W11: Syntactic Issues in Language Acquisition The acquisition of

W11: Syntactic Issues in Language Acquisition
The acquisition of low applicatives and dative “se” in L1 Spanish
María Ángeles Escobar Álvarez
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)
maescobar@flog.uned.es
Ismael Iván Teomiro García
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)
iteomiro@flog.uned.es
Anticausative and inherent reflexive verbs, in (1a) and (1b) respectively, require the presence of
clitic ‘se’ in Spanish (cf. Mendikoetxea, 1999; Teomiro, 2010, 2011). In contrast, other kinds of
verbs, like consumption verbs, as in (2), and certain intransitive verbs like ‘caer(se)’ and ‘morir(se)’,
as in (3), optionally allow for this clitic (Montrul, 2004).
Data from L1 acquisition (cf. Baauw, 2000) show that children have no difficulty with
obligatory “se” with the former verbs in (1). Escobar & Torrens (2007, 2010) provide experimental
data that support the hypothesis that children find the clitic “se” easier with anticausative verbs (1a)
than with transitive verbs like (2). Furthermore, these authors also show that the acquisition of
optional clitic “se” with verbs as in (3) is also problematic, since children tend not to use it at all
provided the examples in (4), while there are no such omissions when clitic “se” is obligatory.
It could be argued that the difficulties with clitic “se” are due to its optional character.
However, other configurations with obligatory “se” with verbs as in (5) are also acquired at later
stages given the examples in (6) found in the same CHILDES corpus.
In adult syntax, clitic “se” with verbs as in (1) is argued to be either an inflexion element
(Mendikoetxea, 1992) or an expletive-like argument (Teomiro, 2010, 2011), inserted in either
derivation due to formal reasons rather than to semantic ones. In contrast, the syntactic
configurations in (2) and (3) have in common the fact that “se” is within a low applicative phrase
and thus is assigned dative Case (cf. Campini & Schäffer, 2011 and Teomiro, 2012). If we consider
the Czech clitic “si” in examples in (7) as the equivalent counterpart of Spanish obligatory “se”, we
observe that it is also marked as dative in this second language. This leads us to think that there is
also a low applicative phrase in the configurations of (5) where the clitic “se” is related to the NP
(head, knee, hands) by means of an applicative head which establishes an inalienable possession
relation betwen both elements (Pylkkänen, 2008). Hence, we want to put forward a twofold
analysis of clitic “se”: as an expletive with verbs as in (1), on the one hand; and, as a dative with
verbs as in (2), (3) and (5), on the other hand. We assume that the difficulty we found with the
examples in (4) and (6) is due to the fact that we are in front of dative “se” within a low applicative
phrase. We assume that this complex derivation needs some time to be acquired. Actually, if the
optional character of “se” was the reason for children’s difficulty, acquisition data in (6) would be
unexpected since “se” in “romperse la quisma” break your head, or “mancharse la rodilla” stain
your knee. is equally compulsory in adult grammar.
Examples
(1)
a.
b.
(3)
a.
La ventana *(se) cerró / rompió.
The window CL closed / broke.
“The windows broke / closed.”
Juan *(se) peinó / lavó.
Juan CL combed / washed.
“Juan combed / washed (himself).”
Juan (se) cayó.
(2)
a.
b.
Juan (se) comió el bocadillo.
Juan CL ate
the sandwich.
“Juan ate the sandwich.”
Juan (se) leyó el libro.
Juan CL read the book.
“Juan read the book.”
b.
Juan CL fell off.
“Juan fell off.”
Juan (se) murió.
Juan CL died.
“Juan died.”
(4)
a.
cayó la abuela (Magín 1;10)
fell the granny
“The granny fell.”
b. ha caído mami (Magín 1;11)
has fallen mom
“Mom has fallen.”
c. Cayó # ota ve cayo # (Irene, 1;8)
fell3rd.sing again fell(3rdsing)
“He fell again.”
d. lo
cojo
lo
tito
y Tina cayó (Irene 1;10)
CLACC take1SG CLACC throw1SG and Tina fell
“I take it and Tina fell.”
(cf. CHILDES, Spanish).
(5)
a.
b.
c.
(7) a.
b.
Juan *(se) rompió la crisma.
Juan CL broke the head.
“Juan broke his head.”
Juan *(se) ha manchado la rodilla.
Juan CL has stained
the knee.
“Juan has stained his knee.”
Juan *(se) ha lavado las manos.
Juan CL has washed the hands.
“Juan has washed his hands.”
(6)
a.
cayó y rompió la quisma
(Irene, 1;11)
fell3SG and broke3SG the head
“He fell and broke his head.”
b. ha manchado la rodilla (Magín
1;11)
has stained
the knee
“He has stained the knee.”
(cf. CHILDES, Spanish).
Jan se
/*si
myje každý den.
Jan CLACC/*CLDAT washes every day
“Jan washes himself everyday.”
Jan *se
/si
myje zuby
každý den.
Jan *CLACC/CLDAT washes teethACC every day.
“Jan washes his teeth every day.”
References
Baauw, S. (2000) Grammatical Features and the Acquisition of Reference. A Comparative Study of
Dutch and Spanish. Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University.
Campini, C. & F. Schäffer (2011) Optional se-constructions in Romance: Syntactic encoding of
conceptual information. Talk given at Generative Linguistics in the Old Word 34.
Escobar, L. & Torrens, V. (2007) “On the Acquisition of Clitic se and Aspect in Spanish” in The
Acquisition of Romance Languages. Occasional Series 8, LOT, 59-71.
Escobar, L. & Torrens, V. (2010) “The effect of clitics on the aspectual properties of Child Spanish”
in P. Guijarro-Fuentes & L. Domínguez (eds): New Directions in Language Acquisition:
Romance Languages in the Generative Perspective. Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
Newcastle.
Mendikoetxea, Amaya (1992) On the Nature of Agreement: The Syntax of arb se in Spanish.
Doctoral dissertation, York University.
Mendikoetxea, Amaya (1999) Las costrucciones con se. Medias, pasivas e impersonales. In Ignacio
Bosque & Violeta Demonte, Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, Madrid: Espasa
Calpe.
Montrul (2004) The Acquisition of Spanish: Morphosyntactic Development in Monolingual and
Bilingual L1 Acquisition and Adult L2 Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Pylkkänen, L. (2008) Introducing arguments. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Teomiro, Ismael (2010) Anaphors at the interfaces. Doctoral dissertation. Universidad Autónoma
de Madrid.
Teomiro, Ismael (2011) Reflexivity and adjustment strategies at the interfaces. Tromso Nordlyd
Working Papers in Linguistics 37:119-149.
Teomiro, Ismael (2012) Low applicatives and optional se in Spanish non-anticausative intransitive
verbs. Unpublished manuscript. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia.