Developing Spanish Child Language--The Syntax of Pronominal Case
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Date
2009-06
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
The "Dual Mechanism" model of language processing posits that many word combinations are stored in memory while others are generated by freely combining syntax. The "Default Case" hypothesis holds that languages have "default" pronominal cases, which are used when the syntactic context lacks the specificity necessary to assign noun phrases particular case marking. Child English and German speakers make case errors which support these theories, in subject and object position, respectively. In this study, we explore the object of the preposition position in child Spanish to determine whether children produce default case errors. The fact that prepositions constitute a highly frequent, closed class element, as do pronouns, makes it seem plausible that children could simply memorize preposition + oblique case object sequences, without using freely combining syntax. To explore this problem two studies were carried out, both using existing data. The first search was a detailed search of all pronominal forms in two specific children which looked for any errors that children might make with oblique case in pronouns. The second search culled all preposition-nominative case pronoun combinations in 13 Spanish corpora, as this is the error predicted by the "Default Case" hypothesis. From the first, detailed search, specific default case errors were found in the pronoun para. However, these errors are most likely due to transfer from contact languages, including English and Catalan, with monolingual children producing no errors. From the second search, out of all of the errors made in child speech, there was not a substantial number of errors attributable to default case. While there is evidence that default case can emerge in other child languages, the high frequency and the fact that the preposition and pronouns are closed-class elements suggests that children are memorizing chunks and probably not using syntax in the constructions under consideration here.
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Linguistics, Spanish, Language Acquisition, Child Language