis towards simplicity of otherwise complex productions. So, a child’s incorporation of marked constructions –from an abstract grammar perspective– is compatible with a starting small scenario, but as a result of a simple process. Let’s say: i. the extraction of a construction from the modeled use, and ii. its integration as a piece in a sequence, by a sort of pasting process with no other formal operation involved, regardless of the apparent complexities of the extracted fragment. In this context, a starting small rendition will not imply or require a default option on either of the possible sides of the competing syntactic frames –integration vs. whole (un)marked clause rendition. Chunking and adoption of some constructional frames –marked, unmarked, reduced or expanded– will be dependent upon the child’s experience. Sequencing of the extracted components of adult constructions would be the starting point of complex constructions which will depend on children’s intentions, attention, adoption, and conservative use of experienced frames. In the following pages, a rendition of Flor’s complex querer constructions will be offered. An argument will be made to propose that constructional frames, with independence of their formal properties like infinitive or subjunctive marking, are the result of simple cut and paste activities and do not need to involve an independent computation or calibrated selection, nor do they require us to credit the child with the relevant integration and/or marking operations which on the surface the construction might manifest. One crucial aspect of this proposal implies that the fragments assumed to be combined must be independently produced, before they get into the pasting process. We will also be exploring whether a functional-pragmatic motivation might be involved in this pasting.



Before grammar 

The two following points will be developed in separate sections of this paper: i. The pieces. Here, the independent and previous uses of the constructions that will later combine with querer ‘want’ in complex constructions will be presented; emphasis will be made on their dependence marking (INF, SBJ and LM: que) even if used without any surrounding or related main verb. Close attention will be paid to querer as a main verb as well as to its biased inflectional development and use, and mainly bare exposition and null expansion. ii. The combinations. Here the various complex constructions produced by the child with querer as a CTV will be presented. Special attention will be given to the novel, non-adult type of combinations the child produces, as reliable evidence that a pasting procedure is at work in their production. 2. Analysis 2.1

The construction pieces

Like with a playing kit, previous to making use of complex constructions with querer as a CTV, Flor produces for almost two months different construction frames like the ones to be included in the complex constructions she will later produce. 2.1.1 The main verb Querer occurs in Flor’s constructions from an early age (1;10,15) both as a bare verb or in Verb-FN frames. It adopts first as a unique form and later as a dominant inflected form the 1S present indicative: quiero ‘I want’ (queo bacate = want-PRS.1S ‘I want avocado’, 1;10,15). This is a normal expected situation, supporting the One form hypothesis proposed for morphological development with previous findings (including Spanish) with this same lexical verb (Gathercole, Sebastián & Soto 1999; Rojas-Nieto 2003). Although some 3S inflected forms do occur from early on, they refer in fact to 1S. The reference to 1S continues to be the dominant form during the entire period under consideration. Second and third person inflections (quieres ‘you want’, quiere ‘he/she/it wants’) with a genuine reference to an interlocutor and a third person referent, respectively, are used one month later. The mini-paradigm they jointly form, together with a later 3P quieren ‘they want’, are the whole set of inflected forms for querer during the period under study. But for the later 3P forms– they are already available for the child when she starts to combine them in two-predicate frames (see Table 1).

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

Table 1.  querer inflection development

quiero 1S quiere 3S as 1S quieres 2S quiere 3S quieren 3P

As a lexical Vb

In VbVb frames

1;10,15 1;10,24 1;11,15 1;11,15 2;01,18

2;00,00 2;00,18 2;01,18 2;01,18 2;02,21

As previous work has established for the corresponding Eng. want (Diessel 2004), 1S inflected forms dominate these complex frames. This occurs in our data, as well: quiero exemplars cover 86% (n = 380) of all querer complex constructions in the period (4a). Also some early 3S inflected forms occur (n = 15), referring in fact to 1S (4b), so that reference to ego ‘wanting’ is completely dominant (n 395/444 = 89%) and is expected to continue to be so until adulthood. (4) a. b.

quielo comé (= quiero comer) want-prs.1s eat-inf ‘I want to eat’. quiee bajad (= quiero bajar) want-prs.3s get.down-inf ‘I want to get down’ (from the high chair).

(2;0)

(2;0,18)

Illocutionary Force (IF) associated with quiero ‘I want’ utterances is interpreted, and most probably intended, as a sort of directive (Rojas-Nieto 2001). In any case, when Flor says she wants something she usually recruits a cooperative adult willing to fulfill her desire, or to help her to carry out her intent. Reference to an interlocutor in 2S (n 24 = 5%) occurs first and exclusively in our data with interrogative intonation: ¿quieres? ‘do you want?’ (5a-c), as an offering or as a question about interlocutor’s intent, first occurs one month and a half later than 1S quiero ‘I want’ forms. (5) a. b. c.

¿quiees domite? (=¿quieres dormirte?) (2;1,18) want-prs.2s sleep-inf=2rf.s (do you) want to sleep? ¿quiedes bed e cachodo? (=¿quieres ver el cachorro?(2;4,17) want-prs.2s see-inf the puppy ‘(do you) want to see the puppy? ¿ta te quiedes domi? (=¿ya te quieres dormir? (2;6,4) already 2rf.2s=want-prs.2s sleep-inf ‘(do you) already want to sleep?’



Before grammar 

As for 3S forms with third person singular reference, quiere ‘he/she/it wants’ (n 22 = 4%), they are always used in statements (6a). The infrequent 3P forms, quieren ‘they want’ (n 3 = 1%), also occur exclusively in statements (Ex. 6b). Notably, 3P/S inflected forms of querer report, that early, a third person’s interpreted intent or desire. (6) a. b.

mi peyo no teye líl (= mi perro no quiere ir) (2;0,18) my dog neg want-prs.3s go-inf ‘my dog does not want to go’. los cocoyilos se quieren satá (=los cocodrilos...saltar) (2;2,21) the crocodiles 3s.rf=want-prs.p jump-inf ‘the crocodiles want to jump’.

So, from a functional point of view, every inflected form with querer ‘want’ syncretically codifies a particular communicative intention towards a person’s desire/ intent. By addressing a question to the interlocutor regarding his desire/intent with a 2S inflected form: ¿quieres? ‘do you want?’; by reporting an inferred intention from a 3S/P one: quiere/quieren ‘he wants/they want’; or in a kind of performative way, by coding the ego’s current desire/intent with the preferred and first adopted form: quiero ‘I want’. As for the exponents of querer constructions, both as a lexical verb and as a CTV, we find that they show almost no expansion; except for some preverbal operators (NEG, ASP: ya ‘already ~ yet’) and occasional a preceding subject (S) or some clitic pronoun. In sum, querer constructions present, in many respects, the properties of a bare ‘modal operator’, as argued for its close parallel Eng. want on a similar basis in Diessel (2004). 2.1.2 The infinitive verb frames Infinitive verbal forms are frequently used by Flor as root infinitives in independent clause constructions with a modal, goal directed-inceptive reading (cf. Aguado 2004: 272; Ezeizabarrena 2001: 257; 2002: 51; Fernández Martínez 1994: 33, for similar findings). Their lexical diversity is not as great as their frequency. A handful of activity verbs –abrir ‘open’, bañar ‘have a bath’, bajar ‘go/put down’, bailar ‘dance’, cerrar ‘close’, comer ‘eat’, dormir ‘sleep’, ver ‘see’– are initially the only root infinitives and later are the most frequent. What is crucial for our argument is the fact that during the two previous months, in the child’s initial querer constructions with an infinitive (e.g. quiero comer ‘I want to eat’) (2;00), some lexical verbs (dormir ‘sleep’, comer ‘eat’, bajar go/ put down’, and echar ‘throw’) are already used as root infinitives (from 1;10,15, onwards), apparently coding intention or inception. Some authors have proposed that, in fact, root infinitives have been extracted or cut out from modal auxiliary constructions, a proposal that could account for the meaning these INF present.

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto



(7) a. After having been picked up, attempting to re-enter the water (1;10,15) añad (=bañar) bath-inf ‘have a bath’. b.

While getting into the car to play at being a driver (1;10,15) ajad yo (= manejar yo) drive-inf 1s ‘drive me’.

In a close parallel to querer, whose dominant inflected form is quiero –1S person–, root infinitives mainly refer to the ego as an implicit subject, and on occasions to a second person. More frequently INF verb subject reference is recovered in the situation (7a), but it may also have an independent pronominal marking (as in 7b; or in 9, infra). In some cases, as in (8), INF may refer to both dialogue participants whose identification is indexed by the reflexive proclitic pronoun nos ‘us’. (8)

With her mother, at nap time (1;11,15) a mominos (= a dormirnos) to sleep-inf=1rf.p ‘(let’s go) to sleep’.

Bare root infinitives, first documented at 1;10,15, compete from the following week on, with infinitives marked by the preposition a ‘to’ (9a) (Fernández Martínez 1994; Gallo 1994). Here the preposition seems to mean inception or intent; a + INF jointly realize a directive Illocutionary force (IF). To attribute the preposition a ‘to’ an incitation type or directive meaning, we appeal to some innovative non adult type constructions this child produces, by combining a ‘to’ with an imperative verb, such as a mira, to look-IMP, ‘look’; a mete, to put.into-IMP, ‘put’, whose anomalous creation may possibly be explained by attributing to the preposition a sort of directive force. (9)

Nap time, already in bed with her mother (1;11,15) a mir, yo a mil, a mil tú to sleep-inf 1s to sleep-inf to sleep-inf 2s ‘Let’s sleep, me to sleep, you to sleep’

The presence of bare and prepositional root INF in Flor’s data has a peak at 1;11,03 and declines between 1;11,15 and 2;00. Then infinitives start to be used mainly with the phasal–goal directed verb ir a ‘go to’ (10a) (cf. Aguado 2004; Ezeizabarrena 2001: 254, 2000). Querer also takes a part in this decline from 2;00,6, when it starts to combine with INF verb forms (10b). But prepositional and bare root infinitives are not just child-specific constructions: they are kept across the life span as



Before grammar 

exhortative-directive constructions and with many other senses and different constructions (Luna Traill 1980: 77–84). (10) a. b

ía nene, ba balá look-imp baby, go-prs.3ss dance-inf ‘Look at the baby, he’s going to dance’. no ele a bomir not want-prs.3s to sleep-inf ‘I don’t want to sleep’.

(1;11,15)

(2;00,6)

We have evidence, then, that root infinitives are an accessible resource for children to express a modal-irrealis type of meaning, which can easily be recruited to combine with querer. Since infinitive verbs occur by themselves with no governing item around them, when they combine with querer, there is no obvious need to propose the integration operations that otherwise would be needed to account for their co-occurrence. 2.1.3 The subjunctive frames Clauses in general are often used alone as full utterances (Tomasello 2003: 197), and clauses with subjunctive verbs also occur in absolute syntactic positions, without any CTV (Moreno de Alba 1978: 123). This also happens in Flor’s early clause production, where subjunctive verbs are used as free verbs. There is a pragmatic explanation for it. Free subjunctive verbs in adult models and in children’s productions have a directive function: mainly coding a prohibition (11a -11b), or a positive and modulated mild directive (11c– 11d) (Gallo 1994; Moreno de Alba 1978). Both uses, frequent in parental speech, are already in place the week spanning ages 1;10,15 to 1;10,24 –hence, before querer first occurs in a complex clause frame at (2;00,06). They continue to be present during the four months before querer-no querer ‘want- do not want’ overtly combines (2;02,21) with a subjunctive verb for a more or less consistent reading (11e – 11f). In fact, subjunctive forms of verbs are used early, though their calibrated selection and various functions are a late achievement (Montrul 2004; Pérez Leroux 1998). (11) a.

To the puppy that is biting her pants, with a negative head movement edas, edas (= muerdas) (1;10,24) bite-sbj.2s bite-sbj.2s ‘Do not bite’ (as a prohibition).

b.

Jumping in bed, she asks her mother to stay nearby na ne quites, mamá (= no te quites) neg 2rf.s take.away-sbj.2s, Mum ‘Don’t move away’ (as a prohibition).

(1;11,03)

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

c.

Referring to her shoelaces that are untied oches, ¿sí? (=abroches) tie-sbj.2s yes? ‘You tie (them), won’t you?’ (as a positive petition).

d.

Playing with Mum and asking her to cover the doll with a blanket a papes (= la tapes) (1;11,10) 3o.fs=cover-sbj.2s ‘Cover her’ (as a positive petition).

e.

When her mother is asking her to go upstairs to bed no, o quieo ecuche u caset no, I want-prs.1s listen-sbj.1s a cassette ‘No, I want to listen a cassette’ (as a positive petition).

f. Yo quieo que pinte aquí mamá I want-1s lm paint-sbj.3s here Mum ‘I want Mum to paint here’ (as a positive petition).

(1;10,15)

(2;02,21)

(2;03,20)

The evidence again is at least compatible with the proposal that querer + subjunctive verb to be later combinations do not need a complex rule or adjustment to make the dependent clause take a subjunctive verb form. The SBJ marked construction may be a basic, kind of root subjunctive, so to speak; and the complex construction would be the simple result of an additive recruiting of constructions already included in child’s inventory, and previously used as independent utterances. 2.1.4 Construction frames with a linking mark que ‘that’ We cannot but expect at this point in the argument, that the linking mark que (COMP: that) would also be present in main clause frames, before it starts to occur in querer complex constructions. This is in fact the case. Consider then the following que marking with subjunctive clauses (12a – 12c), where que seems to be aligned with the hortative reading of the subjunctive. (12) a.

Playing with a doll que la penen (que la peinen) lm od.fs= comb-sbj.3s ‘May (somebody) comb her’ (a kind of wish).

(2;01,14)

b.

Still playing with the same doll la nena que no se ca(i)ga the baby lm neg 3s.rf=fall-sbj.3s ‘The baby, may she not fall’ (a kind of wish).

(2;01,14)



Before grammar 

c.

Talking about the wet dog que se seque lm 3s.rf=get.dry-sbj.3S ‘Let/wish he gets dry’ (a kind of wish).

(2;03,20)

Consider as well some particular exemplars that use the same type of que, with no verb involved but with a similar optative meaning effect (13a – 13b). (13) a. Bath time, Flor washes her legs with a sponge (2;02,4) Mum: ¿ya acabaste? ‘already finish-pst.1s ‘have you finished? … pero, y las rodillas? but, and the knees? ‘And what about the knees? Flor: que la oliyas, ya (que las rodillas ya) lm the knees already ‘(consider) that the knees (are) already clean’ (aprox.) b. Lunch time, after playing with the puppy, now in the garden (2;04) Flor: quieo que cachodo aquí (=quiero que cachorro aquí) want-prs.1s lm puppy here ‘I want the puppy here’. As expected, LM: que occurs two months earlier in independent constructions (2;1,14 first case) than in dependent frames as quiero que + verb ‘I want that + verb’ (2;3,20). The point is to be taken seriously. If constructions marked by que like the ones attested in this child’s usage are a piece in her construction inventory as they prove to be by being used in independent frames, we can be confident in arguing that the presence of “quiero que + tensed verb” exemplars are not by necessity complex sentences marked by a COMP que. Their use is fully compatible with the simple addition of an otherwise independently produced sentence, which included que as a basic formant. 2.1.5 Summing up on the construction pieces In sum, we have clear evidence that the marked complex constructions that combine with querer in CTV frames all do occur in this child, and that they occur previously, as independent utterances in situations where no syntactic dependence has been attested. The presence of marked formants like INF, SBJ, and LM: que, do not prove that the clauses including them have been produced by means of any dependence operations or embedding, since these clauses may be produced with

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

no governing CTV around. They probably have been extracted as constructional units from a CTV or auxiliary verb environment; but they may have been also adopted from adults’ models which similarly offer them as free constructional units in real language use, where they already show the marks (INF, SBJ, LM: que) that could be taken as an argument to attribute to them a complex status when used in a CTV situation. We have to keep in mind as well, that the marking elements INF, SBJ, LM: que have been considered not to have any meaning, but to be empty formal syntactic markers. We should not forget though Bolinger’s (1977) opposite position, and Langacker’s (1987, 1991) proposal on symbolic syntax. All these markers seem to have, instead, a clear meaning in children’s early child’s production, probably syncretic, frame-based, derived by metonymic association from the various interlocutive-modal meanings of the construction frames in which they occur, whose meaning may spread to them as in a bridging context of pragmatic-to-semantic change (Closs Traugot & König 1991). This is the case with the construction quiero ‘I want’ in isolations, which may be considered to have a modal intention or a performative function (as Diessel 2004, and Diesel & Tomasello 2001 have proposed for similar cases). A modal illocutionary force is also present in infinitive and subjunctive free constructions, the latter with the incremental presence of an initial LM: que, to form an Optative construction (Moreno de Alba 1978: 124). We can imagine as a possible scenario that the child might have extracted root INF and root SBJ frames from complex constructions where the marking was syntactically governed –though adult models offer these chunks directly. For instance, hortative que SBJ non-embedded constructions in Flor’s parents’ data, have a distributed if not massive presence; frequency counts expose between 3 and 10 exemplars per hour in adult’s voice. We do not need this possible solution as an exclusive one. All these construction are also found as free utterances in adult models with a directive-desiderative meaning, whose marking and hortative illocutionary force may be modeled or adopted by the child. In sum, the pieces analysis lead us to expect a strong array of evidence of pasting, since we have strong evidence of possible cutting and clear independent adoption of the component frames. 2.2

The combinations

The constructions in which querer is combined with another verb construction to form a two-predicate construction start to be produced by Flor around her second birthday. We have been able to join a set with the first ten constructions in six hours of interaction, covering from 2;00 to 2;00,12. These cases show a frame diversity that is very illustrative of the independent constructions the child has



Before grammar 

already included in her constructions inventory, and confirm the absence of any default option. But the first complex exemplars that Flor produces do not point only to a no-default condition, but also are very illustrative of the simple additive processes that are responsible for the resulting combinations. 2.2.1 The significance of the first complex constructions The first ten exemplars of querer complex constructions (14a-j) present the dominance of 1S inflection quiero ‘I want’, and the preference for INF on the ‘dependent verb side’ to be expected from the frequency of these frames used as independent units. Both formants will keep this privilege in all our registers. As we have already said, quiero represents the 85 % (n = 380/444) of all constructions with querer as a CTV (n = 444). A nearly similar dominance shows the combination with an infinitive, with a 75% (n = 331/444). (14) First querer two-predicate constructions (= order of appearance in children’s data) a. no quielo domí ‘I do not want to sleep’ (2;00,00) b. quielo *a omir ‘I want to sleep’ (2;00,00) c. quielo come ‘I want to eat’ (2;00,06) d. quielo *a come ‘I want to it’ (2;00,06) e. quielo *a papála ‘I want to cover her’ (2;00,06) f. quielo pasal ‘I want to go through’ (2;00,12) g. quiedo *a subid ‘I want to go up’ (2;00,12) h. quiedo *te *a dame ‘I want tea to give me’ (2;00,12) i. quere **vamo a veya ‘I want we go to see her’ (2;00,12) j. quelo **a peíta comía ‘I want the little dog eated’ (2;00,12) That we are not facing an INF type of default becomes apparent, despite the dominance of INF, when we consider that among these first ten cases, five anomalous combinations with INF have been produced (marked by an asterisk in 14), together with two additional anomalous cases with an independent verb (all marked by two asterisks in 14), and only three exemplars are normal INF constructions (14a, 14c,14f). Anomalies correspond to three different types of combination: i. Prepositional infinitives (14b, 14d, 14e, 14g, 14h) (cf. Aguado 2004: 293, for similar findings). Effectively, prep INF constructions are illicit when combined with quiero as a main verb, but they are frequent and normal as root infinitives when combined with ir a ‘go to’. ii. Tensed verb constructions with a normal main clause construction, without any LM: que, and no subjunctive marking (14i, 14j). These constructions are again anomalous with querer, since this verb normally requires both the LM:

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

que and the SBJ. But taken apart they are normal as main clauses: la perrita comía ‘the little dog eated’; vamo(s) a vela ‘let’s go to see her’; and at least this last one would have an inceptive-desiderative meaning, which we tend to find in constructions that are recruited to combine with querer. iii. Blended constructions, like (14h). They are also anomalous: in this case because they jointly include two different construction frames: quiero + NP: quiero te ‘I want (some) tea’, and successively a prepositional infinitive: a darme ‘to give=me’. In this case and other similar cases (cf. 15 below), quiero receives two different treatments: first as a lexical verb with a lexical Object; then as a CTV, it takes a preposition + INF. These combinations are impossible for Sp. querer, and illustrate a clear pasting process with an anomalous result. Despite their anomalies, these early sequences may easily be assembled from the pieces the child has already been independently using: hortative infinitives marked by a ‘to’; bare infinitives with a directive-modal meaning. Not to mention the cases that properly and independently may be used as a main clause (vamos a verla ‘let’s go to see her’ (14i); la perita comía ‘the little dog ate’ (14j)). The same is the case for the blend in (14h), where we find two possible independent frames together: querer + DO, and prep + INF. We end this section by stating that it is possible to argue –mainly but not exclusively on the basis of these anomalous cases– that we are facing the integration of pieces, which –given their anomalies– can only be explained as the results of a formally unrestricted pasting. As for the combinations that seem to fit the rules (14a, 14c, 14f) we do not need to treat them separately. Bare infinitives with a modal meaning may just be added to quiero. There is no need to argue that just in these three cases the child is operating a complex process. The same simple process of sequencing can explain the dominant anomalies and the –at this initial moment– infrequent but normal cases. From this perspective, what we would need to provide to explain the child’s early constructions –both, licit and illicit from an adult’s point of view– would be rather the evidence that may lead us to think that quiero + INF constructions have been in fact the object of syntactic operations of integration, with concrete and non-trivial reflexes such as clitic climbing, object pre-posing, anti-topic constructions, and the like, which in fact we might start to collect in later data. But no plain sequencing of a bare infinitive with a bare querer form would be enough evidence in itself to propose its rule-governed production. Instead, we begin to have some indications that a functional explanation may guide development from simple verb constructions to complex constructional frames. Consider that, despite their formal differences, all these pasted constructions happen to expose a directive-prospective intention by themselves, and are



Before grammar 

semantically and functionally coherent with the intention expressed by quiero. We might confidently suppose that a driving force for these combinations is the similar communicative intention that all of them can realize (cf. Ninio 2001 for a similar proposal in another problem space). These constructions independently inhabit the same ecological space in children’s interactions and they are in principle accessible for the same communicative intention, with a different focus perspective, though. 2.2.2 Constructing more sequences During the entire period under study we find direct evidence that formally unrestricted combination of constructions previously adopted as free frames is a handy way to obtain more elaborate results. By putting together independently used constructions with similar illocutionary force, the child may find a way to build complex construction out of some simple pieces; even if they are anomalous in adult usage. So, we recover some additional blends of quiero DO + INF, with querer being used both as a lexical verb and as a CTV (15a – 15b). (15) a. queo paleta a dal want-prs.1s popsicle to give-inf ‘ I want a popsicle (somebody) to give (me).

(2;1,26)

b. queo a ete ponelo want-prs.1s to this put-inf=3s.o ‘I want this one to put it’.

(2;1,26).

To these exemplars we must add the frequent combinations with quiero + prepositional INF (16a -16f). These constructions continue to be used from 2;00, to 2,3,01. Additionally, we find scattered exemplars of quiero + an unmarked independent clause type (see 17a – 17f) collected from 2;1,06 to 2;5,15. We can see below some results of the continued use of querer with prepositional infinitives, a possibility attested from the first complex productions, instead of the normal unmarked bare infinitive. Except for this preposition that we consider to express a sort of illocutionary force, the construction is the normal for = S constructions, which are built with an infinitive. (16) ‘I want + preposition: to + inf’ (from 2;00,0 to 2;3,01) a. quieo a bajal want-prs.1s prep:to go-down-inf ‘I want to go down’. b. quiero a satal want-prs.1s prep: to jump-inf ‘I want to jump’.

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

c. yo quiero a setal I want-prs.1s prep:to sit.down-inf ‘I want to sit down’. d. quielo a il want-prs.1s prep:to go-inf ‘I want to go’ e. quieo a bolar want-prs.1s prep:to erase-inf ‘I want to erase’ f. ¿tú tiees a ve mi tabajo? 2S want-prs.2s prep:to see-inf my work ‘Do you want to see my work?’ g. zoda tede a domir fox want-prs.3s pprep: to sleep-inf ‘The fox wants to sleep’. The exemplars included as (17) below present an inflected verb and no sign of dependence. Most of them are =S constructions, and require an infinitive verb. Some others have ≠S and would lead us to expect LM: que + SBJ constructions. In both cases, though, they keep their own subject inflection marking: either in =S or ≠S conditions; not adjusting for integration in the first cases (17a -17d), nor marking for subjunctive in the second ones (17e – 17f). Every construction frame is their own domain of organization, and there is no trace, or overt mark of any dependence on querer, but just plane sequencing. (17) I want + independent clause (from 2:1,06 to 2;5,15) a. yo quiero peino I want-prs.1s comb-prs.1s ‘I want to comb’ b. quieo saqué la vela want-prs.1s take.out-pst.1s the candle ‘I want to get the candle’ c. quiedo voy a su cuato want-prs.1s go-prs.1s to her room ‘I want to go to her room’ d. ¿quielen ven esto? want-pst.3p see-pst.3p this? ‘Do you want to see this?



Before grammar 

e. quieo da metes want-prs.1s 3fs.o= put.in-prs.2s ‘I want you to put it in’ f. o quieo duémete oso I want-pst.1s sleep-imp=2rf.s bear ‘I want you go to sleep, bear’. Among the previous “quiero + independent clause” sequences in (17), there is one case with the clearest pasting process (17f): it has as a second piece an imperative verb (duérmete ‘sleep’), which should be independent by definition. This exemplar is particularly important in order to look for the deep motives or the driving force behind these anomalous cases. What seems to be general is that every construction in these sequences independently manifests an Illocutionary force (IF). That is: they are treated as independent main clauses –regardless of its marking– each one including one of the inherent components of a main clause: the expression of the speech act it executes (VanValin & LaPolla 1997: 41–42). In most occasions they express a directive-optative force: the indicative in (17e), la metes ‘you put it in’, by pragmatic convention; the imperative in (17f), in an explicit and direct way. The same reason lies behind the prepositional infinitive, used independently as a mild directive. So, we can conclude that in the early adjunction of quiero with a verb construction, the pragmatic force of querer agrees with the pragmatic force of the adjoined construction, but each one keeps its independent exposition or promotes its own inferential reading. But to have two verbal frames with their own IF is by no means the scenario that will correspond to any type of clause linkage; whose fundamental and departing linking property is to have a unified IF (Van Valin & La Polla 1997; Lehman 1988). 2.2.3 New sequences Starting from 2;3,20 the child produces a new type of combination: “quiero + LM: que + inflected verb” ‘I want that verb’. The verb inflection in these case is mainly a subjunctive (n = 62) (18a – 18c), and on occasions indicative (n =11) (18d -18e). We have also some unexpected cases with an infinitive (n = 3) (18f – 18g). (18) a. Yo quiero que pinte aquí mamá I want-1s lm paint-SBJ.3S here Mum’ ‘I want (that) Mum paints here’ b. quelo que me eseñes want-1s lm 1s.io=show-sbj.2s ‘I want (that) you show me that’

(2;3,20)

(2;4,0)

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

c. quiedo que me (pre)pades una leche want-1s lm io.1s=prepare-sbj.2s a milk ‘I want (that) you prepare some milk for me’

(2,5,08)

d. quieo que me pones mis cacetines want-1s lm 1s.io= put.on-ind.2s my socks ‘I want (that) you put my socks on me’

(2;5,00)

e. Yo quieo que te escones I want.1s lm 2s.rf= hide-ind.2s ‘I want (that) you hide.’

(2;4,04)

f. quieo que enseñate la foto want-1s lm show-inf=2s.io the photo ‘I want (that) to show you the photo.’

(2,5,15)

g. quiero que ir co(n) mi papá want.prs.1s lm go.inf with my Dad ‘I want (that) to go with my Dad’.

(2;05,00)

As we have previously mentioned, quiero que + inflected verb constructions are related to ≠S conditions. In such cases every verb indexes its own subject, which is independently determined. Adult usage requires and models in these cases a dependent verb in subjunctive. So, the child’s use of an indicative in these conditions diverges from the modeled use in the experienced target language. The sequence quiero que INF (18f -18g) most radically diverges from the models: INF is specialized for =S conditions. LM: que occurs in ≠S combinations. There is no way for both to coherently combine. As for the presence of the indicative where a subjunctive would be expected, it could be possible to argue, from a markedness perspective, that quiero que frames combine first with an indicative verb, because it is a simpler and less marked selection, and later they would take the marked option. But there is no way to adopt this view. The fact is that subjunctive constructions are from the very beginnings, and globally during the period, more frequently recruited (82%) than indicatives (14%), and the developmental profile of each inflection is independent: there is no evidence of replacement or interrelation between them (Figure 1).



Before grammar  35 30 25 20

Indicative Subjunctive

15

Infinitive

10 5 0

2;3,1 2,3;20

2;4 - 2;4,24

2;5 - 2;6,4

Figure 1.  Quiero que + SBJ/IND

Here we can see that Subjunctive combinations emerge early and grow fast. Indicative use remains low and grows slowly. It is only when both frames emerge −which they do at the same time− that IND and SBJ relative proportions are not far apart (SBJ = 3, IND = 1). Looking in more detail at the particular exemplars, we find a kind of answer for this fact. Again in line with the proposal that the child builds complex constructions on the basis of her construction inventory. So, as for the first piece in this combination, we have the radical selection of 1S quiero forms we are acquainted with (which in this context reaches 90%). But we also have a preference in the second piece for a 2S form, both in the subjunctive verbs (64 %), and in the indicative (70%). What we have, then, is the preferential combination of our well-known operator quiero, with our previously documented early constructional frame que + subjunctive verb, addressing the interlocutor in a directive-desiderative way. The desiderative effect is kept in the subjunctive frame when combined with quiero. The early presence of SBJ, adapted to quiero que contexts is less the result of a syntactic operation, and more the natural product of combining quiero with a well known construction, que + subjunctive verb, that has been in child’s inventory from (2;1,14): two months before we find the first quiero que SBJ verb combination at (2;3,20). Considering now the indicative-verb cases (19a–19c), we can detect the same directive function on them. We are well aware that indirectness is a recurrent phenomenon in addressing the interlocutor in a mild directive mode (Garrido Medina 1999; Haverkate 1994). Besides, this is a frequent politeness tool in some

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

directive domains, like asking for objects, services, and changes of interlocutor position (Brown & Levinson 1987; Rojas-Nieto 2001): ¿me das? ‘will you give me?; ¿me pones? ‘will you put me/give me?; ¿me quitas?, ‘will you take off/away from me.?; ¿te sientas? ‘will you sit down?’. If we consider the verb exemplars that keep an indicative form in quiero que frames, we see that they are frequently used in indirect requests: ¿me abres?, ¿me pones?, ¿me das? (‘will you open/put/give me…?’) (Rojas-Nieto 2001: 197). (19) a. quieo que me pones mis cacetines want-pst.1s lm:que 1.io.s= put-prs.ind.2s my socks ‘I want (that) you put the socks on me’.

(2;5,00)

b. quieo que me abes, el chile (2;5,08) want-1s lm:que 1.IO.S= open-prs.ind.2s the hot pepper ‘I want (that) you open for me, the hot-pepper’. c. yo quieo que te levantas (2;5,15) I want-pst.ind.1s lm:que 2rfs= wake.up-pst.ind.2s ‘I want (that) you wake up.’ We propose here the same interpretation we have been offering up until now. The child is putting together, by simple adjunctions, hence, just paratactically adding, constructions she has been using in an independent way. 2.2.4 Summing up on the combinations We have found some anomalous constructions and have offered a usage-based, pragmatic explanation for them. They are all constructions –form-function pairs (Goldberg 1995)– that have been used independently, with a particular form and function, during various months. Then they are used as one of the pieces of a construction that includes them in the simplest possible way: by adjunction, in a linear sequence, with no adaptation whatsoever. The fundamental point here is that elements credited to be inherently complex or whose complexity is considered to be a reflex of the complex operation of embedding or integration -–subjunctive inflection, linking marks, infinitive forms– are at this moment in this child’s development not evidence of any syntactic operation. Rather, they are simply the remains and the signature of their origin: a discursive-syntactic niche, with the form and the function they had which they have kept in the combining frame. They were first extracted and cut, and some were simply adopted since they were already present as chunks in the modeled adult usage.



Before grammar 

3. Discussion When confronted with the question about how is it possible that small children enter the complex scenario of embedding, dependency, markedness and the like, as in fact they do early, we may remember that thirty years of research from Braine (1976) to Tomasello (2006) have insisted and provided evidence that early constructions are more concrete and limited that most linguistic theories suppose. Recent work on clause combining in young children argues that these complex results may be arrived at by means of simple procedures, by adding and combining, and gradually relating and adapting the formants of a previously built construction inventory. A difficulty for this proposal is the obvious presence of patterns and markers that in adult grammar correspond to complex operations of binding and dependence. They are assumed to imply these operations –as types of complexity indices. The point I have made here leads us to continue to search for an alternative explanation by looking at how constructions with a “complexity mark” may have been incorporated as independent exemplars including that critical mark. We have seen that various constructions including a dependency mark, –the infinitive, the subjunctive, the LM: que– have been adopted /extracted from a particular conversation or discourse situation, and then have been used as independent constructions. They are in this sense as basic and free as other unmarked frames. They are formally different, but not functionally dependent. When they combine with the appropriate –from an adult perspective– construction, they appear to be well fitted and syntactically adapted formants. They are in fact, recruited formants that paste together, in both adult-like and childparticular ways, to other derived constructions. These unrestricted combinations may on occasion be similar to the expected constructions. This possibility is higher, of course, when no competing combinations are in the landscape. They will show, instead, the troublesome effect of competition when various possible combinations are offered in the adult models. Querer constructional frames in Spanish lie in the centre of the competition scenario. As a result, in family usage, the child has at her disposal various combinatorial possibilities, which its various functional properties allow: use as a lexical item, use as a quasi-modal auxiliary or use as a CTV. When we focus the early constructions where querer combines with another verb, we can find evidence of both the adding processes at work as well as the constructions in the child inventory going into this pasting. Nonetheless, I would like to emphasize a critical point: the pasting is not blind, but meaningful. Current developmental models tend to focus on the importance of form and distributional regularities in every task the child has to solve in language development –from word segmentation to complex sentence formation. From this perspective, the child

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto

is conceived of as a pattern finder, while in fact, we should not forget that the effects of meaning and pragmatic function are a part, even a central part, on this scenario. This point has deep roots in our current framework: Bates and MacWhinney’s early design of the competition model insisted on function and form as the polar attractors of building regularities (Bates & MacWhinney 1987; 1989). Nonetheless, the impact of function as a driving, constructive, organizing force, has not received the attention it deserves, but always been in the background (but see Ninio 2001). We have included at the beginning of this paper a brief comment on the possible generalizations that we might detect in the child’s manner of pasting to more abstract operations. This has also been a question that has led the research on argument structure from lexical islands to constructional frames. The fact that, contrary to what is expected in proper clause linkage, the child is apparently marking or, at least, keeping the traces of the illocutionary function that every piece of the combination has previously realized (and will continue to do so –since all pieces continue to be used as independent constructions by the child, and are present in family usage) makes us think of a parallelism with Ninio’s pragmatic bootstrapping account to explain argument exposition. At least in the restricted sense that it is going to be the function of the independent piece which may lead to their early pasting combinations. From this perspective, the child is putting together in a sequence two elements associated with the same intention, offering a sort of dual perspective, one with every piece. The story does not finish here, of course. But I’m confident to conclude that in the beginning, with a reduced set of tools, like the adding and rearrangement operations that Tomasello and his collaborators are testing in children’s use, pure parataxis in Givón’s words, an increasing set of constructions included in child’s inventory, together with the meaningful use the child has attached to them, we have powerful mechanisms for entering complexity by starting small. List of abbreviations ind imp inf lm neg prep prs pst rf sbj

Indicative Imperative Infinitive Linking mark Negation Preposition Present Past Reflexive Subjunctive

o io 1 2 3 f m p s

Object Indirect Object First person Second person Third person Feminine Masculine Plural Singular



Before grammar 

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Before grammar  Hopper, P.M. 1998. Emergent grammar. In The new Psychology of language. Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure, M. Tomasello (ed.), 155–177. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Jackson-Maldonado, D. 2004. Verbal morphology and vocabulary in monolingual and emergent bilinguals. In Bilingual Language Development and Disorders in Spanish-English Speakers, B.A. Goldstein (ed.), 131–161. Baltimore MD: Brookes. Jaksonn-Maldonado, D. & Maldonado, R. 2001. Determinaciones semánticas de la flexión verbal en la adquisición temprana del español. In La adquisición de la lengua materna, Español, lenguas mayas, euskera,. C. Rojas-Nieto & L. de León (eds.), 165–200. México: UNAMCIESAS. Kidd,E., Lieven, E. & Tomasello, M. 2006. Examining the role of lexical frequency in children’s processing and acquisition of sentential complements. Cognitive Development 21: 93–107. Langacker, R.W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R.W. 1988. A usage-based model. In Topics in Cognitive Linguistics, B. Rudzka-Ostyn (ed.), 127–161. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Langacker, R.W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. 2: Descriptive Application. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R.W. 2000. A dynamic usage-based model. In Usage Based Models of Language, M. Barlow & S. Kemmer (eds.), 1–63. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Lara, L.F., Ham Chande R. & García Hidalgo, I. 1979. Lexicografía. Investigaciones lingüísticas en Lexicografía. México: El Colegio de México. Lehman, C. 1988. Towards a typology of clause linkage. In Clause Combining in Grammar and Discourse, J. Haiman & S. Thompson (eds.), 181–225. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Levy, P. 1983. Las completivas objeto en español. México: El Colegio de México. Lieven, E., Behrens, H., Speares, J. & Tomasello, M. 2003. Early syntactic creativity: A usagebased approach. Journal of Child Language 30: 333–370. Lieven, E., Pine, J. & Baldwin, G. 1997. Lexically-based learning and early grammatical development. Journal of Child Language 24: 187–220. Limber, J. 1973. The genesis of complex sentences. In Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language, T. Moore (ed.). New York NY: Academic Press. Luna Traill, E. 1980. Sintaxis de los verboides en el habla culta de la ciudad de México. México DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Montrul, S. 2004. The Acquisition of Spanish: Morphosyntactic Development in Monolingual and Bilingual L1 Acquisition and Adult L2 Acquisition [Language Acquisition & Language Disorders 37] Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Moreno de Alba, J.G. 1978. Valores de las formas verbales en el español de México. México DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Newport, E. 1990. Maturation constraints on language learning. Cognitive Science 14: 11–28. Ninio, A. 2001. Pragmatic keyword and the first combining verbs in children’s speech. First Language 21: 433–460 Pérez Leroux, A.T. 1998. The acquisition of mood selection in Spanish relative clauses. Journal of Child Language 25: 585–604. Peters, A. 1983. The Units of Language Acquisition. Cambridge: CUP. Peters, A. 1985. Language segmentation: Operating principles for the perception and analysis of language. In The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, Vol. 2: Theoretical Issues, D.I. Slobin (ed.). 1029–1068. Hilldsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

 Cecilia Rojas-Nieto Rojas-Nieto, C. 2001. Efectos del uso lingüístico en la construcción temprana de peticiones. Variantes de flexión en verbos directivos. Lingüística 13: 179–216. Rojas-Nieto, C. 2003. Early acquisition of verb inflexion in Spanish. A usage-based account. Psychology of Language and Communication 7(2): 33–56. Rojas-Nieto, C. 2007. La base de datos ETAL: Etapas tempranas en la adquisición del lenguaje. Origen, descripción y metas de un proyecto. Jornadas Filológicas 2005: 575–601. (México: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas- Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). Rojas-Nieto, C. 2009. ‘Starting small’ effects in the acquisition of early relative constructions in Spanish. In Syntactic Complexity: Diachrony, Acquisition, Neuro-cognition, Evolution [Typological Studies in Language 85], T. Givón & M. Shibatani (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Seidenberg, M.S. & MacDonald, M.C. 1999. A probabilistic constraints approach to language acquisition and processing. Cognitive Science 23: 569–588. Shirai, Y. & Andersen, R.W. 1995. The acquisition of tense-aspect morphology: A prototype account. Language 71: 743–762.  Theakston, A.L., Lieven, E. & Tomasello, M. 2003. The role of the input in the acquisition of third person singular verbs in English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46: 863–877. Thompson, S.A. & Mulac, A. 1991. A quantitative perspective on the grammaticization of epistemic parentheticals in English. In Approaches to Gramaticalization, Vol. 2 [Typological Studies in Language 19:2], E. Heine & E. Traugott (eds.), Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tomasello, M. 1992. First Verbs. A Case Study of Early Grammatical Development. Cambridge: CUP. Tomasello, M. 1999. The Social Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Tomasello, M. 2000. Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition 74: 209– 253. Tomasello, M. 2003. Constructing a Language. A Usage-based Child Language Acquisition. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. Tomasello, M. 2006. Acquiring linguistic constructions. In Handbook of Child Psychology, D. Kuhn & R. Siegler (eds). New York NY: Wiley. Tomasello. M. & Brooks, P. 1998. Young children’s earlier transitive and intransitive constructions. Cognitive Development 9: 379–395. Van Valin, R.D. Jr. 2001. The acquisition of complex sentences: A case study in the role of theory in the study of language development. In Chicago Linguistic Society 36, Vol.2: The panels, J. Boyle, Jung-Hyuck Lee & A. Okrent (eds). Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press. Van Valin, R.D. & LaPolla, R. 1997. Syntax. Cambridge: CUP.

Subjects, verb classes and word order in child Catalan Anna Gavarró & Yolanda Cabré-Sans

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona / Universitat Pompeu Fabra A line of research initiated in Borer and Wexler (1987) and more recently pursued in Wexler (2004) indicates that language acquisition is conditioned by the maturation of the principles that regulate the projection of derived subjects. We consider what might be the consequences of assuming such maturation for the distribution of subjects in child Catalan, and with that purpose we examine the spontaneous productions of three Catalan-speaking children with regard to the production of overt and null subjects and the distribution of subjects in relation to verb class. Our findings indicate a delay in the production of subjects with unaccusatives, fulfilling the predictions of Wexler’s hypothesis, in an otherwise early target-like development of monoargumental verb structures. Keywords: verb classes, null subjects, unaccusatives, derived subjects, subject placement, post-verbal subjects, Catalan, Universal Phase Requirement, first language acquisition.

1. Introduction Borer and Wexler (1987) first put forward the idea that derived subjects are delayed in child grammar. They argued that children had difficulty with verbal passives, but not with actives, and the source of the problem was located in the A-chain that linked the derived subject’s base position and its derived position. As a consequence, other derivations involving A-chain formation were predicted to be delayed, as well; amongst those there are unaccusative sentences in which the object raises to subject position. Borer and Wexler’s (1987, 1992) A-chain Delay Hypothesis has been reformulated over the years; what remains constant in all formulations is the fact that unaccusative subjects are predicted to be problematic, in terms of their syntactic derivation, just like those of passives. We investigate whether derived subjects of unaccusatives are indeed problematic in the acquisition of Catalan through the analysis of the spontaneous productions of three

 Anna Gavarró & Yolanda Cabré-Sans

Catalan-speaking children, and to that end we adopt a recent reformulation of the A-chain Delay Hypothesis, that of Wexler (2004) couched in a minimalist framework.1 Catalan, like all null subject languages, allows null subjects when these are old, known information (1); overt preverbal subjects are in fact interpreted as topics, and post-verbal subjects such as the one in (2) interpreted as focus (see Solà 1992 for detailed discussion of Catalan): (1) (La Maria) canta. det Maria sings ‘(Maria) sings.’ (2) Pararà la taula el Joan. Will-set the table det Joan ‘Joan will set the table.’ There are some differences amongst the null subject Romance languages regarding subject placement; Catalan is more restrictive than e.g. Spanish, Portuguese or Romanian in that it disallows a post-verbal subject between the verb and any other complement, as shown in (3), to be compared to (4) for Spanish – examples are taken from Ordóñez 2007: (3) a. *Avui comprarà el Joan menjar. Today will-buy det Joan food ‘Today Joan will buy the food.’ b. *Ahir van resultar molts soldats ferits. Yesterday past result many soldiers wounded ‘Yesterday many soldiers were wounded.’ (4) a. Hoy comprará Juan comida. Today will-buy Juan food ‘Today Juan will buy food.’ b. En Irak resultaron varias personas heridas. In Irak resulted several people injured ‘In Irak several people were wounded.’ 1. Part of the research reported here is developed in Cabré-Sans (2007), and an earlier version was presented in Galana 2006 (Cabré-Sans & Gavarró 2007). We are grateful to the participants of Galana in Montreal for their comments, and to Anna Espinal of the Servei d’Estadística of the UAB for her help with the statistics. Two anonymous reviewers and John Grinstead have provided detailed comments on earlier versions of this paper for which we are thankful. All remaining errors are our own. The first author acknowledges the financial support of project HUM2006– 13295–C02–01 of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science/FEDER.



Subjects, verb classes and word order in child Catalan 

Both in Catalan and Spanish, on the other hand, there is a contrast between unergative and unaccusative verbs, since subjects of unergatives tend to appear preverbally (5a) and subjects of unaccusatives post-verbally (5b) in an unmarked context, as e.g. in answer to the question ‘What happened?’, in which the whole sentence is focalized. (5) a. Els nens dormen. The children sleep

(Catalan)

b. Arriba la primavera. Arrives the spring ‘Spring arrives.’ The emergence of subjects in the null subject languages has received relatively little attention when compared to the research done since the seminal work of Hyams (1986) on the languages in which null subjects are banned. With regard to child Catalan, the results in the literature support the claim that children produce null subjects in an adult-like fashion from early on. For example, Bel (2001, 2003) analyzed the spontaneous productions of three Spanish and three Catalan speaking children and obtained similar results in the two languages regarding the proportion of null and overt subjects; furthermore, these percentages of null subjects are strikingly close to those by Casanova (1999), who analyzed the productions of six Catalan adults; on a corpus of 863 declarative sentences, she found 28% overt subjects. For other studies of the Romance null subject languages also reaching the conclusion that children have set the null subject parameter correctly from early on, see Grinstead (2004) for Catalan and Spanish, and Valian (1991) for Italian. Assuming then that children have set the null subject parameter from the onset of their syntactic productions, the next question is whether children are also adultlike in subject distribution with the different verb classes. Bel (2001, 2003) explored Table 1.  Overt and null subjects in Spanish and Catalan, Bel (2003) Spanish

Overt subject Null subject

n

%

  790 1630

32.7 % 67.3 % Catalan

Overt subject Null subject

n

%

  556 1168

32.3 % 67.7 %

 Anna Gavarró & Yolanda Cabré-Sans

Table 2.  Subject position by verb class, Bel (2003), Júlia Pre-verbal

unaccusatives unergatives transitives

Post-verbal

n

%

n

%

13 17 29

46.43% 65.83% 76.32%

15  9  9

53.57% 34.62% 23.68%

subject distribution for Catalan and Spanish, for one child for each language: subject position relates to verb class in the productions of María (for Spanish; period: 1;7–2;6) and Júlia (for Catalan; period: 1;–2;6). (Percentages in Table 2 are ours.) Subject production with respect to verb classes was also discussed by Lorusso et al. (2005) for Italian; individual percentages appear in Table 3 and global percentages in Table 4. Their results show a significant difference in subject distribution as a function of verb class, as in adults. They found, however, that children differed with respect to adults in the percentage of overt subjects: children used more overt subjects with unaccusatives than with unergatives, but the contrast was not found in adult speech. The results are nonetheless indicative that children are sensitive to the unaccusative/unergative distinction. In the coming pages we examine in detail the development of the distinction between verb classes in Catalan, and investigate whether the empirical findings available for Italian are replicated in Catalan, and so can be considered to hold Table 3.  Subject position by verb class, child Italian, Lorusso et. al (2005) Diana

unac uner tran

Martina

Raffaello

Rosa

Total

Prev.

Postv.

Prev.

Postv.

Prev.

Postv.

Prev.

Postv.

Prev.

Postv.

31% 60% 73%

69% 40% 27%

32% 80% 75%

68% 20% 25%

35% 95% 67%

65% 5% 33%

37% 73% 74%

63% 27% 26%

34% 79% 72%

66% 21% 28%

Table 4.  Subject position by verb class, adult Italian, Lorusso et. al (2005)

unaccusatives unergatives transitives

Pre-verbal

Post-verbal

43% 83% 63%

57% 17% 37%



Subjects, verb classes and word order in child Catalan 

some generality; second, we consider to what extent they fulfill the predictions of a theory such as Wexler’s (2004) according to which children master the grammar of the languages they are exposed to, but fail in specific constructions because of the immaturity of their computational system. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the theoretical background and spells out the hypothesis we test. Section 3 provides information on the source of our data and the statistical methodology followed in their analysis. Section 4 presents our original results on overt and null subjects with the verb classes of unergatives, unaccusatives and transitives, as well as the position of those subjects when they are overt. Section 5 provides an analysis of the facts under the hypothesis defined in Section 2, as well as discussion on how to interpret other results in the literature on unaccusativity in Romance. 2. Background Borer and Wexler (1987, 1992) observed that children had difficulty in comprehending passive sentences in English. (6) a. The boyi was seen ti by the girl. b. The boyi was kissed ti by the girl. This difficulty lasted until around age 5, and was particular clear, in English, with psychological verbs (6a) as opposed to actional verbs (6b). The finding that knowledge of passives is delayed has since been replicated for many languages, including Spanish (Pierce 1992), Dutch (Verrips 1996), Japanese (Sano et al. 2001), Greek (Terzi and Wexler 2002), and Russian (Babyonyshev and Brun 2003). This phenomenon follows, in Borer and Wexler’s analysis, from the child’s inability to construct an A(rgumental)-chain between the basic position of the object and its target position as subject (which was termed A-Chain Delay Hypothesis). This inability was considered to follow from an immature computational system, and disappears as the system matures around the age of 5. The reason why actional passives in English were better understood by children is simply because they were construed as adjectival passives, not requiring an A-chain for their derivation (so, for example, The girl is combed can either be a verbal passive or and adjectival passive, but according to Borer and Wexler’s analysis children interpreted it systematically as an adjectival passive which their yet immature computational systems could handle). Psychological passives do not yield good adjectival passives, and thus children are unable to parse them and fail to comprehend them. Since the raising of an object to subject position (7) is, by the unaccusative hypothesis (Perlmutter 1978), what underlies the derivation of a sentence with an

 Anna Gavarró & Yolanda Cabré-Sans

unaccusative verb in subject position, by Borer and Wexler’s account children were expected to be unable to parse sentences with unaccusative verbs in an adult-like manner. Work by Babyonyshev et al. (2001) substantiated this claim with the genitive of negation construction in early Russian. (7) La primaverai ha arribat ti the spring has arrived

(Catalan)

In Babyonyshev et al. (2001) an independent development in linguistic theory forced the reformulation of the A-chain Delay Hypothesis: the idea by Koopman and Sportiche (1991) that subjects are merged internal to VP. The so-called VP-internal subject hypothesis implied that all subjects raised out of VP, with the corresponding A-chain in the derivation. The raising of subjects out of VP to the specifier of TP would have been banned by the A-chain Delay Hypothesis, but there was no empirical evidence that children failed in the interpretation of the subjects of transitives or unergatives. Babyonyshev et al. (2001) reformulated the A-chain hypothesis as the External Argument Requirement Hypothesis (EARH) to accommodate for this; in this formulation, what makes passive and unaccusative constructions problematic in child grammar is the absence of an external argument. In that way, the VP-internal subject hypothesis does not give rise to an incorrect prediction with respect to the derivation of transitive and unergative subjects: transitives and unergatives both present an external argument. The EARH was formulated in minimalist terms by Babyonyshev et al. (2001: 6) as follows:

(8) Assume that the external argument is base-generated in [Spec, v], where v is the functional category that select VP as a complement, and that in unaccusative and passive clauses v is either absent or ‘deficient’ in that it does not assign the external argument θ-role. The EARH states that a clause with a deficient or absent v is starred in the children’s grammar.

The problem that emerged with the EARH relates to raising verbs such as seem, which are defective in the sense of not assigning an external θ role. When raising occurred (as in Berti seems to Ernie ti to be wearing a hat) children’s interpretations were indeed delayed; but, against the EARH predictions, unraised structures (as in It seems to Ernie that Bert is wearing a hat) were not delayed (see, for discussion of the EARH and the empirical problems it presented, Wexler 2004, and Hirsch et al. 2008 for discussion of the acquisition of raising). Our analysis is based on Wexler’s (2004) reformulation, which integrates the new findings about the acquisition of raising which appear to be problematic for the EARH. Wexler’s (2004) hypothesis is based on the minimalist approach to grammar (Chomsky 1995, 2000, 2001) and appeals at the notion of phase as fundamental to account not only for the properties of adult syntax, but also some of the properties



Subjects, verb classes and word order in child Catalan 

of child grammar alone. One of the tenets of the Minimalist Program is that the derivation of a sentence proceeds in designated subparts, known as phases. Following Chomsky (2001) phases are minimal propositional entities that have interpretative (and phonological) autonomy and that constitute the domain in which agreement relations are established. Only the edge of a phase (its specifier and its head) remain accessible to the computation in the next phase. Intuitively, a phase is a domain within which grammatical relations are established, and the relation between a phase and the lower one is limited. The Phase Impenetrability Condition of Chomsky (2001) establishes this constraint: (9) Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) When working at a phase, only the edge (the head and spec(s)) of the next lower phase are available for analysis, and nothing lower than the edge. In particular the complement isn’t available. It is generally assumed that, in a standard sentential structure such as (10), CP and vP are phases (Chomsky 2001). Chomsky proposes that v be defined as defective with unaccusatives, in such a way that raising of the internal argument to subject position is possible; in this way, the effects of PIC are not effective with unaccusatives. (10)

CP … TP vP VP

v Subject

V

Compl

The claim in Wexler (2004) is that the exceptional character of unaccusatives is not found in child grammar: child grammar does not treat unaccusatives as exceptional in any way. Wexler’s (2004) formulation is as follows: (11) Universal Phase Requirement (UPR) (for children up to the age of 5) v defines a phase, whether v is defective or not.

 Anna Gavarró & Yolanda Cabré-Sans

If so, in child grammar, by the UPR, the arguments of unaccusatives are expected to be inaccessible to the computation due to the Phase Impenetrability Condition – which like all other principles of grammar holds. Problems with unaccusatives are predicted to follow, as with the internal arguments of passives. Basically, the immature child grammar defined by the UPR makes the child insensitive to the distinction between defective v and non-defective v, with consequences for the derivation of structures with arguments of unaccusatives, passives and raising. In this paper we focus on the acquisition of unaccusatives in Catalan, while the acquisition of passives and raising, relevant as it would be to our discussion, remains a topic for future research. In the field of the acquisition of Romance in general, unaccusatives are relatively unexplored. As an exception, Snyder, Hyams and Crisma (1995) studied the emergence of auxiliary selection in the spontaneous productions of four children, one a speaker of French, three of Italian. Auxiliary selection is a well established unaccusativity test in these and other Romance varieties, because unergatives and transitives systematically select avere/avoir ‘have’ as an auxiliary, and unaccusatives select essere/être ‘be’ as an auxiliary. Snyder et al. examined reflexive verbs, which select essere/être, and the same verbs with non reflexive uses, which select avere/avoir (Je me suis mordu ‘I bit myself ’ vs. Il m’a mordu ‘He bit me’). For both languages, children’s productions were virtually error-free, and so the authors claim that unaccusatives are not problematic for children, against the predictions of the A-chain Delay Hypothesis of Borer and Wexler (1987, 1992). (Previous work by van Hout, Randall and Weissenborn (1992) on French reported on errors in auxiliary selection in French, where the child studied incorrectly selected avoir ‘have’ with unaccusatives; this mistake was found by Snyder et al. only very rarely.) Needless to say, these facts need to be integrated in any analysis of the acquisition of unaccusativity in Romance, if it is agreed that reflexive constructions are indeed unaccusative – still a disputed matter (see, for example, Reinhart and Siloni 2004). Wexler’s UPR predicts universal delay with unaccusatives, although of course the manifestation of unaccusativity varies crosslinguistically and the visible effect of the UPR in child grammar is expected to vary accordingly. One of the expected outcomes of the UPR is the inability to comprehend and produce unaccusative structures with displacement of the internal argument; alternatively the child can assign an unergative structure with unaccusative verbs in some derivations (as proposed by Borer & Wexler 1987, Babyonyshev et al. 2001). Here we entertain the hypothesis that subject production and distribution for unaccusatives in the early stages of a null subject language like Catalan may show the effect of late maturation out of the UPR. If so, we predict early convergence to the adult grammar regarding subject production with unergatives (proportion of null subjects, subject placement and word order alternations), but discrepancies between child and adult Catalan with regards to unaccusative subjects.



Subjects, verb classes and word order in child Catalan 

Those discrepancies between child and adult grammar could be investigated by testing comprehension of unaccusatives, as has been tested with passives; however, it is quite possible that, unaccusatives being monoargumental, children would succeed in their interpretations. Here we analyze the spontaneous productions of children and the word order patterns they reveal. 3. Data source and statistical methods The source for our study comes from the longitudinal recordings of three children, Pep, Àlvar and Laura, all native speakers of Catalan living in the Barcelona area (data available on CHILDES, MacWhinney 1995). The files considered and the children’s ages and MLUs for the corresponding period appear in Table 5 and include all productions recorded from the onset of verbal production to the age of three. In order to compare the children’s productions to those of adults, some of the children’s interlocutors (Àlvar’s mother and also three adults from another set of files, those numbered 05 and 08 in the CHILDES database) have been analyzed. The adult data source appears in Table 6. An uneven number of files have been analyzed for each adult, but the overall number of sentences examined is quite similar for all adults. The adults selected for the study were chosen on the basis of two criteria: first, to include some of the children’s interlocutors, but not exclusively those, to avoid any family bias there might have been; second, to select adults for which a sufficiently large amount of data were available. Table 5.  Child data source (available on CHILDES) Pep

Àlvar

Laura

file

age

MLU

file

age

MLU

file

age

MLU

first file last file

0110 0131

1;2.3   3;0.27

1.024 3.405

0300 0319

1;2.28 3;0.13

1.064 2.606

0900 0912

  1;7.20 3;0.2

1.041 2.528

# files

   22

   18

   13

Table 6.  Adult data source (available on CHILDES)

# files examined # V prod examined

Mother 08

Mother 05

Rosa

Mother 03

   3 159

  11 180

   5 225

   2 172

 Anna Gavarró & Yolanda Cabré-Sans

Table 7.  Number of child verbal utterances analyzed child

Pep

Àlvar

Laura

total

#verbal utter.

1443

481

1077

3001

Our analysis involved a manual identification of all verbal utterances and the classification of verbs into verbal classes; sequences have been further classified into declaratives (i.e. all non-interrogative clauses with a subject and a finite verb) and other. As is current practice, immediate repetitions of adult utterances or of the child himself have been excluded. In order to identify the early linguistic behavior of the children we introduce a further partitioning of their productions into two developmental periods, before and after MLU 2.5. The literature on subject development is not particularly consistent with respect to the stages established: while some divide the children’s production in virtue of age (before and after age 2; see Valian 1991 for Italian, Gordishevsky & Avrutin 2003), others take into account their MLU (see, for example, Valian 1991 for English, Valian and Eisenberg 1996 for Portuguese), which allows for individual differences in age of development to be taken into account. In our case, the cut-off point of MLU 2.5 was chosen since it was our goal to consider subject and object production, and very few multiargumental sentences could have been expected before that point. Regarding the statistical method adopted, the analysis of these data has been carried out taking repeated measures into account. That is, the data is organized in a hierarchical structure due to the fact that each individual (child or adult) provides a set of sentences which are jointly analyzed, and taking into account that not all the subjects provide the same amount of data. Methodologies to address data with these characteristics are well developed (e.g. Molenberghs and Verbeke 2005). In this paper logistic regression models taking into account the repeated measures have been established for the analysis of overt subject versus null subject, and for preverbal versus post-verbal subject. The results (given by chi-square and its p-value) have been obtained using the software SAS v9.1, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA and the significance level has been stated at 5%. 4. Subject distribution across verbal classes Since it has been established that the rate of null and overt subjects reaches adultlike levels very early in Catalan, let us now ask what the position of overt subjects is and how it relates to verb classes. The spontaneous productions of Pep, Àlvar



Subjects, verb classes and word order in child Catalan 

and Laura attest monoargumental and bi-argumental verb classes by all the children from early on: (12) a. Busco un altre conte. I-look a another story ‘I am looking for another book.’ b. Hi ha l’Anna. cl have det Anna ‘Anna is here.’

transitive

(Pep, 2;5,4)

(Laura, 3;0,2) unaccusative

c. Ja he dinat. already I-have eaten ‘I already had dinner.’

(Àlvar, 2;6,25)

unergative

Leaving aside copulative verbs (as in Lorusso et al. 2005), we address the issue as to when children start differentiating these verb classes with respect to their syntax. In fact one can imagine that they differentiate them even before they produce them, but it is possible to find evidence that they do differentiate them only as soon as they reach the two-word stage and produce sentences consisting of a verb and a subject. We first compare, for Catalan, the rate of overt vs. null subjects with the three verb classes. Although there is considerable individual variation, overall we find, as in Lorusso et al. (2005), that overt subjects are more common with unaccusatives (41.73%) than with unergatives and transitives (23.88% and 21.86% respectively). With respect to overt subjects, consider their distribution with the three verbal classes: Table 8.  Null and overt subjects with respect to verb classes Pep

unaccusatives overt subject null subject unergatives overt subject null subject transitives overt subject null subject

Àlvar

Laura

Total

n

%

n

%

n

%

n

%

111 116

48.90% 51.10%

32 26

55.17% 44.83%

  30 101

22.90% 77.10%

173 243

41.59% 58.41%

  29   71

29.00% 71.00%

 9 12

42.86% 57.14%

  10   72

12.20% 87.80%

  48 155

23.65% 76.35%

  77 269

22.25% 77.75%

21 90

18.92% 81.08%

  38 131

22.49% 77.51%

136 490

21.73% 78.27%

 Anna Gavarró & Yolanda Cabré-Sans

Table 9.  Subject position with respect to verbal classes, child Catalan Pep unaccusatives pre-verbal subj post-verbal subj unergatives pre-verbal subj post-verbal subj transitives pre-verbal subj post-verbal subj

Àlvar

Laura

Total

n

%

n

%

n

%

n

%

17 76

18.28% 81.72%

10 19

34.48% 65.52%

15 14

51.72% 48.28%

  42 27.81% 109 72.19%

12  9

57.14% 42.86%

 3  3

50.00% 50.00%

 7  3

70.00% 30.00%

  22 59.46%   15 40.54%

49 20

71.01% 28.99%

18  2

90.00% 10.00%

23 15

60.53% 39.47%

  90 70.87%   37 29.13%

Since the transitive verbs reported present overt subjects and objects, that allowed us to test the word order alternations exemplified earlier in (2) and (3). The word orders found included target SVO, VOS and some instance of left dislocation, but ungrammatical VSO was unattested, and so we can establish that all of the children’s productions are well formed. The statistical analysis of the results in Table 9 indicates that nevertheless there is a statistically significant difference between the rate of preverbal subjects with unaccusatives and unergatives (the rate of preverbal subjects with unaccusatives is lower; chi-square 21.00, p-value 4.5   6;11 7;9 4.58 >4.58 5;5 5;5 5.72 5.72

5;8 >4.57   5;11 >4.5 7;4 >4.58

Ind. Futuro Pres. Imp.   4;11 >4.57   5;11 >4.5 7;9 >4.58   7;11 >5.72

5;2 5;8 4;9 >4.57 >4.57 >4.57   5;11 5;5 >4.5 3.87 7;4 7;1 7;1 >4.58 >4.58 >4.58   7;11 7;9 5;1 >5.72 >5.72 2.26

Impers. Inf. 4;1 2.7 5;5 3.87   5;10 2.79 5;3 2.83

Períf. Ger.

Inf.

Ger.

4;1 4;7 5;2 2.7 3.71 >4.57 5;5 5;5 5;5 3.87 3.87 3.87 7;1 6;8 5;10 >4.58 6.1 2.79 7;2 7;2 6;8 >5.72 >5.72 >5.72

Table 11.  Ages and MLU of normal developing children for verbal morphology Indic.

Sara Mar Roger Emilio

Subj.

Pres.

Imp. Perf. Ind. Futuro Pres. Imp.

2;3 2.13 2;1 2.2 2;1 2.03   1;10 1.5

2;7 2;7 3.2 3.2 2;1 2;1 2.2 2.2 2;5 2;5 2.91 2.91 2;5   1;10 2.51 1.5

2;3 2.13 2;6 2.49 2;5 2.91

2;7 3.2 2;6 2.49 2;5 2.91 2;5 2.51

2;7 2;3 3.2 2.13 2;6 2;1 2.49 2.2 2;5 2;1 2.91 2.03   1;10   1;10 1.5 1.5

Impers. Inf. 2;3 2.13 2;1 2.2 2;1 2.03   1;10 1.5

Perif. Ger.

Inf.

Ger.

2;3 2.13 2;1 2.2 2;1 2.03   1;10 2;5 1.5 2.51

2;7 3.2 2;6 2.49 2;5 2.91 2;5 2.51

 Vicenç Torrens and Linda Escobar

The errors we found on the acquisition of verb morphology on SLI children are present in a number of cases: a. wrong agreement feature affix: (9) jo no sa (jo no sé) ‘I don’t know’

*V [ - ] (Joan, 4;7)

(10) ya caí la nieve (ya cayó la nieve) ‘the snow fell down’

*V [ - ] (Andrés, 5;1)

b. omission of auxiliaries – omission of BE in the non-finite passive verb form (11) va corriendo para no picar (va corriendo para no ser picado) ‘he runs in order no to be beaten’

* -aux + V[-fin] (Llorenç, 7;4)

– omission of HAVE [+present] in the perfective form (12) a. jo ja feta tot aquest (jo ja fet tot aquest) ‘I’ve already done all this’

* -aux + V [+PAST PARTICIPLE ]

b. aquí esta gente hecho fuego (aquí hay gente que ha hecho fuego) ‘Here some people have made a fire’

* -aux + V [+PAST PARTICIPLE ]

(Joan, 4;9)

(Andrés, 7;11)

– omission of the auxiliary in the periphrastic form of Catalan past tense (13) com ahir fer jo (com ahir vaig fer jo) ‘as I did yesterday’

* -aux + V [+PERIPHRASTIC PAST ] (Joan, 4;9)

c. default use of 3rd sg despite the presence of a plural subject (14) unas máquinas que sale (unas máquinas que salen) ‘some machines that show up’

* Sub[3rd plur]) + V[3rd sing] (Llorenç, 6;11)



Specific language impairment in Spanish & Catalan 

(15) Tío Nicolás cae los huevos *topic + V [3rd sing] + Subj [3rd plur]2 (a Tío Nicolás se le caen los huevos) ‘the eggs of uncle Nicolás are falling down’ (Llorenç, 6;11) d. incorrect lexical verb form: (16) vimos a ver (fuimos a ver) ‘we came to see’

(Llorenç, 8;4)

(17) era una vez una osa que nació un osito blanco (era una vez una osa que dio a luz a un osito blanco) ‘once upon a time a bear gave birth to a little white bear’

(Llorenç, 8;4)

e. bare infinitive (18) no podé (r) (no pueden) ‘they can’t’

* (Subj[3rd plur]) + V[-fin] (Andrés, 7;11)

f. wrong mood selection:  (19) éste ten punta? (éste tiene punta?) ‘this is sharp?’

*V [imp] (Llorenç, 6;11)

(20) que pondría e tren (que pusiera el tren) ‘to put the train (subjunctive)’

V [cond] (Llorenç, 8;7)

g. omission of reflexive clitic SE when an incorrect inflected verb (21) or an incorrect auxiliary verb (22) is used: (21) Tío Nicolás cae los huevos (a Tío Nicolás se le caen los huevos) ‘the eggs of uncle Nicolás are falling down’ (22) está ido (se ha ido) ‘he’s gone’

*Subj [3rd plur] + V [3rd sing] (Llorenç, 6;11)

*(Subj) + Aux [+pres] + V[+past participle] (Quico 5;2)

2. Spanish as Catalan allow free subject inversion. In this example the noun phrase “tio Nicolas” is topicalised and is linked to a dative clitic “le” while the subject is omitted. A dative clitic “le” is linked to the topicalised phrase and is wrongly omitted, so is the reflexive clitic. See later in the text for an explanation.

 Vicenç Torrens and Linda Escobar

Note that when the verb has been inflected correctly, clitic SE is not frequently omitted as examples (23) and (24) illustrate. (23) s’encenguessi (s’encengués) ‘it switches on’ (subjunctive) (24) se despertió (se despertó) ‘he woke up’

Subj [3rd sing] + cl SE + V [3rd sing] (Llorenç, 8;7) Subj [3rd sing] + SE + V [3rd sing] (Quico 5;3)

5. Discussion and conclusions From the data discussed in this paper, it seems that determiner-noun agreement and subject-verb agreement markings are both impaired. We have shown that morphology agreement is acquired in SLI children with a higher MLU than their MLUmatched normal developing children (P < 0.001), who acquire determiner-noun agreement at MLU = 2.9, when they are approximately 2;6 years old. Joan acquires article-noun agreement at MLU = 4.5, when he is 5;5 years old. Llorenç acquires article-noun agreement at MLU = 4.5, when he is 7;1. Quico acquires article-noun agreement at MLU = 4.5, when he is 5;10. Andrés acquires article-noun agreement at MLU = 4.5, when he is 7;2. Bedore & Leonard (2001) also found that children with specific language impairment showed more limited use of noun morphology, in a study comparing children with specific language impairment and normal developing children with similar mean lengths of utterance. According to these results, Restrepo & Gutiérrez-Clellen (2001) also showed significant differences between groups on percentage of article errors in children with and without SLI. With respect to subject-verb agreement we have found that while normal developing children acquire subject-verb agreement for present tense at MLU = 2.1, when they are approximately 2;0 years old, impaired children acquire it when they have a much higher MLU value. Joan acquires subject-verb agreement for present tense at MLU = 4.57, when he is 4;11 years old. Llorenç acquires subject-verb agreement for present tense at MLU = 4.58, when he is 7;1 years old. Quico acquires subject-verb agreement for present tense at MLU = 4.5, when he is 6;2 years old. Andrés acquires subject-verb agreement for present tense at MLU = 4.5, when he is 7;2 years old. Bosch & Serra (1997) also found that children with specific language impairment performed worse than MLU-matched and age matched children on verbal morphology. Children’s omissions of auxiliaries in both present and past tenses are also more frequent in contrast with normal developing children. The examples of omission of



Specific language impairment in Spanish & Catalan 

the auxiliary in the perfective form by Joan, as in (12), along with the omission of the auxiliary in the periphrastic past verb form by Llorenç, as in (13) are totally unexpected from the Extended Optional Infinitive Stage hypothesis since it predicts that the subject in these cases is marked as Accusative “em” (me) and not as Nominative “jo” (I) (cf. 12a and 13). Note that in both cases the subject “jo” cannot agree in person or number with the bare form of the verb in the absence of the auxiliary. In the light of the data coming from English, the extended optional infinitive stage would be suitable to explain the syntactic properties of SLI children. However, the data we found in the acquisition of Spanish and Catalan with richer and more complex agreement systems lead us to the conclusion that for SLI children, the main problem is not Tense marking but Agreement marking. The omission of reflexive clitic SE in the examples (21) and (22) is similarly unexpected since the verb/auxiliary doesn’t correctly agree in person and number with the subject. The omission of clitics in a language like Spanish is also unpredicted by the Unique Checking Constraint (Wexler 1998), according to which clitics shouldn’t be omitted in languages like Spanish with no past participle agreement. The incorrect use of verbal inflectional morphology or incorrect use of auxiliaries in the examples under discussion can be derived from children’s difficulty with subject-verb agreement predicted by Clahsen’s agreement deficit hypothesis. Crucially we have observed that when the reflexive clitic SE is used as in (23) – (24), the verb correctly agrees with the singular feature of the clitic. In contrast, when the verb doesn’t agree with the number and person features of the subject, the reflexive clitic omitted as in (21) or (22). Furthermore, the omission of the auxiliaries in the examples of present perfect as in (12a) and (12b) along with the omission of the periphrastic form of the past verb in the Catalan example (13) may be derived from the same impairment agreement deficit. To conclude, rather than assuming any impairment of the computational system for the children under study, we want to assume that there is an impairment of agreement features in the lexicon. If we assume that the learning of the morphological agreement paradigm of both determiner-agreement and subject-verb agreement is impaired we may explain why they have some difficulties with both agreement markings. In particular, we have observed two main problems: missing agreement features and incorrect agreement features. One of the main predictions that the agreement-deficit hypothesis makes is that when verbs come with a full feature specification out of the lexicon, their agreement features will be properly checked by the computational system. The prediction may be assessed according to our examples above. In particular we want to propose that the omission of clitic SE is a mirror image of lack of agreement. More research is however needed to test such a correlation.

 Vicenç Torrens and Linda Escobar

Aknowledgements We’d like to thank the comments on earlier versions of this paper to the audiences of the Conference of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL) in Madison, the Conference of the Asociación Española de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología (AELFA) in Salamanca, and the American Speech and Hearing Association Convention (ASHA) in Washington, D.C.. References Bedore, L.M. & Leonard, L. 2001. Grammatical morphology deficits of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 44: 905–924. Bosch, L. & Serra, M. 1997. Grammatical morphology deficits of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Amsterdam Series in Child Language Development 6: 33–46. Bottari, P., Cipriani, P. & Chilosi, M.A. 1996. Root Infinitives in Italian SLI Children. In Boston University Conference on Language Development, A. Stringfellow et al.  (eds) Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press. Clahsen, H. 1989. The grammatical characterization of development dysphasia. Linguistics 27: 897–920. Clahsen, H. 1991. Child Language and Developmental Dysphasia: Linguistic Studies of the Acquisition of German. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Clahsen, H., Rothweiler, M., Woerst, A. & Marcus, G.F. 1992. Regular and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun plurals. Cognition 45: 225–255. Clahsen, H. & Hansen, D. 1993. The missing agreement account of specific language impairment: Evidence from therapy experiments. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 2: 1–36. Clahsen, H., Bartke, S. & Göllner, S. 1997. Formal Features in Impaired Grammars: A Comparison of English and German SLI Children [Essex Research Reports in Linguistics]. Essex: University of Essex. Clahsen, H. & Dalalakis, J. 1999. Tense and Agreement in Greek SLI: A Case Study. Ms, University of Essex. Colomina, R. & Gilboy, E. 1985. Categorització lingüística de la realitat, l’article i flexions implicades vers la plurifuncionalitat. MA thesis, University of Barcelona. Cortés, M. 1989. Temps i Aspecte: cóm els infants aprenen a parlar del passat. PhD dissertation, University of Barcelona. Gopnik, M. 1990. Feature-blind grammar and dysphasia. Nature 344: 715. Gopnik, M. & Crago, M. 1991. Familial aggregation of a developmental language disorder. Cognition 39: 1–50. Jakubowicz, C. 2003 Computational complexity and the acquisition of functional categories by French speaking children with SLI. Linguistics 41: 175–212. Leonard, L., Bortolini, U., Caselli, M., McGregor, K. & Sabbadini, L. 1992. Two accounts of morphological deficits in children with specific language impairment. Language Acquisition 2: 151–179.



Specific language impairment in Spanish & Catalan  Lin, Y.-A. 2007. On grammatical errors in English SLI children: A corpus-based study. In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA), A. Belikova, L. Meroni & M. Umeda (eds), 245–252. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Restrepo, M.A. & Gutiérrez-Clellen, V.F. 2001. Article use in Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Journal of Child Language 28: 433–452. Rice, M.L. & Wexler, K. 1996. Toward tense as a clinical marker of specific language impairment in English-speaking children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 39: 1239–1257. Rice, M.L., Wexler, K. & Cleave, P. 1995. Specific language impairment as a period of extended optional infinitive. Journal or Speech and Hearing Research 38: 850–863. Rothweiler, M. & Clahsen, H. 1996. Dissociations in SLI Children’s Inflectional Systems: Evaluating Participle Inflection and Agreement. Ms, University of Düsseldorf. Sanz, M. 1996. Telicity, Objects and the Mapping onto Predicate Types. A Crosslinguistic Study of the Role of Syntax in Processing. PhD dissertation, University of Rochester. Siches, E. 1990. Adquisició de la morfologia i retard del llenguatge. PhD dissertation, Universitat de Barcelona. Tenny, C. 1987. Grammaticalizing Aspect and Affectedness. PhD dissertation, MIT. Van der Lely, H.K.J. 1994. Canonical linking rules: Forward vs. reverse linking in normally developing and specifically language impaired children. Cognition 51: 29–72. Van der Lely, H.K.J. 1998. SLI in children: Movement, economy and deficits in the computational-syntactic system. Language Acquisition 7: 161–192. Van der Lely, H.K.J. 2005. Grammatical-SLI and the computational grammatical complexity hypothesis. Revue Frequences 17(3): 13–20. Wexler, K. 1998. Very early parameter setting and the Unique Checking Constraint. Lingua 106: 23–79. Zagona, K. 1994. Compositionality of aspect: Evidence from Spanish aspectual se. In Aspects of Romance Linguistics: Selected Papers from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages XXIV, C. Parodi, C. Quicoli, M. Saltarelli & M. Zubizarreta (eds). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.

Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment Gareth Morgan, M. Adelaida Restrepo and Alejandra Auza This chapter investigates whether a specific grammatical marker can be used to identify specific language impairment (SLI) in monolingual Spanish-speaking (SS) children that is consistent with a linguistic knowledge deficit account of SLI. A number of grammatical markers that have been identified as vulnerable to error in Spanish-English bilingual children with SLI (articles, clitics, subjunctive verbs, & derivational morphemes) were tested in monolingual SS children with and without SLI. Results indicated significant group differences between monolingual SS children with and without SLI in all grammatical areas tested. However, children with SLI demonstrated considerable variability across grammatical markers such that one particular grammatical marker could not be identified as impaired in all children with SLI. Theoretical and clinical implications of the study are discussed. Keywords: Spanish, Specific Language Impairment, Grammar, Morphology, Monolingual, articles, clitics

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a disorder that, by definition, only impacts language skills, although some subtle differences in nonverbal skills have been identified (Leonard, et al 2007; Ullman & Pierpoint, 2005). Research on the identification of clinical markers of SLI has focused mostly on two general areas: processing limitations and grammatical skills (Conti-Ramsden, 2003; Leonard, et al, 2007; Ullman & Pierpont, 2005). Grammatical skills have been identified as the most salient linguistic difficulty observed, at least for a subgroup of children with SLI (e.g. Bedore & Leonard, 1998, 2001, 2005; Rice & Wexler, 1996). Both lines of research are compatible with each other, although a direct relation between processing accounts and linguistic characteristics is difficult to find (Schwartz, 2008). This chapter examines the grammatical skills of Spanish-speaking (SS)

 Gareth Morgan, M. Adelaida Restrepo and Alejandra Auza

children with SLI and examines whether we can identify a specific clinical/grammatical marker for Spanish SLI that is consistent with a linguistic knowledge deficit account of SLI. Rice (2003) defined a clinical marker as “… a symptom that is diagnostic of a particular [medical] condition” (p. 68). Bedore & Leonard (1998) defined a linguistic clinical marker as an indicator in language that reliably identifies children whose language skills fall below the norm. An example of a clinical marker for English SLI children is verb tense (e.g. past-tense –ed), although a clinical marker has not been identified for Spanish SLI. For our purposes, a clinical marker for Spanish SLI would be any one of the identified linguistic elements that are consistently impaired in all grammatical SLI children (Bortolini, Caselli, Deevy, & Leonard, 2002). Such a marker would indicate that Spanish SLI would have a linguistic knowledge deficit if it were consistent across children. In addition, Rice (2003) argued that variability in other forms may be expected beyond the clinical marker, indicating that SLI children present with an underdeveloped grammatical system in general. Ingram and Morehead (2002) argued that grammatical variability is expected, given that the children rely on a range of limited grammatical productions and a simpler linguistic system than their MLU peers. Leonard (1998, p. 69) acknowledged that this variability occurs across forms and within the same sample. The question is whether we can identify a specific marker for Spanish SLI that is consistent with a linguistic knowledge deficit account of SLI. On the other hand, we may find that in null subject languages such as Spanish, a range of forms that are underdeveloped are an indication of a performance deficit; such a deficit may be explained by psycholinguistic theories based on production processing difficulties. In this chapter, we focus on whether there is a clinical grammatical marker that identifies Spanish SLI. Despite an increase of data available, a clinical grammatical marker of Spanish SLI has not necessarily been validated, although some areas of research do indicate some grammatical features that are vulnerable to error across SS SLI groups: articles, direct object clitic pronouns, subjunctive verbs, and argument structure. Finding a clinical marker, a consistent error across all children with Spanish SLI that is significantly below controls, would allow us to develop and refine identification measures, explore the linguistic nature of the disorder, and validate the accounts cross linguistically. 1. Grammatical characteristics of Spanish SLI Articles Use. Articles in Spanish (el, la, los, and las) have been found to be vulnerable to error in SS children with SLI (e.g. Anderson, 2001; Bedore & Leonard, 2001, 2005; Eng & O’Conner, 2000; Restrepo, 1998; Restrepo & Gutierrez-Clellen,



Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-speaking children 

2001). Articles are function words and by nature, definite articles are prone to error because of their low saliency and weak phonological properties (single syllable, and almost always unstressed). Restrepo and Gutierrez-Clellen (2001) found that SS children with SLI who lived in the US present with significant difficulties using definite articles; they found that although the majority of the errors were substitutions, a great number of omission errors were also present. Further, they found that the most difficult article for the children was the singular masculine definite article “el”, which Eng and O’Connor (2000) also found. Although Bosch and Serra (1997) found problems in the article system of Spanish SLI, results differed from Restrepo and Gutierrez-Clellen (2001) on two counts. Bosch and Serra reported omissions as the most frequent error type, as opposed to substitutions, and greater difficultly with the feminine definite article “la”. Similarly to Bosch and Serra, Anderson and Souto (2005) and Bedore and Leonard (2005) found that the majority of the errors were of omission in SLI children. In addition, Bedore and Leonard found that the children with SLI had most difficulty with the plural forms of the article, unlike the findings of Restrepo and Gutierrez-Clellen or Eng and Connor. Anderson and Souto found that the difficulty was greater with the indefinite articles; further, they found significant within subjects variability indicating that articles may not be a grammatical marker of SLI given that some children with SLI score a high percent correct in article use. Although there is consistent support for a deficit in article production in SS children with SLI, the specific difficulties are not consistent. Differences across studies in elicitation tasks, sociolinguistic contexts, and ages may account for the variability of results. For example, only one of these studies examined children who live in monolingual contexts1 (Anderson & Souto, 2005); and thus, it is difficult to determine whether children’s difficulties are impacted when there is language contact. Variability of results may also be due to variability within children depending on the demands of the elicitation context and task. That is, some studies use spontaneous samples and some use elicitation tasks. Unfortunately, this variability calls into question whether a particular article, per se, is a clinical marker given the variability of how it is represented in the different studies and within participants in any single study. Clitic Pronouns. Clitic pronouns have also been documented as a possible deficit in SS children with SLI (e.g., Bedore & Leonard, 2001, 2005, Bosch & Serra, 1997; Jacobson & Schwartz, 2002). Bosch and Serra (1997) report significant 1. The authors did not consider Bosch and Serra’s (1997) article as a monolingual Spanish study as the participants who participated in the study lived in Barcelona, a bilingual Spanish/Catalan city with high language contact. The language status of the participants was not reported therefore, the authors could not assume that the participants were monolingual.

 Gareth Morgan, M. Adelaida Restrepo and Alejandra Auza

differences in error rates of clitic production between SLI and typical language groups, 48.18% and 16.42% respectively. Furthermore, the majority of the errors were found in the production of third person plural clitics (los and las), and omissions significantly outnumbered substitutions. In contrast, Bedore and Leonard’s (2001) study of SS children with SLI reports that the Spanish SLI group differed significantly in production of clitics, but their errors of gender and number substitutions considerably out-weighed the omission errors. As in Bosch and Serra’s (1997) study, plural clitics contributed to a majority of the errors; however, no statistical information was reported. In a later study with the same sample of children as their 2001 study, Bedore and Leonard (2005) examined children’s spontaneous language samples and found that SS children with SLI had the most difficulty with the use of plural clitics. Jacobson and Schwartz (2002) also examined clitic pronoun use in Spanish SLI incipient bilinguals; they found significant differences on an elicitation task, but not in spontaneous language samples. Further, the error rate was 37% compared to 14% of the control children. The most frequent type of error was omission followed by gender agreement. As with some of the article studies, there was significant variability in clitic use/ error type across children with SLI. Some SLI children seemed to have fully developed clitic pronoun use, whereas others had high errors rates. Apart from Anderson and Souto (2005), the abovementioned studies have focused on bilingual populations or at least on children living in contexts where there is high language contact. Further research with monolingual SS children living in largely monolingual contexts that systematically evaluates these aspects of grammar is needed. Moreover, the variability in errors types across studies leads to the question of whether clitics can be considered on their own as a clinical marker of Spanish SLI. Subjunctive Mood. The difficulty defining clinical markers in Spanish-speaking children with SLI is still based on the limited research available in the area, despite gains in recent years. Although the verb system has been investigated to some extent, research indicates that that tense marking is not an issue for Spanish SLI (Bedore & Leonard, 2001, 2005). However, other aspects of the verb system may be vulnerable in Spanish SLI. Mood selection has been observed to be vulnerable for SS SLI in Spanish-English bilingual children (Gutierrez-Clellen et al, 2000; Restrepo, 2003; Restrepo & Kruth, 2000), yet it does not seem as vulnerable as verb inflections, such as past tense ed, are for English-speaking children with SLI (Gutierrez-Clellen et al., 2006). Unfortunately, independent studies reviewing group differences between SLI and TD peers on mood selection are not available. This area is still largely unexplored and further research is needed. We suspect that mood selection is a possible weak area in Spanish SLI, however, like other linguistic characteristics it may not qualify by itself as a clinical marker.



Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-speaking children 

Derivational Morphemes. Given the richness of inflections in Spanish, use of bound morphemes through derivational morphology may be of interest for identification of SLI in the population. Although no literature is available in Spanish, Windsor and Hwang (1999) present evidence that middle school aged English-speaking children with SLI were less accurate in determining the idea expressed by derivational suffixes as compared to their chronologically age matched peers. This evidence coupled with the findings from Auza et al (2001), Auza (2006), and Roseberry and Connell (1991) suggests that SS children with SLI could have difficulty with derivational suffixes, while their typically developing age matched peers do not. 2. Argument structure Syntactic difficulties may also be present in children with SLI. Sanz-Torrent (2002) found that Spanish-speaking SLI children omit arguments with ditransitive verbs significantly more often than their same age and MLU peers. Similarly, SimonCereijido and Gutierrez-Clellen (2007) found that SS children with SLI can be identified with MLU words and ungrammaticality index, replicating results from Restrepo (1998). In addition, they found that number of omissions of verbal arguments with ditransitive verbs was a possible identifier of SLI in Spanish-speaking children who had adequate sentence complexity, although it missed children with limited sentence complexity. The studies just reviewed demonstrate that as a whole, the grammatical skills of SS children with SLI are vulnerable to error, and at the same time support findings that the variability still reflects characteristics of simpler or underdeveloped linguistics system (Ingram & Morehead, 2002; Jacobson & Schwartz, 2002; Grela, 2003). Accordingly, in Spanish SLI, children who have difficulty with clitics and articles may have a linguistic knowledge difficulty based on Wexler’s proposal of the Extended Optional Infinitive Stage (Leonard, 2008) and with the prosody/phonology accounts. However, these theories do not account for errors in subjunctive mood, derivational morphemes, or substitutions in articles and clitics (Leonard, 2008). In summary, we continue to look for clinical grammatical markers of Spanish SLI. Given the variability of sociolinguistic contexts, the bilingual vs. monolingual nature of the linguistic systems in previous studies and the need for more Spanish SLI data, research with monolingual children may help identify a clinical marker, which would help us further evaluate whether their errors are due to a linguistic knowledge deficit. However, given the variability in results, we may find that grammatical deficits in general are a better marker than identifying specific grammatical forms. Evans (1996) found that children’s performance varied according to the linguistic and contextual demands of the task, and other studies report that a specific

 Gareth Morgan, M. Adelaida Restrepo and Alejandra Auza

inflection may be present or absent with the same form in the same sample (Leonard, 1998, p. 69; Bishop, 1994). This inherent variability in the population, coupled with a highly inflected language may only demonstrate that errors in production in SLI are due to performance deficits in production of grammatical forms that are more vulnerable when the system is stressed (Grela, 2003; Jacobson & Schwartz, 2002). On the other hand, if we find consistent errors across SLI children who speak Spanish, we may find a specific area of grammatical knowledge that may be late developing, as in English SLI (Bedore & Leonard, 2005; Rice & Wexler, 1996). Our aim in this study is to evaluate whether there is a clinical marker of SLI in monolingual SS in areas that have already been found to be vulnerable in their linguistic system. To this end, we examine both group and individual performance to determine whether any one form qualifies as a linguistic marker. The second aim of this study is to replicate current research on Spanish SLI using monolingual children living in Mexico to help us determine if some of the characteristics noted are specific to SLI groups in contact with other languages or are specific to Spanish SLI in general. Specifically, we hypothesized that Spanish SLI children will demonstrate difficulty with clitic pronouns, articles, subjunctives, derivational morphemes and argument structure when compared to same age peers after accounting for MLU. In addition, we hypothesize that we will find significant within group variability although there may be one area that is consistently impaired across children, such as articles or clitics, which may constitute a clinical marker of SLI. 2.1

Method

2.1.1 Participants Nine children were classified as SLI and were age matched with nine typically developing peers. Age matches were within two months each other. Ages ranged from 49 to 83 months (M = 64). The children attended a private school that includes grades from pre-school through the end of high school. No special education or speech and language services were available for the children at school. Data from children with SLI and their age matches were used for the analyses of group differences. Due to the age matching there were no age differences between groups and therefore, no age covariates were used. Of consenting families, parents were surveyed with parent questionnaires regarding language use and concern of speech and language development. 2.1.2 Participant selection criteria All children met the following criteria: a) spoke Spanish as the only language at home and in school, and b) obtained a non-verbal IQ score of 75 or above on the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children 2nd edition (KABC-II; Kaufman &



Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-speaking children 

Kaufman, 2004). Children with typical language met the following criteria: a) Scored more than 50% on the Spanish Morphosyntax (S-MST) subtest of the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA; Peña, Gutiérrez-Clellen, & Iglesias, 2006) if they were 4;0 to 4;11 years old, or scored at least one standard deviation above the mean scale score on the Estructura de Palabras (structure of words) and Repetición de Oraciones (sentence repetition) subtests of the Spanish Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals 4 (SCELF-4; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1996) if they were 5;0 to 7;11 years old; (b) parent report indicated no signs of hearing impairment, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, motor difficulties, or neurological deficits and no concern of speech or language impairment, and c) scored below 15% in ungrammatical utterances in a spontaneous language sample based on Restrepo (1998). Children with SLI met the following criteria: a) scored 50% or less on the S-MST subtest of the BESA if they were 4;0 to 4;11 years old, or scored at least one scale score standard deviation below the sample mean on the Estructura de Palabras (structure of words) and Repetición de Oraciones (Sentence Repetition) subtests of the SCELF-4 if they were 5;0 to 7;11 years old; (b) parents reported no signs of hearing impairment, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, motor difficulties, or neurological deficits; (c) parents indicated concerns pertaining to their child’s speech and language (Restrepo, 1998), and d) scored 20% or above in ungrammatical utterances in a spontaneous language sample based on Restrepo (1998). Of the original sample of 18 children, 50% of the parents reported concern of language difficulties, as manifested through the parent questionnaire, which was previously filled out by one of the parents. Some parent concerns were about specific articulation difficulties, while others had to do with a more general language difficulty. The remaining nine participants were reported to be typically developing with respect to their language abilities. The nine children with parent concern, qualified as SLI based on the criteria described above. While the two groups did not differ on MLU, they differed significantly on grammaticality; therefore, no MLU word matches were obtained. Table 1.  Mean and Standard Deviations for Participant Characteristics by Group

Age Gender MLU words grammaticality Nonverbal IQ

Typical Language

SLI

5:0 (.53) 5 male, 4 female 6.25 (1.96) .08 (.04) 112.00 (13.88)

5:0 (.53) 5 male, 4 female 4.8 (1.32) .31 (.20) 97.89 (14.81)

SLI – Specific language impairment: MLU mean length of utterance

 Gareth Morgan, M. Adelaida Restrepo and Alejandra Auza

Parents reported that the level of the mother’s education was between 13 and 16 years of education, which indicates that they had all completed high school or college. None of the children were receiving services at the time, as this was not a readily available option to the families in the school. See Table 1 (above) for means and standard deviation of participant characteristics. 2.1.3 Materials Identification measures. The Nonverbal inventory of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children 2nd edition was used to rule out cognitive impairment. Subtests vary according to age and include: conceptual thinking, face recognition, story completion, triangles, block counting, pattern reasoning, and hand movements. Scale scores for each subtest were calculated and then summed; a standard nonverbal IQ score was calculated from the summed scale scores for each child. Spanish Morphosyntax subtest of the Bilingual English/Spanish Assessment. Children aged 4;0 to 4;11 received the S-MST of the BESA. The S-MST is divided into two sections: a cloze format task and a sentence repetition task. The cloze format task consists of twenty-two 1-point items that are divided into four sections. Each section individually tests a point of Spanish grammatical morphology: articles, preterit verb inflections, clitics, and subjunctive verb inflections. The sentence repetition task consists of eight sentences each containing a varying number of points that can be earned by repeating certain or all parts of the sentence. The scores from the CLOZE task and the sentence repetition task are summed and divided by the total number of points in the test, thus creating a percent correct. The S-MST has an established cut-off score of 50% or less which was used to classify children with SLI; this cut-off score was considered to be valid because a large portion of the norming sample for the BESA was from monolingual and predominately Spanishspeaking children of Mexican families, albeit living in the United States. Spanish Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4. Children aged 5;0 to 7;11 years old received two subtests from the SCELF-4. The Estructura de Palabras (Structure of Words) and Repetición de Oraciones (sentence repetition) subtests of the SCELF-4 were chosen because they were the most similar to the S-MST of the BESA. The Estructura de Palabras (structure of words) subtest consists of twentynine items that covers a range of Spanish grammatical features: plural nouns, derivations of nouns and adjectives, and verbs. The Repetición de Oraciones (Sentence Repetition) subtest consists of thirty-two sentences that are scored on a zero to three-point scale: zero points for more than 4 errors committed, including word order, and up to three points for no errors committed. As a result of the concerns regarding the SCELF-4, children with SLI had to score at least one scale score standard deviation below the sample mean.



Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-speaking children 

MLU and grammaticality. Mean length of utterance in words was obtained for all of the children using a story retell format. The children listened to the story in Spanish “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie” (Numeroff, 1985). Samples were transcribed into Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller & Iglesias, 2008), they were segmented into Terminable Units (TU), and coded for grammaticality and TU. A MLU in words was obtained through SALT for each child. Two Spanish speakers judged all of the sentences for grammaticality and a third Spanish speaker judged when there was a disagreement to come to a consensus. Experimental Measures. A Spanish grammatical morphology measure was developed with four sections that individually tested each of the following grammatical constructions: articles, clitics, subjunctive inflections and derivational morphemes. The measure consisted of ten items in each section for a total of forty items, and it used a CLOZE format using pictures for each target. Scoring criteria for each item was provided along with expected answers and examples of possible derivations of answers. For example, a child received credit for producing a clitic that matched (in gender and number) the direct object in the question, and a child received credit for producing any tense of the subjunctive (present, imperfect, or an imperfect subjunctive auxiliary followed by an appropriate past participle) in response to the questions in the subjunctive section. Table 2 includes a sample question for each grammatical area examined. Each individual section controlled for various factors that pertained to the particular grammatical marker that was being tested. The articles section controlled for gender, number, and definite versus indefinite articles. In addition, semantic contexts that required an obligatory form of a particular article were also controlled. An example of this is when the child was presented with a picture of a moon in the night sky and asked ‘¿Qué salió en la noche?’ (What came out at night?). This question requires that the child responds with ‘la luna’ (the moon) instead of ‘una luna’ (a moon) because the moon is a type and therefore it must be referred to with the definite article (see Langacker, 2002 for a review on semantic types and categories). The type of subjunctive was also controlled because it is a marker that develops slowly over time (Blake, 1983; Lopez-Ornat et al., 1994), and we did not want to test something that had not yet been acquired. Lopez-Ornat et al. (1994) reports that the obligatory optative form of the subjunctive is one of the first forms to be acquired by Spanish-speaking children; this form was the sole focus of the subjunctive section. After the item design process was completed, an adult review panel of four experts (two native Spanish-speaking speech-language pathologists, and two native Spanish-speaking linguists) reviewed all of the items for content validity, grammaticality, and age appropriateness.

 Gareth Morgan, M. Adelaida Restrepo and Alejandra Auza

Table 2.  Samples of each task in the experimental measure Target

Question

Articles

¿Con qué chocó el coche? With what did the car hit? ¿Qué hace la niña con la sandía? What does the girl do with the watermelon?

Clitics

Subjunctive

Derivational morphemes

Expected answer

Con el/un árbol With the/a tree Se la come/ se la está comiendo; la muerde/la está mordiendo She eats it/ she is eating it; bites it/is biting it La casa estaba muy sucia. ¿Qué Que limpie / barra/ recoja/ quería la mamá que hiciera el niño? trapee la casa The house was very dirty. What did To clean/sweep/mop the the mother want the boy to do? house Este señor pesca y es un pescador y Costurera/cosedora (sic) ésta cose ropa y es una … Sewer This man fishes and he is a fisherman and this (lady) sews clothes and she is a…

In addition to the grammatical morphology measure, children participated in a sentence repetition task to examine their use of argument structure. In this measure, we developed sentences by controlling for number of arguments. Sentences started with intransitive verbs, then transitive, and ditransitive verbs. In addition, we controlled for number of content and function words in each section of intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive verbs, and for number of adjuncts. The last section required children to repeat conditional and complex sentences with relative clauses, but only arguments were counted. Arguments were defined as any obligatory noun or prepositional phrases required by the verb in the subject or complement position (Grela, 2003). The test consisted of 20 sentences and the child was asked to repeat each sentence. Scoring was based on the percent of arguments structures produced correctly out of the total possible. 2.1.4 Procedures All children were administered all measures in random order by a group of five trained testers and two of the researchers. Examiners were blind to the language and cognitive status of the children when testing them. All protocols were rescored by two of the examiners according to the scoring criteria; inter-rater agreement reached 95%.



Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-speaking children 

2.1.5 Results A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine whether groups (TD and SLI) differed significantly on the dependent variable, mean length of utterance in words (MLU-W), taken from a language sample. Significant differences were not found between the two groups on the dependent variable, F(1,14) = 8.28, p >.05. The results indicate that the two groups had a similar MLU-W and it would not be necessary to co-vary their MLU-W in the remainder of the analyses. Descriptive statistics and ANOVA results are reported in Table 4. A multivariate one-way analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to determine the relationship of the four subtests of the experimental morphology measure (articles, clitics, subjunctive, and derivational morphemes) and the child’s group status (TD and SLI). Significant differences were found between the two groups on the dependent measures, Wilks’s Λ =.27, F(4,13) = 8.73, p