Age and Input Effects in the Acquisition of Clitic Climbing Constructions in Heritage and Second Language (L2) Spanish

Antonio Martin Gomez, Purdue University

Abstract

The present study contributes to our understanding of the effects of age and type of linguistic input in the acquisition of Spanish as a second language in adulthood. I examine the Spanish syntax (word order) of three groups of speakers, monolingual Spanish speakers from Mexico and two bilingual English-Spanish speakers born and raised in the United States (N = 53) to measure the effects of an early, oral-based versus a late, written-based exposure to the target language. The study of how a second language develops in adulthood is of great interest to language specialists and language educators in general, given that the aforementioned bilingual profiles are most common in higher education settings. On one hand, heritage language learners are speakers who are immersed in a home where a language other than English is spoken, who speak or at least understand the language, and who are to some degree bilingual in that language and in English (Valdés, 2001); on the other, traditional classroom learners are students who start learning a second language later in life, when the majority of their native language is developed.Although studies comparing the interlanguage grammars of heritage speakers and second language (L2) learners invariably report that the former show advantages in oral language production and perception, these are not so evident in the syntactic domain (Au, Knightly, Jun & Oh, 2002; Knightly, Jun, Oh & Au., 2003; Polinsky, 2007; Silva-Corvalán, 1994). The present study adds new data to this debate, by examining the production and intuition of “clitic climbing” constructions (Kayne, 1994, Rizzi, 1982), the optional placement of an object clitic pronoun in the domain of a finite matrix verb taking an infinitival complement, as in lo voy a ver vs. voy a verlo ‘(I’m) going to see it’.In this study I test the production and intuition of clitic climbing sentences in four periphrastic conditions (auxiliary-like verbs, modal-like verbs, impersonal sentences, and sentences with embedded negations) in two experimental groups of heritage speakers and L2 learners of Spanish with two degrees of proficiency (intermediate, advanced) and a control group of native Spanish speakers. Results from a sentence completion task show comparable behavior across all groups in the four verb conditions, with a strong tendency to favor the no climbing (enclisis) option, and a proficiency effect among the experimental groups. Results of an acceptability judgment task show comparable behavior across all groups, accepting grammatical proclitic placement and rejecting ungrammatical sentences with climbing. Neither proficiency or group effects were found in this task, although the judgments of the experimental groups were less categorical compared to the native speakers’. The combined results of these two tasks point to an absence of age or input effects in the L2 acquisition of this syntactic phenomenon in Spanish.In sum, while the production of proclitic placement in verbal periphrases is subject to a proficiency effect, English-Spanish bilinguals seem to follow the reported native trends in the variationist literature (Davies, 1995). These bilinguals are also aware of the syntactic restrictions of this syntactic operation, although the fact that their judgments of ungrammatical sentences were not as categorical as native speakers’ suggests that a significant amount of written-based input is also necessary to acquire a full-fledged knowledge of clitic climbing constructions in Spanish. Taken together, these data suggest that the acquisition of this syntactic operation does not seem to be affected by age or type of input effects.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Cuza, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Linguistics|Education|Adult education|Audiology|Bilingual education|Developmental psychology|Disability studies|Foreign language education|Individual & family studies|Language|Neurosciences|Psychology|Recreation

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